M5 iPad Pro review: Promise fulfilled
It’s been ten years since Apple released the first iPad Pro. In 2015, there were already people trying to integrate the five-year-old iPad platform into their working lives, but the wisdom of that choice seemed questionable—at least until Apple validated it by adding a true, professional-level model.
Unfortunately, it’s been a decade of rough sledding. Apple would occasionally feint toward embracing the iPad as a productivity device akin to the Mac, but (with certain exceptions) the experience was just too limited and restrictive.
In the past few years, things have changed. Apple has finally brought its pro media apps, Final Cut Pro and Logic Pro, to the iPad. And with iPadOS 26, Apple has delivered numerous improvements that get the iPad far closer than it has ever been to being a device that can get all sorts of different work done, without the need of a traditional computer as a fallback.
iPadOS 26 especially shines on the M4 iPad Pro, a device with a new, ultra-thin design, and bearing one of the best displays Apple has ever made: a tandem OLED screen with high dynamic range and remarkable brightness and color fidelity.
Into this very different world comes the M5 iPad Pro, which inherits that remarkable design and a much more capable operating system. Pretty nice.
An M5 boost
Let’s be clear: The M5 iPad Pro is really just the M4 iPad Pro with a new chip. So it only really makes sense as an upgrade if you’re coming from an older model. In the process of reviewing the M5 iPad Pro, I spent a little time with my M1 iPad Pro, and while it’s still usable, it’s chunky and a little bit slow. I think the most viable iPad Pro upgraders will be coming from pre-M1 models, or maybe from the M1 model itself. If you’re using a more recent vintage iPad Pro, I don’t see this upgrade making a lot of sense unless you’ve got the itch and your current iPad Pro will get handed down to someone close to you who’s using a really old iPad.
Still, it’s worth looking at the march of progress when it comes to Apple’s processors in these top-of-the-line iPads. Every generation, things just keep getting better. When you do finally upgrade after a few years, you’ll get the benefit of some pretty massive speed boosts. And with proper multi-window support and AI workflows and the like, there are finally more reasons to take advantage of the added speed and memory of newer models.
Apple has increased the memory in the lower-storage configurations of the iPad Pro by 50% to 12 GB, acknowledging the importance of memory when it comes not just to AI but to an operating system that can now keep many app windows open at once. The iPad Pro’s storage has also been revamped to use PCIe gen 5 storage, which is twice as fast—again, good if you’re using excruciatingly disk-intensive apps.
I did test an AI app, Draw Things, that (according to Apple) had been specifically updated to support the new ML accelerators on the GPU cores of the M5 processor. In an image-generation test, the M5 performed the job in half the time of the M4. That’s a pretty substantial upgrade—but of course, it’s also a very specific upgrade for apps that are using local AI models. Most people and apps aren’t, at least not today. Still, I expect Apple to push hard in this area, since its commitment to user privacy and its chip-design skill both favor a world where as much AI functionality as possible is happening on your private device. Right now, we don’t live in that world, but if apps begin to take advantage of chips like the M5, it may yet come into being.
The other substantial change in the M5 iPad Pro is its use of Apple’s C1X and N1 chips, which replace the Qualcomm (5G cellular) and Broadcom (Wi-Fi and Bluetooth) parts used in previous models.
Apple has invested billions of dollars and the better part of a decade trying to build its own modem chips, and they made their debuts this year in the iPhone 16e, iPhone Air, and iPad Pro. While I didn’t have time to do a large, methodical broadband shootout comparing the M4 and M5 iPad Pro’s cellular connectivity, I did have the opportunity to use them both in the challenging environment of my backyard, which has notoriously bad cellular connectivity.
I did my testing across two days on AT&T’s 5G network, and while speeds were all over the place, on average, the M5 iPad Pro was a little slower at download and a whole lot faster at upload. Obviously, your mileage will vary depending on your carrier and geography. It’s certainly a viable chip, and that 6.8× improvement in upstream speed was especially surprising.
I do have to commend the little guy for actually getting a single bar of Verizon, something that no plumber or HVAC installer has ever managed at my house. It managed to download data at 30Mbps, though it could barely upload anything. Still, the fact that it managed to connect at all is pretty inspiring.
Apple’s N1 chip offers Bluetooth and Wi-Fi connectivity, including Wi-Fi 7. I tested the M4 and M5 iPads on my local Wi-Fi 7 network, and it went pretty much as you might expect: the M4, which only supports Wi-Fi 6E, lagged behind the M5 with its pure Wi-Fi 7 power.
Finally, I should mention that the iPad Pro is now fast-charge capable. Apple says it can charge to 50% full in 35 minutes if you use a powerful enough adapter. I definitely noticed: during the course of writing this review, I picked up the iPad Pro and found it was almost drained. I plugged it into a fast charger, and when I came back not too long after, it had plenty of charge.
Where the iPad Pro belongs
One of Apple’s real challenges is how to get people to keep buying new devices when their existing line of Apple silicon chips remains great, even years later. And even the cheaper versions of most of their devices have plenty of power to serve most users.
This is good news in a lot of ways. Today’s iPad Air essentially provides the iPad Pro experience of just a few years ago. It’s cheaper, but still powerful. It still works with the excellent Magic Keyboard and Apple Pencil Pro. Basically, it’s got everything an iPad user might want.
The iPad Pro, on the other hand, is just… better. In so many ways, but ways that might not matter to most people. It’s so thin, especially the 13-inch model, that when I hold it in my hands without any sort of case, I still get that sci-fi feeling that I’m using some device out of the future. The tandem OLED screen really is the best display Apple’s probably ever made. The Magic Keyboard is better on the iPad Pro, too.
Basically, you get what you pay for. If you want a nicer iPad with a better screen and better accessories, the iPad Pro will provide. You can get by with less. To use the iPad Pro is a luxury, in a way. But if you love your iPad—whatever you use it for—you will get plenty of satisfaction out of the iPad Pro. It really is the ultimate expression of Apple’s vision for a tablet device.
Unburdened
It seems like every iPad Pro review I’ve written for a decade has ended with a sad coda. You know the tune. It goes a little something like this:
I wish iPadOS loved the iPad Pro as much as I do. We continue to live in a world where Apple’s most flexible, powerful, groundbreaking piece of hardware is let down by an inflexible, weak, and slow-to-be-upgraded operating system. “Unfortunately, the hardware has outpaced the maturity of the operating system and app ecosystem” is a thing I wrote nearly nine years ago, and while everything has evolved since then, it’s still true.
There’s certainly more work to be done on iPadOS. But when I take the M5 iPad Pro out for a spin, powered by iPadOS 26, I am reminded that all my angst about the iPad’s hardware outpacing its operating system is beginning to fade away. The hardware is still amazing, to be sure, but it does feel like the operating system loves it back.
There was a time when it seemed like Apple viewed the iPad as the future of the computer, and the Mac was seemingly consigned to be the past. It’s ironic that today, at a moment where the Mac seems to have come back to the center of Apple’s computing universe, the iPad feels the closest it’s ever been to fulfilling that earlier desire. It’s better this way, because the iPad can be as much of the Mac as it needs to be to fulfill its own destiny, without needing to carry the burden of replacing the Mac.
I don’t know where this is all headed, but between iPadOS 26 and the M5 iPad Pro, it feels like the iPad Pro has finally fulfilled the promise it showed a decade ago.
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