About the Liquid Retina XDR display on iPad Pro

Learn how to get the most out of the Liquid Retina XDR display on your iPad Pro 12.9-inch (5th and 6th generation).

The Liquid Retina XDR display on iPad Pro was engineered by Apple to meet our incredibly high standards. This display delivers Extreme Dynamic Range with high contrast and high brightness. ProMotion and True Tone display technologies deliver a responsive and natural viewing experience. Ultra-low reflectivity helps you stay focused on your content, even in high ambient lighting conditions. A wide color gamut delivers rich and vibrant color. Each display is carefully calibrated in the factory, and together with the color management built into iPadOS, the Liquid Retina XDR display delivers an optimal viewing experience.

High Dynamic Range

The Liquid Retina XDR display is ideal for High Dynamic Range (HDR) content. Videos are stunning and photos more vivid than ever, with even more true-to-life details. This display delivers extremely bright highlights along with the subtle details in the darkest parts of an image from HDR video formats, such as Dolby Vision, HDR10, or HLG.

Display Technology

The 12.9-inch Liquid Retina XDR display has an IPS LCD panel supporting a resolution of 2732 by 2048 pixels for a total of 5.6 million pixels with 264 pixels per inch. To achieve Extreme Dynamic Range required an entirely new display architecture on iPad Pro. The all new 2D mini-LED backlighting system with individually controlled local dimming zones was the best choice for delivering the extremely high full-screen brightness and contrast ratio, and off-axis color accuracy, that creative professionals depend on for their workflows.

The Liquid Retina XDR display can support up to 1000 nits of full-screen brightness. It can also support up to 1600 nits for highlights in up to 40 percent of the screen area when the rest of that image is black or at brightness up to 600 nits.

Unlike the previous design that takes light emitting from one edge of the display and evenly distributes it across the entire back, the Liquid Retina XDR display uses over 10,000 custom-designed mini-LEDs spread uniformly across the entire back of the display, delivering higher LED density than any other display of its kind. These mini-LEDs are grouped into an array of over 2,500 individually controlled local dimming zones. This delivers incredibly deep blacks right next to bright image areas, achieving a 1,000,000:1 contrast ratio.

The Liquid Retina XDR display improves upon the trade-offs of typical local dimming systems, where the extreme brightness of LEDs might cause a slight blooming effect because the LED zones are larger than the LCD pixel size. This display is designed to deliver crisp front-of-screen performance with its incredibly small custom mini-LED design, industry leading mini-LED density, large number of individually controlled local dimming zones, and custom optical films that shape the light while maintaining image fidelity and extreme brightness and contrast.

Additionally, custom algorithms run on the advanced display engine of the M1 chip, working at the pixel level to control the mini-LED and LCD layers of the display separately, treating them as two distinct displays. These proprietary algorithms coordinate the mini-LED and LCD layers across transitions to deliver the optimal visual experience. Transitional characteristics of local dimming zones, such as a slight blur or color change while scrolling against black backgrounds, are normal behavior.

The Liquid Retina XDR display delivers P3 wide color. The color gamut afforded by the P3 primaries is larger than sRGB, offering richer and more saturated colors, especially with certain reds, yellows, and greens. The result is rich and vibrant color that’s also used in the digital cinema industry. Every Liquid Retina XDR display is also calibrated at the factory for color, brightness, gamma, and white point for a consistent visual experience.

ProMotion technology automatically adjusts the display refresh rate up to 120 Hz (twice the rate of typical LCD displays) to the optimal rate for the content. The result is ultra-smooth scrolling and incredible responsiveness on the display, whether you’re using your finger or Apple Pencil. True Tone technology subtly adjusts the white balance onscreen to match the color temperature of the light around you, so images on the display look as natural as on a printed page. The cover glass on the Liquid Retina XDR display has an on-axis reflection of 1.8 percent due to a custom antireflective coating. As a result, iPad Pro delivers industry-leading reflectivity for a more comfortable viewing experience indoors and out.

Get the most out of the Liquid Retina XDR display

Here are some additional things you can do to get the most out of your Liquid Retina XDR display:

• Update your iPad to the latest version of iPadOS. When a new update is available, you'll see a prompt to update. You can also check for updates in Settings > General > Software Update.

• Use Auto-Brightness to automatically adjust the brightness of your display based on the ambient light in your location. This setting is on by default. To check this setting, go to Settings > Accessibility > Display & Text Size, then scroll down and turn on Auto-Brightness.

• Set your iPad to turn off the display when you aren’t using it. Choosing a shorter time is recommended. To adjust this setting, go to Settings > Display & Brightness > Auto-Lock.