iPad Pro Surprised at how well the 2020 iPad Pro runs iOS 26

[jjrtiger]

I’ve owned the iPad Pro since day one. Recently, the battery performance has been less than stellar and I have a couple of tiny cracks in the screen.

Rather spend money on a new screen and battery repair, I decided to order the 1 TB iPad Pro M5.

Yes, this thing is insanely fast. There’s so much I like about it. I thought it would feel much lighter but the difference isn’t as pronounced.

While the newest iPad Pro is an incredible device, the big story it’s me is how capable the old iPad is.

If you’re using your 2020 iPad Pro for “non-pro” tasks like side car, web browsing, working on documents/presentations, watching movies, etc. I think it’s still a pretty damn good device for being five years old. And, now that they brought Stage Manger to it, it’s even better. I guess we all know now that Craig’s technical reasoning for the 2020 iPad Pro not getting Stage Manager was BS.

Anyways, I think this goes to show how ahead the hardware is of its software; especially iPadOS.

 

[Hmm]

I have the 2018 iPad Pro and it's running iPadOS 26 just fine.

 

[JPack]

Those things had 6GB RAM. It's the models with 4GB that can struggle when multi-window is used.

 

[TheRealAlex]

Really it’s about Battery quality and battery cycles. My M4 iPad Pro had 280 cycles and 87% capacity left. So another year would have been catastrophic. Plus the trade in value plummets.
So a new iPad Pro yearly is less than $300 based on use and battery degradation.

 

[keeper]

I’m still using my 2018 ipad pro, other than low storage i’m struggling to find a reason to replace it, it’s only used as a news and forum reader.

 

[Homme]

Even the 32GB Budget 8th gen iPad is handling 26 quite well.

 

[bondr006]

I have 26.2 on my M1 iPad Pro 11 and my iPad 9. I run "Full Screen Apps" on the iPad 9, and "Windowed Apps" on the M1 Pro. Battery life and performance are amazing imho.

 

[Wando64]

On my 2018 pro I thought everything was working fine with good speed, but recently it has slowed down to a crawl, especially Safari.
I don’t know what’s changed, but it has become intolerable.
Oh well, it had to happen one day.

 

[Newbie67]

IOS 26 basically made my 2018 IPP unusable. Even after a complete wipe and with selective reloading of only minima critical apps