With a desktop-grade M1 processor under the hood (and a bunch of other super-premium features), last year's 11 and 12.9-inch iPad Pros are arguably the overall best tablets money can buy in 2022... as long as money is no object. But according to multiple generally reliable leakers, industry pundits, and insiders, that's set to change by the end of this year, with the vastly upgraded Apple M2 chip unveiled earlier this week widely expected to expand from MacBooks to iPads slightly quicker than its precursor.

A beastly SoC deserves all the storage and memory in the world

How could Apple possibly do justice to a chip advertised as containing an 18 percent faster CPU, 35 percent more powerful GPU, and 40 percent faster Neural Engine on the latest MacBook Air and 13-inch MacBook Pro editions than the already mind-blowing M1? A 14.1-inch screen sounds like... an interesting start for the most advanced of three rumored iPad Pro (2022) variants, and a "base" combination of 512GB internal storage space and 16GB RAM may well help this colossus completely leave Samsung's 14.6-inch Galaxy Tab S8 Ultra in the dust..

An iPad Pro with up to 4TB storage?!?

This is an even sketchier theory (at least for the time being), but it kinda sorta makes sense for Apple to go all the way up to FOUR terabytes of local digital hoarding room if the jumbo-sized 14.1-inch iPad Pro (2022) will indeed start at 512 gigs. In case you're wondering, the M1-powered iPad Pro 12.9 (2021) currently comes in 128GB, 256GB, 512GB, 1TB, and 2TB storage configurations, the former three of which are limited to 8GB RAM, while the other two offer 16 gigs of the good stuff each. Compared to that, the first-ever 14.1-inch iPad Pro could run on a whole different level in 512GB, 1TB, 2TB, and 4TB options, the latter of which we don't even want to imagine how much it might cost.