That's without AppleCare+. With AC+, I believe Apple either has to provide a similar device if the exact model is not available or a reimbursement.
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iPad Pro M4 with 8gb of ram iPad Pro owners: Are you upgrading to the M5 to get more ram?
- Thread starter Jacoblee23
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That's without AppleCare+. With AC+, I believe Apple either has to provide a similar device if the exact model is not available or a reimbursement.
Yep unless Apple does something about PWM on OLED iPads or the LCD Air gets FaceID.
So I’m pretty sure the jump from my 8GB M4 to my 12gb M5 has offered zero ram benefits in my usage. I’m seeing just as many Safari tab reloads as before. I run anywhere from 15-25 tabs open at any given time.
The overall experience is slightly faster and smoother on the M5. I’ve also had wifi7 routers and 1/1Gbit fiber for over a year now, so my network performance is undoubtedly better than on my M4, but as far as memory, I don’t believe 12gb did much for me. I play games as well and that wipes out my memory even though I swipe-close the games when I’m done with them.
Wondering if I need to upgrade to a 16GB M5 or if I’d be in the exact same boat there too.
The overall experience is slightly faster and smoother on the M5. I’ve also had wifi7 routers and 1/1Gbit fiber for over a year now, so my network performance is undoubtedly better than on my M4, but as far as memory, I don’t believe 12gb did much for me. I play games as well and that wipes out my memory even though I swipe-close the games when I’m done with them.
Wondering if I need to upgrade to a 16GB M5 or if I’d be in the exact same boat there too.
Interesting. I have been on the fence going from m4 8gb to the 12gb base and you may have just saved me money.
I think what we are all really wanting is Safari to have a “protected” reserve that cannot get stomped on by anything else, thus stopping the page reloads. Without that I think we’d actually need 24gb-32gb of ram to never see page reloads. I know a lot about how memory caching works in Windows and Linux and Apple is doing what it can with so little ram in its devices. Until we see massive amounts of ram (24gb-32gb) we get to deal with page reloads - again I run a lot of open tabs because I’ve got a lot going on at any given time. Others may not need the extra memory to stop the reloads as their usage is different. Blanket statements don’t make sense here.
Even just having an option to stop specific tabs from refreshing/sleeping would be so useful.
I’ve felt this way about the 8GB to 12GB RAM improvement on my iPhone 15PM to 17PM upgrade too. I haven’t seemed to notice much improvement on refreshing.
I am going to pick up my M5 12GB right now. Will be comparing it to my 16GB M1 and my 8GB M4. I have 14 days to decide if I keep it. Will be reporting my results.
That's what you have on Samsung tablets (not by default but you can enable it). Wish Apple gave us the same level of control...
Here’s my problem. My typical use case involves me working in Lightroom, and I’ll periodically take a break to go check stocks, read stuff in Safari, glance at Facebook, etc. Sometimes when I return to Lightroom, the app has apparently been purged from memory, as it “restarts” (splash screen appears). The issue with this is that some settings (specifically of concern to me, the option to hide rejected photos) are reverted when this happens, and it takes me a bit of time to set it back to how I want it, then find my way back to whatever image I was working on before.
It’s quite frustrating, and I was all set to go in tomorrow and trade in my M4 for an M5, thinking that the additional RAM would stop this from happening.
However, what’s confusing to me is that if I intentionally TRY to run out of memory by launching a bunch of apps, and opening a bunch of Safari tabs, I usually cannot prompt this purging of Lightroom to occur. IOW, it happens seemingly at random, sometimes if I just go into Safari and read something for a few minutes, but even under artificial torture test conditions, I struggle to replicate it.
This has me wondering if the extra 4tb would even help me here, or if maybe Lightroom is re-launching for some unrelated reason.
It’s quite frustrating, and I was all set to go in tomorrow and trade in my M4 for an M5, thinking that the additional RAM would stop this from happening.
However, what’s confusing to me is that if I intentionally TRY to run out of memory by launching a bunch of apps, and opening a bunch of Safari tabs, I usually cannot prompt this purging of Lightroom to occur. IOW, it happens seemingly at random, sometimes if I just go into Safari and read something for a few minutes, but even under artificial torture test conditions, I struggle to replicate it.
This has me wondering if the extra 4tb would even help me here, or if maybe Lightroom is re-launching for some unrelated reason.
