- Apple has presented a new iPad Pro with M5 technology
- It promises big leaps in performance.
- A possible major upgrade in AI operations
Apple’s best and thinnest iPad is getting a major performance upgrade that leans heavily on AI. On Wednesday, October 15, Apple presented its new iPad Pro with the new Apple Silicon M5, a chip that simultaneously appears in the new 14-inch MacBook Pro.
This is notable because the last time Apple released a major Apple Silicon update on the iPad Pro (the M4), it took months to appear on a line of new Macs.
The iPad Pro, both the 11-inch and 13-inch models, which are among the best tablets you can buy, offer virtually no design updates. The iPad Pro 11 is still 5.3mm thick and the 13-inch model is still an impressive 5.1mm thick. Both offer the same Ultra Retina XDR display with tandem OLED technology that makes that thinness and incredible blacks possible.
It seems like the focus is really on the new M5 chip. Apple promises it’s faster, reportedly 3.5 times faster than the M4 in the latest iPad Pro.
However, it’s the focus on AI capabilities that could generate the most interest, even as Apple fails to deliver the definitive version of Apple Intelligence. Certainly, this tablet and the M5 sound ready for when it arrives, we think, early next year.
Like the A19 Pro chip that Apple introduced last month in its iPhone 17 Pro, the new M5 features an updated GPU with a neural accelerator inside each core. Apple says the improved power and performance, along with a faster 16-core neural engine, will raise the bar for productivity tasks and AI operations.
It could also be a faster tablet due to the 150GB/s of unified memory bandwidth, which Apple claims is 30% faster than previous silicon.
The M5 comes to iPads with iPadOS 26, the new iPad platform with support for multitasking. It’s clear that the silicon is designed to take advantage of and support those multi-window desktop capabilities.
Connectivity is also getting a boost with the introduction of Apple’s C1X and N1 chips that will improve cellular connectivity and add support for WiFi 7, Bluetooth 6, and Thread.
Despite the internal updates, Apple held the line on pricing, with the 11-inch iPad Pro starting at $999 / £999 / AU$1,699 (Wi-Fi model) and the 13-inch model starting at $1,299 / £1,299 / AU$2,199 (Wi-Fi model). Both iPad Pros are available in Space Black or Silver and in storage capacities up to 2TB.
Pre-orders are now open at the Apple Store and will begin shipping on October 22.
An AI provocation
There are no big surprises in this update, but it’s encouraging to see Apple continuing to channel its best and fastest Apple Silicon into its lightweight and powerful tablets.
The focus on AI performance is interesting because it immediately raises the question: where is the rest of Apple’s intelligence? When can we get a Siri as system-aware as, say, Gemini or even Galaxy AI?
As we know, those updates are still in the pipeline, but Apple is open to working with other generative AI models, and it will be interesting to see how the M5 works with different third-party AI operations, for example ChatGPT.
And it bodes well for a future, more powerful version of Apple Intelligence and Siri, which will surely have plenty of room to work with when they arrive on the new M5-powered iPad Pro tablets.
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