Just curious what the differences, if any, there are between the M5 in the iPad Pro, and the Macbook Pro.
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Difference between M5 in an iPad Pro, and a Macbook Pro?
- Thread starter Ursadorable
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I don’t know the difference from a hardware perspective but I have an iPad Pro with an M2 and a MacBook Pro with an M1 Pro processor and the MacBook runs circles around the iPad’s performance.
To be honest, it’s difficult to tell the benefit of a fast processor in an iPad because I haven’t found any powerful and usable productivity software for it.
I like my iPad and I use it a lot, but for doing work the Mac is infinitely better, for me. There’s really no comparison.
To be honest, it’s difficult to tell the benefit of a fast processor in an iPad because I haven’t found any powerful and usable productivity software for it.
I like my iPad and I use it a lot, but for doing work the Mac is infinitely better, for me. There’s really no comparison.
Look at the Tech Specs on the Apple web page.
iPad M5 (256/512 storage): 9 core CPU
iPad M5 (1024/2048 storage): 10 core CPU
MBP M5: 10 core CPU
All are 10 core GPU.
iPad M5 (256/512 storage): 9 core CPU
iPad M5 (1024/2048 storage): 10 core CPU
MBP M5: 10 core CPU
All are 10 core GPU.
Number of cores unfortunately doesn't tell the entire story.
- Does the processor run at the same frequency?
- Does it have the same power consumption?
- Etc.
Absolutely this.
Gotta say after 5 years of trying to run an iPad as my main computer (albeit with with a Mac mini attached as a kind of psuedo desktop/laptop/iPad hybrid), the system has such potential but it requires far far to much work, constant tweaking, breaks regularly no real fixes except luck, it's a failed experiment when compared with opening a macbook and just working.
The iPad has amazing apps that never reach their potential, it has inbuilt ability to enable macos as an app using an attached mac which apple just arbitrarily gimp.
I have tried and tried. But I'm getting rid of it all to buy a macbook and just use a computer as a computer instead of trying to use something which cannot reach its full potential due to the restrictions they (both app and the app makers) hang around its neck.
Here's the MacRumors M5 iPad Pro article:
And here's MR's M5 MacBook Pro article:
Both articles list some benchmark results, along with the differences in CPU cores, but I didn't see any clock-speed measurements. Another difference is RAM.
There may be more info in the replies to each article. At this time, the MB Pro article has 3 pages of replies, while the iPad Pro one has 2 pages, so it shouldn't be difficult to scan the replies to see if there are more details.
And here's MR's M5 MacBook Pro article:
Both articles list some benchmark results, along with the differences in CPU cores, but I didn't see any clock-speed measurements. Another difference is RAM.
There may be more info in the replies to each article. At this time, the MB Pro article has 3 pages of replies, while the iPad Pro one has 2 pages, so it shouldn't be difficult to scan the replies to see if there are more details.
The big difference is the OS of course. But the second biggest difference is thermal management. iPad cpus must be throttled because they are fanless.
According to Geekbench there is a difference in clock speed between the two:
browser.geekbench.com
browser.geekbench.com
But I'm not sure if that's confirmed. It's probably true, but it seems to make only marginal difference in score, at least for Geekbench.
iPad Pro 13-inch (M5) - Geekbench
Benchmark results for an iPad17,4 with an ARM processor.
browser.geekbench.com
Mac17,2 - Geekbench
Benchmark results for a Mac17,2 with an Apple M5 processor.
browser.geekbench.com
But I'm not sure if that's confirmed. It's probably true, but it seems to make only marginal difference in score, at least for Geekbench.
According to Geekbench there is a difference in clock speed between the two:
iPad Pro 13-inch (M5) - Geekbench
Benchmark results for an iPad17,4 with an ARM processor.
Mac17,2 - Geekbench
Benchmark results for a Mac17,2 with an Apple M5 processor.
But I'm not sure if that's confirmed. It's probably true, but it seems to make only marginal difference in score, at least for Geekbench.
Also shows one less core on the iPad.
Yeah multicore score will be lower because of that and the greater thermal constraints of the iPad (although that will matter more for non-bursty workloads, won't show up as big in GB). You can see this in M4 data comparing the Air with the MBP/mini.