Though they carry “Pro” in the name, Apple has long championed its top-end line of iPads as portable home entertainment devices, billing them as ideal for discerning movie fans as well as creative professionals. The tech giant even went so far as to describe its latest Apple iPad Pro 13-inch (M4) as a “home cinema in your hand” when it first unveiled the device.
While we have heard claims like this many times before from other brands, Apple is unique in that its hardware delivers the goods in the real world, with the iPad offering the best picture quality we have seen on a screen this size in quite some time during testing.
The only downside is that, while good enough for catching up on the latest episode of The Great Pottery Throwdown or Ru Paul’s Drag Race All Stars, the tiny inbuilt speakers can’t do justice to a decent movie – especially one with Dolby Atmos surround sound. That's why we suggest this pairing of Apple’s best premium iPad with its five-star wireless over-ear headphones, the premium AirPods Max, to create a truly great portable home cinema system.
Why the AirPods Max specifically, rather than any other five-star headphones, such as our Product of the Year Award-winning (and more affordable) Sony WH-1000XM5? It comes down to Apple’s famous Walled Garden approach to designing its own iOS ecosystem, which helps the iPad Pro and AirPods Max perfectly complement one another – especially when used as a portable home cinema set-up.
The perfect portable system
- Headphones: Apple AirPods Max (£499 / $599 / AU$899)
- Tablet: Apple iPad Pro 13-inch (M4) (£1299 / $1299 / AU$1699
- Total price: £1748 / $1898 / AU$2598
Tablet: Apple iPad Pro 13-inch (M4)
Apple's iPads have been a staple in our best tablets for movies buying guide for quite some time, but even by these high standards the Apple iPad Pro 13-inch (M4) proved to be something special when we reviewed it earlier this year.
The tablet’s most interesting feature is its "tandem OLED" screen. This is the first iPad to have an OLED panel and, in true Apple style, it’s not a "normal" version of the technology. Specifically, Apple has loaded the iPad Pro 13-inch (M4) with two OLED panels that, as the name suggests, run in tandem on top of each other.
The design aims to let the iPad offer the pixel-level contrast and perfect blacks that OLED is prized for, but with a much higher peak brightness than is traditionally possible with the technology. Specifically, Apple lists the iPad Pro 13-inch (M4) as offering 1600 nits with HDR highlights and 1000 nits of full-screen brightness thanks to the tandem OLED arrangement. (A nit is a measurement of luminance – a higher number indicates a brighter picture.)
That doesn’t put it on a par with a current-gen flagship OLED TV with micro lens array or QD-OLED hardware – these can hit over 3000 nits peak brightness – but it is still impressive considering most OLEDs struggled to break the 600 nits mark even a couple of years ago.
The hardware works a treat. Whether it's playing Napoleon via Apple TV+ or streaming Blade Runner 2049 on Amazon Prime Video, the iPad delivers a richly cinematic picture full of contrast. That's why we heaped praise on it in our iPad Pro 13-inch (M4) review, concluding:
“All told, this is a spectacular picture performance that combines pop and dynamism with superb subtlety and cinematic richness, resulting in a portable movie experience that is a match for the best home cinema displays.”
The only downside is that Apple hasn’t put a lot of work into the new iPad Pro’s speakers – that's somewhat understandable as they are still good performers by tablet standards. If you are sitting squarely in front of the iPad in quiet conditions, the audio is spacious and comes with decent clarity for casual viewing. Yet there is no form of Apple spatial audio (powered by Dolby Atmos) and the low end is a little too weak to create a truly immersive experience when watching movies.
Headphones: Apple AirPods Max
Enter the Apple AirPods Max, Apple’s flagship, and first, pair of premium wireless over-ear headphones. The pair we have here is the original model released in 2020; Apple has just refreshed the AirPods Max for 2024, bringing with it USB-C connection (instead of the older Lightning connection port) and new colours. We haven't tested the new 2024 model yet, although Apple hasn't made any announcements about changes to the sound. While you can still buy the original Max at various retailers, Apple officially only sells the refreshed, USB-C-toting AirPods Max 2024 now.
We have documented how good the AirPods Max are for general music listening many times. When paired with an Apple source and a decent quality stream, the AirPods Max delivers engaging, spacious and authentic results that will delight music fans.
What earns them a place in this system is their brilliant performance as a pair of home cinema headphones. Paired with the iPad Pro 13-inch (M4), the AirPods Max offer a variety of features you won’t find on competing wireless headphones, the biggest of which is spatial audio.
Spatial audio is a surround-sound technology specific to Apple devices and services that is powered by Dolby Atmos. It lets the AirPods Max offer 5.1, 7.1 and Atmos virtual surround sound when paired with a compatible Apple source.
On top of that, our clever combination also features dynamic head tracking technology. This does what it says on the tin, adjusting the audio depending on your head’s movements and position to ensure the sound always maintains a realistic sense of direction.
Apple isn’t the only brand to offer this. The Sonos Ace headphones attempt to do a similar thing, but require a compatible Sonos soundbar rather than an Apple source to work. Bose also has head tracking in its flagship QuietComfort Ultra Headphones; after testing them all, we can confirm that Apple is the only one to really nail its execution and deliver a properly great portable surround-sound experience with its headphones.
As we state in our AirPods Max review: “This is something you don’t get from rival models, as you need that collaboration between the source and the headphones. Simply put, combining an iPad with a pair of AirPods Max headphones gets you the most convincing portable cinema experience that we can think of.”
Verdict
It is for the reasons above that we have built this system and wholeheartedly recommend it as the best portable home cinema money can buy. It’s the perfect (if pricey) option for everyone from frequent flyers to night owls who like to binge films in bed, offering the rich picture quality of the iPad Pro M4 combined with the sonic excellence of the five-star AirPods Max. For Apple fans who love to take their movies on the go, this setup is very tough to beat.
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