That is what I thought initially, but you do get a 120hz screen and 64GB more storage for $200 with the pro 11". If you want 256GB then it's only a $150 difference for the better screen. If you need 128GB but not 256GB then it is $50 since Apple doesn't sell a 128GB iPad Air (probably to leave room for the Pro 11"). It isn't a great deal but if I were in the market for an iPad I think I would go for the pro just for the fluidity, especially since either should last for years and years.
But you are also going two generations backwards with the CPU, albeit with extra cores. It doesn't make sense. It seems like they should be offering the Pro's with an A14X or equivalent by now.
I wonder if they are holding it up because it will use the same CPU as whatever is in the ARM Macbooks.
Or Apple doesn't have enough TSMC 5nm inventory to make both A14 and it's big-chungus cousin and launch everything at the same time. That would also explain why they launched iPad Air a month before iPhone. The former is a lower-demand product so you could totally launch that one first when yields are lower.
Also with APPLESi Macs, they're natively running iPad apps, so there is some kind of chance they meld the Pro line and the MacBook line into a single device capable of running both platform's Apps, though I don't actually expect that gen1 of the new platform.
The 120hz screen is a big deal if you plan to pick up the pencil and use it for a lot of drawing/whiteboarding/notetaking. Latency really matters when you're drawing on the screen and can visibly see the line trail behind the pencil tip. Ideally, you'd want a 1khz screen for ultimate responsiveness [1], but that may be a long time coming.
IMO COVID changed the appeal of the iPad at home for school, but if you wanted the newest pencil or keyboard combo, then you'd be stuck looking at only the iPad Pro line. The iPad Air changes that.
If I had to guess, I think it's because they don't want developers optimizing for specific amounts of RAM and then having lousy performance on iPads with less RAM. If consumers don't have an easy way to find out which models have >X GB of RAM, then developers can't put it in their system requirements.
Apple doesn’t talk about the RAM because the machines have enough. I don’t recall the exact amount from tear downs, but having owned a few different models over time and played graphically complex games etc on them, I can say the performance on iPads is consistently great and however much RAM they have is enough.
iOS is a console ecosystem, so any new one is guaranteed to last 5 years or more with excellent performance.
