Apple Debuts New iPad Pro With M5 Chip, Faster Charging, and More

[McScooby]

The one card up Window's sleeve had been the GPU's. To me that and affordability had been the main reasons people bought Window's machines, and Macs are let affordable and superior in every other way to Windows machines.And right now, with Windows being a complete mess and next to impossible to find anyone who think they are actually good, the reasons to buy Windows machines are slowly evaporating. But hopefully not too bad as we need competition.

I still own a couple of Windows machines for rendering, but pretty soon I can see than lone reason for me to own a Window's machine may be gone. My M4 Mac Studio still can't compete with latest Window's Nvidia machines, but the upcoming M5 Max chips should come pretty close, and without crazy cooling, and crazy wattage or a terrible OS.

Nvidia is making money hand over fist with their commercial chips and could care less about consumer chips right now, but I wouldn't doubt Apple could make a dent there too. They wouldn't need to care about CUDA compatibility as they have big enough ecosystem to make it happen. Better efficiency and looking like better technology too.

Where it comes to AI, I wouldn't worry about Apple, I would worry about Nvidia. They are check-Kiting everyone right now with their chips. That doesn't look good. That doesn't sound good. It looks like they need save some of their riches for a rainy day when the AI goldfish is done and people stop buying picks and shovels. Looks like the game is teetering as we speak.

Looks like it!😜

 

[FeliApple]

50% in 30 mins fast charging is interesting, yet I’m a happy owner of the 11th-gen iPad (A16) who charges with the 20w Power Adapter. And I think it actually charges too fast. One hour from 66% to 100% (according to GSMArena’s test) is insane considering it gives me 26 hours of SOT.

Battery life has been so good on recent iOS devices (at least with my light, efficient use) that I actually think the 20w charger is too fast. 50% in 30 mins, if it is anything like the iPhone 16, it would imply one hour to 85% from 0%, which is quite insane. I charge my 16 Plus with a 5w Power Adapter. Charging the iPad with a 10 or 12w older charger is too much of a hassle, as I only have one USB-C to USB-A cable and I don’t care enough to buy another one, but 20w is actually too fast for me.

Still, for those of you who use the iPad to draw at full brightness, I reckon you can make use of the fast charging. The Apple Pencil’s ridiculously fast charging (2nd-gen for my Air 5) is actually great to have. Battery life is insane though, about 2 hours of use to 80%. So the iPad getting this capability doesn’t hurt.

 

[kozz]

While I am the one that always wants the latest…gonna hold onto my 1tb M4 for the near future.

Now the hard one though will be the M5 Max MacBook, as I do game on mine but will wait for the redesign since it’s right around the corner…

Looking forward to the M5 air though for my wife or daughter (if she wants to give wife her M4) when the time comes so she can have the latest for college.

 

[rp2011]

What are you going on about? Do you actually think Windows is going anywhere? Windows marketshare has actually gone up in the past couple of years.

Looks like it!😜

That thing still runs Windows.

 

[hovscorpion12]

I dug a bit deeper into the newsroom article and I found a few key tidbits that the M5 iPad has over the M4.

1. 4K/120hz external monitor support w/Adaptive sync for low latency
2. N1 chip for better 5G
3. 150GB/S memory bandwidth
4. 2x faster storage read and write speeds.

For comparison

256GB iPad Pro M4 Model
Read: 1580MB/s
Write 1488MB/s

512GB iPad Pro M4 Model
Read: 2959.54 MB/s
Write: 2652.85 MB/s

1TB iPad Pro M4 Model
Read: 2783MB/s
Write: 2169MB/s

2TB iPad Pro M4 Model
Read: 2860.34 MB/s
Write: 2860.23 MB/s

5. 3rd Gen Ray Tracing
6. 1.5x faster GPU Rendering than iPad Pro with M4.
7 1.2x faster video transcode performance than iPad Pro with M4
8. 2x faster Ai image generation than iPad Pro with M4
9. 2.3x faster AI video upscaling performance than iPad Pro with M4

 

[rp2011]

What are you going on about? Do you actually think Windows is going anywhere? Windows marketshare has actually gone up in the past couple of years.

That's exactly what folks were saying whenever I mentioned that Intel was a dead company walking. People kept ignoring the trends and were slightly delusional about them until it was too late.
Windows will of course stay relevant unlike Intel because it is the backbone of commerce and institutions. But I don't see the happening on the consumer side. I see little loyalty for windows in that sector. And if OpenAi and others have their way, a chrome browser, if even that, is all people will need for apps..

Windows on the consumer side is on the trajectory of what I have been saying about Intel for the past 6years or so.

 

[jcshas]

Just put my out of date M4 13” on eBay

I opted to use Apple trade in instead of eBay for my “out of date” 11” iPad Pro. $604 trade in value is well worth the peace of mind and not having to deal with scammers.

