Transcription
If you put iPad Pro with M5 right next to iPad Pro with M4, it would be almost impossible to tell the difference. Held on its own, you may notice the M5 is lacking any words on the back, but they have the same incredible tandem OLED display, both work with the same Magic Keyboard and Apple Pencil Pro, both have Thunderbolt and USB 4, and they both run all the same apps.
But after using it for the last five days, I wouldn't judge an iPad by its cover. While on the face of it, the M4 to M5 sounds just like a spec bump, there are actually three new chips in the M5 iPad Pro. The M5, C1X for cellular connectivity, and the N1 for Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and Thread.
So I put it to the test, using on-device AI models for transcriptions, image generation, video workflows, and Apple Intelligence and shortcuts. I put it head-to-head against last year's M4 iPad Pro and an older M2 model, plus did side-by-side comparisons for cellular data speeds, Wi-Fi, and Thread. And while the M5 chip isn't alive, "Hello, bozos!" it does have some trick up its sleeve when it comes to AI workflows. And most importantly, I'll cover whether it's time for you to upgrade from your previous iPad. This is my iPad Pro with M5 review.
I use my iPad Pro every day to edit podcasts in the app Ferrite. I'm often exporting multiple files at a time, and the faster that happens, the better. This is also my first experience with a nanotexture display compared to the glossy I had on my 11 inch, and I have a lot of thoughts on that coming in a bit. So let's get right to the M5 and speed.
The new M5 chip has a 10 core GPU with a neural accelerator in each core. Apple says it's four times the peak GPU compute. performance compared to last year's M4 chip. Now, I did multiple tests with apps I know use on-device models. The first one being Transcriptionist. It's actually from the same developer that makes Ferrite, the app that I use to edit podcasts. And you can download different models, whether you need more speed, more accuracy, or a mix in between.
Now, I actually ran a side-by-side test with an M2 iPad Pro, my M4, and the M5. Now, using the largest brain, which is an over 3GB model you download to your device, obviously of the three iPads, the M5 won out. An hour, 45-minute MP3 file, which was the raw, unedited episode of Primary Technology. By the way, that's my tech podcast. Link below. The M5 did it in 12 minutes and 43 seconds using that largest brain. 34% faster than the M4, doing it at 19 minutes and 10 seconds. And 52% faster than the M2.
Now, most of my transcription work I do on my M4 Max MacStudio. So just for fun, I wanted to make sure that was way faster, and it was doing it at 4 minutes, 55 seconds. But I even contacted the developer of Transcriptionist, and he said he uses Core ML and that transcription feature. uses GPU power, so the new M5 definitely takes advantage of those faster cores with neural accelerators, allowing you to transcribe, I would say, significantly faster, especially if you're doing long form audio.
I also tested the DrawThings app, where you can download different models. I downloaded the Stable Diffusion models and the Flux models, and also ran it through a 2x upscaler. Now, I tested this a bunch of times. I have many pictures of medieval knights riding polar bears. But once again, that M5 going through on-device models was able to generate the first image in one minute, it, while the M4 took almost three minutes. So in that test, it's living up to that 3x performance even over last year's M4 model. I was basically able to generate almost three images in the time the M4 just did one, and the M2 was significantly slower at 7 minutes 15 seconds for the first image.
I also tested a shortcut using both the on-device LLM to generate prompts for images and the image playground action, which is also on-device. And while it was fast on all three, the M5 still had an edge. I also tested exporting video from Final Cut. This was a 10-minute 4k video where I removed the background using Scene Remover And while this isn't necessarily an AI task, of course the M5 did it faster. So as you would expect, in sheer horsepower, the M5 beats the M4. And in some of those AI tasks, it beats it significantly.
But the M5 isn't the only new chip. What about the N1 and the C1X for cellular connectivity? Well, I do have a Wi-Fi 7 network from Ubiquiti here, and so I tested it. The iPad Pro with M5 now has Wi-Fi 7, whereas last year's M4 only had Wi-Fi 6e. I didn't see a huge difference in performance here. Sometimes the M4 would get faster downloads. The M5 got consistent. in higher upload speeds, but I didn't see huge gains in that Wi-Fi performance.
