At first glance, the new Apple iPad Pro looks exactly like last year’s model. Don’t let the virtually identical appearance fool you, though, since the new tablet is housing the company’s freshly-unveiled M5 chip underneath that shell.
Touted to offer “the most advanced and versatile iPad experience yet,” the tablet boasts big leaps in graphics and AI performance, along with a host of new features that, the outfit claims, “pushes the boundaries of what the iPad can do.” The most significant upgrade seems to be with AI as Apple claims it can deliver 3.5 times the performance of the previous generation, so expect a whole host of AI smarts to come with the new tablet.
The new Apple iPad Pro is, of course, a showcase for the new M5 chip, which boasts 10 GPU cores, each of which come with a Neural Accelerator onboard. This allows GPU-based AI processing to run at four times the peak GPU compute performance of the M4, while the primary 16-core Neural Engine boasts improved speed over the last generation, ensuring significantly accelerated performance in AI-based features in apps like Draw Things and DaVinci Resolve. The new chip also touts 15 percent faster multithreaded performance, so there should be noticeable improvement in non-AI functions, too.
For graphical performance, that same GPU should be 45 percent faster than the M4, which should really boost overall performance, especially when paired with the faster CPU. It has a third-generation ray tracing engine that enables more realistic lighting, reflections, and shadows, allowing it to render 3D with ray tracing a whopping 1.5 times faster than last generation. Apple claims all these improvements should make the tablet a whole lot more responsive in graphics-intensive productivity programs like Adobe Illustrator, Sketchup, and Morpholio Trace, all while allowing for smoother multitasking across multiple apps.
The Apple iPad Pro retains the same Ultra Retina XDR display as the last generation, so the screen should be just as good as the tandem OLED on what was previously the best tablet in the market. That means, it delivers 1,000 nits of full-screen brightness for SDR and HDR content, while going up to 1,600 nits peak for HDR. There’s also a nano-texture display glass option for reduced glare that’s perfect for users who need to do work in color-managed workflows. It can plug into external displays with refresh rates up to 120Hz, complete with Adaptive Sync support for low-latency performance.
Other features include 30 percent more memory bandwidth (150 GB/s), two times faster read and write speeds on its onboard storage, a C1X modem on cellular versions (so you can get 5G service), an N1 networking chip (Wi-Fi 7, Bluetooth 6, and Thread connectivity), 10 hours of battery life, and fast charging support that gets it replenished up to 50 percent in 30 minutes using a 60W USB-C power adapter. Like last generation, the iPad Pro comes in two sizes, 11 and 13 inches.
The Apple iPad Pro M5 starts at $999 for the 11-inch model and $1,299 for the 13-incher. At the top end, you can get up to 2TB storage and 16GB RAM. Preorders are available now, with shipments slated for October 22nd.