 

[ricketysquire]

I guess we're not getting the Powerbook G5 this year.

 

[b.la]

Yep. The 12GB upgrade in RAM is great improvement, but without more RAM my M4 was no better in any practical way to my M1 iPad Pro.What use is more power if you cannot even open or save larger files? Even the base MacBook's start at 16GB.

With such a small update you do wonder if this is just planned obsolescence at play. At some point, your M4 iPad Pro won't get the new OS and the M5 will and it will be justified that it's because of the additional ram. I'd much rather live in a world where Apple brings out an iPad and supports the hell out of it for years and then 3, 5, 7 years when there's a reason to bring out a new one, people can choose to upgrade if they value the new thing. Right now, people don't appreciate Monday because they're waiting for Tuesday for the sole reason that it comes after Monday, not because of what they could do with either day, it's sad.

 

[McScooby]

That thing still runs Windows.

Was talking about Nvidia (results weren't great for $4k) & thought it was running ubuntu.

 

[rp2011]

Was talking about Nvidia (results weren't great for $4k) & thought it was running ubuntu.

Oh ok got it. Yep I saw someone reviewing it for LLM use, and this specific version shows it it promising for certain cases, it was mentioned that the Mac Studio was better bang for the buck overall.

 

[rp2011]

With such a small update you do wonder if this is just planned obsolescence at play. At some point, your M4 iPad Pro won't get the new OS and the M5 will and it will be justified that it's because of the additional ram. I'd much rather live in a world where Apple brings out an iPad and supports the hell out of it for years and then 3, 5, 7 years when there's a reason to bring out a new one, people can choose to upgrade if they value the new thing. Right now, people don't appreciate Monday because they're waiting for Tuesday for the sole reason that it comes after Monday, not because of what they could do with either day, it's sadI rather they keep updating year over year. Th

I rather they keep updating it year over year. The reason is, and it has always been the case, traditionally from the very inception of personal computers is that the more headroom you give developers, the quicker they use it up.

But in this case, yes, Apple has been very deliberate and I would blame marketing and Craig (These are folks who really need to retire) are purposely holding the iPad Pro back out of some crazy OS religious dogma they have conjured up.

But it they allowed the iPad Pro to escape that dogma, giving it a better OS we could use the Apple Pencil and all the other touch applications to the fullest potential that the chips are capable of. Developers would absolutely use up every bit of headroom if they could.

AND THE CHIPS ARE AMAZINGLY CAPABLE.

 

[gadgetgirl85]

As much as I’d love to watch movies on this, it’s soo expensive

 

[marte91]

Liquid Glass is complete garbage from a UX standpoint.

you are entitled to your opinion, however i'm not sure how many people will agree in the real world, at this point i have a neutral opinion, i do like some of the new looks, but not everything, i come from the android world, and i'm used to certain software not being perfect until a couple of revisions are issued.

 

[Jdhommert]

So disappointed in today's "updates" being mostly just a chip swap. As always, disappointed in Apple's RAM choices.

So disappointed in 12gb base on a Pro level device that now has built in day 1 actual multitasking.

A year ago all M4 chips made came with 16gb. Even Mini and Air branded devices. I think the M4 even had 12gb chips binned down to 8. M4 iPad Pros had the same amount of RAM as the economy iPhone 16e. Now they come with iPad26 with real multitasking with up to 4 windows at once. Widgets and OS will continue to use more RAM. Another big thing will be the LLM/AI things and nobody likes to keep things on device like Apple. A iPad Pro released in Q4 2025 with OEM multitasking should have more RAM than an iPhone Air. It should have more than 4gb more than a iPhone 16e

8GB in the M4 iPad Pro was horrible but mostly as time went on and we saw how much RAM went in everything else etc.

I think factoring in everything the RAM choices on the M5 iPad Pro are worse than the M4 iPad Pro.

 

[GMLP]

Damn. Was really hoping that dual front camera rumour was true, something I actually need.

 

[hgfjhbvytjdnb]

Keeping the form factor relatively unchanged this long is bananas to me. I've been waiting to update for like 8 years now - see no reason to do so until they lose those atrocious, massive bezels and make the screen a bit bigger, and more of a widescreen aspect ratio.

Hopefully they'll keep doing what they've been doing and not turn this thing into a TV set, that's the only place 16:9 is good for.

 

[b.la]

I rather they keep updating it year over year. The reason is, and it has always been the case, traditionally from the very inception of personal computers is that the more headroom you give developers, the quicker they use it up.

But in this case, yes, Apple has been very deliberate and I would blame marketing and Craig (These are folks who really need to retire) are purposely holding the iPad Pro back out of some crazy OS religious dogma they have conjured up.

