iPad Air 4 Pencil Speed Improved To 3ms Latency

The presentation of the new iPad Air 4 is predicted for the coming weeks, Apple is said to have achieved a decisive improvement in the fresh generation: a very low latency of the Pencil. This could also benefit other iPads.

If the pencil works well, the whole tablet is worth more

In order to be able to use the input with a digital pen really productively, one criterion is most important: The delay between touching the screen and displaying the input must be as short as possible. Apple is one of the best providers of its Apple Pencil. As Forbes reports, the iPad Air 4 seems to want to significantly undercut the previously achieved peak values ​​in terms of pen input latency.

Forbes bases its report on statements by the most accurate speaker Komiya, who predicts a delay of 3 milliseconds for the upcoming iPad Air model in a tweet. For comparison: the second-generation Apple Pencil was launched with 20 ms, but then experienced a significant improvement to 9 milliseconds with iPadOS 13. When introducing the Note 20, Samsung placed great emphasis on the fact that the S-Pen also has a latency of 9 milliseconds. If the iPad Air 4 reaches the predicted value here, that would definitely be a big step forward.

Possibly via software update

As Forbes emphasizes, the message about low latency could also give hope to users of the second generation of the Apple Pencil. Since the last improvement in the input delay was achieved via a software update, it is easy to imagine that Apple will not only be able to improve the iPad Air 4 – a latency of 3 milliseconds would therefore also be conceivable for the iPad Pro.
Only the presentation of the iPad Air 4, which is currently expected in the coming weeks, will bring security here. In the fight for the best pen input, Apple could definitely set an example again.