Every autumn, a crop of new Apples falls from the Silicon Valley tree in Cupertino, California. Some are iPhones, and some are iPads. Not every iPad gets a yearly makeover, but Apple’s furnished plenty of attention on its top-dog iPad, the iPad Pro, lately.
After releasing the iPad Pro M4 around this time in 2024, Apple launched the iPad Pro M5 last week. There are many questions, such as should you wait until it officially goes on sale on October 22, or just buy the iPad Pro M4 that you can get right now? And if you have an M4, does it pay to upgrade to the M5?
Apple
iPad Pro M5 (opens in a new window)
Available at Apple
Buy Now (opens in a new window)
Available at Amazon
Buy Now (opens in a new window)
the big difference
Much of the iPad Pro M5 is a carryover design. The dimensions are the same, as are the looks, display,
As if Apple weren’t making it obvious by the name, the centerpiece upgrade to the iPad Pro M5 is the use of Apple’s M5 chip. Apple is mum about the exact processor speeds, but what we’re really looking at here is RAM.
The RAM on the 256GB- and 512GB-storage versions grows from 8GB to 12GB. That’s where you’ll see a noticeable performance bump in choosing the iPad Pro M5 over the M4. RAM is short-term memory that allows you to run more apps and services concurrently, and more performance-intensive apps.
Apple says that the iPad Pro M5 is 3.5 times faster at on-device AI tasks than the M4. Apple’s talking about the iPad’s built-in Apple Intelligence, not accessing ChatGPT or Perplexity through an app or browser.
How they measure that and why they specify “AI performance,” I’m still waiting to find out. But I’d wager that’s down to the 50% increase in RAM.
The 1TB and 2TB versions of the iPad Pro M5 remain at 16GB of RAM. That’s no slouch, but it’s not an upgrade over the iPad Pro M4, either. Memory bandwidth on all versions grows from 120 GB/s on M4 to 153 GB/s, though, helping with those performance-intensive tasks.
Apple’s iPad Pro is already a heavy-duty, powerful beast. If you’re simply using it for sketching and casual video editing, you don’t need to ditch your iPad Pro M4 for an M5. But if you’re running up against the limits of your M4 and your tablet is a key part of your workflow, then the performance bump of the M5 is worth it, as long as you’re updating from a 256GB or 512GB M4.
You have plenty of time to make your decision. If you land on buying the iPad Pro M5 before its launch date on Wednesday, October 22, you can pre-order it here. It’ll even land in your eager paws on that day if you pre-order it from the online Apple Store and have it shipped to you.
Apple
iPad Pro M5 (opens in a new window)
Available at Apple
Buy Now (opens in a new window)
Available at Amazon
Buy Now (opens in a new window)
The post The iPad Pro M5 vs. iPad Pro M4: Does It Pay to Upgrade? appeared first on VICE.