But it they allowed the iPad Pro to escape that dogma, giving it a better OS we could use the Apple Pencil and all the other touch applications to the fullest potential that the chips are capable of. Developers would absolutely use up every bit of headroom if they could.

AND THE CHIPS ARE AMAZINGLY CAPABLE.

Yeah I'm with you. I run a small hobby CNC machine and it blows my mind I can't use my iPad Pro to control it, it would be perfect but Apple doesn't allow the TB/UBC port to be used that way.

 

[Andyg13]

The update over the M4 is really minor. Just a 15% bump in cpu performance and it’s basically more AI oriented. The boost there is significant but who really needs that much power over AI now or in the next 3 years? I will be keeping my M1 iPad Pro which performs great in everything i throw at it (teaching through Goodnotes while extending the display on a projector in class, studying for my master’s , light photo and video editing, gaming, personal research). Unless i find a good discount i think i am good with my M1 which has been my main device for almost 4 years.

 

[Ctrlos]

As someone who finds use for the M1 version in all sorts of ways I still cannot help but think this is all wasted power. You only have to look at all the ways Apple pushes the Macbook Pro at an industrial market whereas the iPad Pro just lists the same old 'Thin, Pencil, Keyboard' stats. I'm kind of stuck because the battery on mine is clearly slowly degrading and I actually use the LiDAR scanner for workflow, yet I also need the 0.5x camera for recording purposes and they got shot of it, just to force me to use the Final Cut camera app.

 

[cloudyo]

So, will the magic keyboard for the last generation (M4 ipad pro) work with the new m5 ipad pro?

 

[La Linea]

So, will the magic keyboard for the last generation (M4 ipad pro) work with the new m5 ipad pro?

Yes:

 

[Brapple]

Just pre-ordered a 13 M5 256 to replace my 13 M4 256.

I am prepping myself to be mind-blown.

Seriously, I’m pissed there’s zero battery capacity improvements. Faster charging will help a little, but more capacity would’ve been nice.

Also, really wish memory was 16/24 or something. I actually do run into memory issues pretty regularly with my 8GB M4. I was tempted to go for the M5 1TB for the 16GB memory, but am hoping an extra 4GB over my M4 will reduce/stop safari crashes and game lockups etc. An extra $600 for the 1TB is a very tough sell for only 4GB more memory. Stupid Apple memory tax. Would I notice the extra CPU cores in my gaming?
I’ve noticed my new 12GB iPPM 17 always runs completely full on memory, just like my 8GB iPPM 16 did, so I don’t know if the extra 4GB bump will actually help, or if that extra 4GB is “off-limits” for regular apps and has been allocated only to OS/AI functions.

Upgrade cost was ~$605+tax w/trade-in.

Fun fact - I bought my M4 day 1, 18mo ago and have had 80% max charge enabled the entire time. My M4 battery is currently at 92% max usable capacity with 312 cycles. I think I’m going to allow 100% full charging on my M5 with the intent I’ll upgrade in 18mo to the M6. I’ll be curious to see how the battery fares charging all the way to 100%.

 

[cloudyo]

Yes:

View attachment 2568436

That just means that the new keyboard will work with the old ipad, not that the old keyboard will work with the new one.

 

[mango316]

Just pre-ordered a 13 M5 256 to replace my 13 M4 256.

I am prepping myself to be mind-blown.

Seriously, I’m pissed there’s zero battery capacity improvements. Faster charging will help a little, but more capacity would’ve been nice.

Also, really wish memory was 16/24 or something. I actually do run into memory issues pretty regularly with my 8GB M4. I was tempted to go for the M5 1TB for the 16GB memory, but am hoping an extra 4GB over my M4 will reduce/stop safari crashes and game lockups etc. An extra $600 for the 1TB is a very tough sell for only 4GB more memory. Stupid Apple memory tax. Would I notice the extra CPU cores in my gaming?
I’ve noticed my new 12GB iPPM 17 always runs completely full on memory, just like my 8GB iPPM 16 did, so I don’t know if the extra 4GB bump will actually help, or if that extra 4GB is “off-limits” for regular apps and has been allocated only to OS/AI functions.

Upgrade cost was ~$605+tax w/trade-in.

Fun fact - I bought my M4 day 1, 18mo ago and have had 80% max charge enabled the entire time. My M4 battery is currently at 92% max usable capacity with 312 cycles. I think I’m going to allow 100% full charging on my M5 with the intent I’ll upgrade in 18mo to the M6. I’ll be curious to see how the battery fares charging all the way to 100%.

Did you leave your plugged in most of the time? I noticed when I did that with other Apple’s devices the full capacity dropped regardless it if I set it to max charge at 80%.