iPad Pro iPad RAM is not THAT important

[Digitalguy]

With regards to how aggressive iPad OS is in shutting down background tasks and applications, 16GB of RAM seems almost overkill.

not sure, do you mean it's not aggressive?

 

[rui no onna]

I think you are right, I am misremembering, I got my 9.7 pro quite a bit later than my 2015 12.9 (in 2018 I think) and immediately upgraded to 12 and it was reloading on 12, but not badly, I remember I noticed the difference with the 12.9 however, which never reloaded on 12. Reloads became worse on 13 and I left the 9.7 there (where it still is, 13.4).
As for 4GB devices, I don't remember too many reloads on 13 (I remember them on 14 and 15 and 16, they became worse and worse), but maybe I just didn't noticed back then since they were not as evident as they became later.

Yeah, I had the 2017 10.5 and 12.9 with A10X 4GB and they pretty much never reloaded on 12. The 2GB RAM devices reloaded but not frequently. The Air 2 was getting noticeably slower though.

I distinctly recall 13 being much worse than its predecessor. There was one time I was working on something rush on Excel on the 12.9 while in a car (passenger). I had to switch to Safari to research something and when I went back to Excel, the whole app has reloaded and I lost my progress. 13 was when Apple switched from iOS to iPadOS branding and also when "desktop Safari" started and I found it much heavier on RAM compared to iOS 12. Honestly, 14 seemed around the same as 13 in terms of RAM usage but 15 was another heavy hitter.

Thankfully the M1 iPP was released when I was getting really fed up with the reloads. I needed 1TB so the 16GB RAM was a very nice bonus.

 

[FeliApple]

I agree, but I just use my iPads for content consumption. And I don’t update, so that is a massive factor in my favour. 1GB iPads struggled quite a bit with iOS 9, but 2GB iPads ran flawlessly. 2GB iPads struggled on iPadOS 13, but 4GB iPads and over ran very well, etc.

My M1 iPad Air with 8GB has more than enough RAM on iPadOS 15, but admittedly I’m neither a Procreate user nor do I especially care if tabs reload (which for me they don’t).

 

[Digitalguy]

Yeah, I had the 2017 10.5 and 12.9 with A10X 4GB and they pretty much never reloaded on 12. The 2GB RAM devices reloaded but not frequently. The Air 2 was getting noticeably slower though.

I distinctly recall 13 being much worse than its predecessor. There was one time I was working on something rush on Excel on the 12.9 while in a car (passenger). I had to switch to Safari to research something and when I went back to Excel, the whole app has reloaded and I lost my progress. 13 was when Apple switched from iOS to iPadOS branding and also when "desktop Safari" started and I found it much heavier on RAM compared to iOS 12. Honestly, 14 seemed around the same as 13 in terms of RAM usage but 15 was another heavy hitter.

Thankfully the M1 iPP was released when I was getting really fed up with the reloads. I needed 1TB so the 16GB RAM was a very nice bonus.

I had the 10.5 on 12 and I can confirm, it started reloading later, I don't remember when, but I do remember that while 13 was still okish on my mini 4, 14 kind of destroyed it...
I guess desktop safari was much worse also because desktop pages take more RAM: My tabs reload on 8GB RAM because they are all desktop tabs (gmail and youtube, not the mobile version). The M1 with 16GB will not have reloads till the end of his supported life...

 

[Digitalguy]

I agree, but I just use my iPads for content consumption. And I don’t update, so that is a massive factor in my favour. 1GB iPads struggled quite a bit with iOS 9, but 2GB iPads ran flawlessly. 2GB iPads struggled on iPadOS 13, but 4GB iPads and over ran very well, etc.

My M1 iPad Air with 8GB has more than enough RAM on iPadOS 15, but admittedly I’m neither a Procreate user nor do I especially care if tabs reload (which for me they don’t).

Honestly my 9.7 pro on 13.4 is still ok, reloads a lot but it's not slow, the air 2 was way way slower. And even the 12.9 2015 with 4GB RAM on iPadOS 16.7 is now worse than the 9.7 on 13.4. The M1 on 15 has zero reloads. It has some issues with compatibily, I have lost a couple of apps who will not work if not updated and will not update, but it still runs most things well.