Most people say it's not worth to update from one generation to the next, and that's generally true, unless... you want to correct a mistake you made with your previous purchase (no cellular, but you realize you wanted it, not enough storage, but you realize you need more, not enough RAM but you realize there are too many reloads for your liking etc.) or if the battery is in a bad condition (unlikely after 1/1.5 years) or because the new model has some game changing (for you) feature, like a redesign (like from 2017 to 2018 or even from 2022 to 2024). If the new features of the M5 (faster charging, support for high refresh displays, AI engines) are game changing is debatable, but the answer is probably no for the vast majority of M4 users. I would say the main reason for M4 users to upgrade is if they are not happy with their current devices (in terms of storage, RAM, battery etc.). CPU (or even GPU) performance is unlikely to be a reason, but there are always niche cases.
I'll copy the comment I posted on another thread for you:
"So I have done the first tests comparing the base M4 and base M5.
7 tabs open, 3 gmail desktop pages, 2 youtube videos, 1 reddit page, 1 macrumors, same on both.
I have also used a remote desktop app, a couple of second screen apps (duet and spacedesk), an e-commerce app, the gmail app, the instagram app and a pdf app.
As long as I kept using them, no reloads, then I went and took a shower, taking the new iPad with me to listen to stuff, after the shower I checked the M4 and it started reloading, I lost 1 of the 2 youtube videos, several tabs reloaded.
So yeah, 12GB works better than 8GB, no big surprise. Now I'll be doing the harder test, 12 vs 16, in order to see how much I can do without reloads on each (the 16 has been excellent so far). This test could take days, not hours, at least I hope. I won't be multitasking like crazy, that's not my point, I want to do a realist scenario of what I use.
Also I tested speakers but things are more complicated than I expected. I'll probably make a separate comment or event post about that (I compared M1, M2, M4 and M5).
And about charging, the high wattage charging only kicks in below 50%, otherwise it's around 35 like the M4 and M1/2. It flutuctues between 50w and 60w.
Don't expect fast charing above 50%."
I'll also add, disk speed is in line with other tests, so faster than M4 base or than M1/2 2TB.
Perceived speed is exactly the same between the 2, but that was expected, these chips are overpowered (did a speedometer test: 37 vs 43)
Thank you much. I went ahead and upgraded today as well to the base m5 coming from a m4 512gb. So far multitasking seems to have zero lag while at times I would have lag on the m4 but nothing bad… We shall see.. Thank you for sharing. Looking forward to your other posts!
Very disappointing. Preventing Safari reloading is the only improvement which would have been useful for me. Had even thought before buying M4 3 months back whether to wait it out. Very glad that I did not. Very happy with my M4 11" cellular iPad. Hope Apple will address this issue in the future. Seems like for most users there is going to be no noticeable improvement due to the additional RAM.
It is just a number. If you don’t have performance issues, just skip it since it is a modest specs bump.
I upgraded from an M1 to an M4 primarily for storage. 8 GB never has been an issue for my workload.
It doesn’t really matter since you are accessing only 8 Gb of it.
I'll give you an update. I pushed the iPad 12GB to reloads with benchmarks etc. but you know what, also the 16GB one started reloading, so I would say the difference is not huge. At this point the 16GB does not seem much more future proof than the 12 (and both are clearly better than 8GB if you don't push them too hard). I'll save the $600 for when Apple increased the max RAM to 24GB at least, hopefully in a couple of years.
Still I'll continue testing, to try and have more accurate results.
Indeed but at the pace Apple is going with iPad, we might have to wait a decade to get that even on the top tier model
You know what, this is Apple we're talking about.
The way I see it, they do things differently from the rest of electronic companies. That's why I don't see a huge benefit going from 8GB RAM to 12GB or 16GB with them.
They go at a different pace than others, they might or might not optimize their OS to work better with different amounts of RAM, they only upgrade the RAM and storage in base models every couple of years (always late), etc.
So, knowing how they are, I just don't trust that paying for more RAM will actually make things work better (Mac, iPad, iPhone, etc).
I decided to go ahead and try the M5, picked it up yesterday afternoon. Happy to report that the 12gb of RAM does appear to be helping in my case. I have not yet had a single instance of Lightroom being bumped when I go do other stuff… every time I return to LR, it’s still just the way I left it.