Where I did see gains, though, is in cellular connectivity. I tested it in three different locations. Both iPads were using Verizon Cellular. In my first test, the M4 got 334 down, 10 up, while the M5 with C1X got 657 megabits down and 22 up. Double the speeds both ways. In my second test, the same thing. M5 got over double the speeds over M4, both for downloads and uploads. I do use cellular fairly often on my M4 iPad Pro. And you definitely notice that battery life going down a little bit faster compared to when you're on Wi-Fi.
Now both the M4 and iPad Pros have Thread built in, which is a smart home connectivity standard. Thread is now a part of Apple's chip this year, but I couldn't really tell a difference. I tested it on some Thread smart shades, and if you don't open and close them for a while those Thread devices go to sleep. So sometimes it takes a second to respond, other times it feels almost instantaneous. So Thread connectivity speeds inconclusive, I would say.
Another new feature of the M5 iPad Pro is fast charging. Now I did a couple charging tests the first test M5 iPad Pro into Apple's new 40 watt up to 60 watt dynamic charger. Apple claims you can charge up to 50% in 30 minutes using the new charger and the M5 iPad Pro. The first test was close to that. It took 32 minutes whereas my older M4 iPad Pro took about 49 minutes to get up to 50%. But I had a feeling it could charge faster so I drained it once again and plugged it in at 1% to my Anker desktop charger which can give over 100 watts over that cable and it also tells you the current output when you're charging a device. In that test it would show 50 to 60 watts coming from the. And then the M5 iPad Pro hit 50% in about 28 minutes, even faster. So no, you don't need Apple's new dynamic charger for that fast charging, just something that is capable of over 50 watt charging. I'll put a link to that Anker desktop charger down in the description, as well as Anker's new Prime battery, which can actually output 100 watts from both ports simultaneously. Super powerful power bank.
So it's clear. The M5 iPad Pro is faster. The cellular connectivity is better and it has fast charging, but is it worth upgrading? We'll get to that in a second, but I have to talk about.
You can get nanotexture displays on MacBook Pro, iPad Pro, and the Pro Display XDR or Studio Display. I've always seen them in the store, and it definitely reduces glare, it's an interesting look, but now that I've lived with it for about five days on this new iPad Pro, I don't think it's for me. Now, if you work outside a lot, or you're in coffee shops all the time, and glare is an issue, obviously the nanotexture display is going to be way better at that. Diffusing the light, you won't have to adjust your iPad screen angle as much, but there is a trade-off. If your priority is actually watching movies and TV shows or just the highest quality display, which iPad Pro has a tandem OLED which looks incredible, you definitely lose some contrast and clarity with the nanotexture over the glossy display. Put on any movie with lots of black space like Interstellar and you will notice the difference. You're not going to get that jet black look on the nanotexture display that you do on the glossy. And again, depending on your use case, you may love this if you're outside a lot or you use this in the field. Nanotexture may be great but I think I still prefer the glossy. Also when you get nanotexture, the bezel around the display is still glossy so you can get some light reflections off of that but those reflections won't be as harsh on the actual screen.
Now if you do get a nanotexture iPad Pro, you do get a polishing cloth in the box. Shout out to Tim from the iPad Pro podcast for telling me I'm mastodon, I did not know. And I'd actually lost my previous polishing cloth so I got a new one. This is actually the one that comes with iPad Pro with a nanotexture which is pretty big. If you order a MacBook Pro with nanotexture, you get this size polishing cloth. I guess if you have an iPad you're gonna be touching the screen and so a larger polishing cloth because you'll use it more often. But I also bought the posting cloth separately because I was curious what size you get when you buy it new and I lost my old one. So if you buy it new it's kind of in between the one you get with iPad and MacBook Pro. It's also a slightly different texture. The polishing cloth you get when you buy it new it feels a little stiffer whereas this one which came with the M5 iPad Pro it's softer. I don't know. If you get nanotexture you're supposed to use Apple's polishing cloth and don't spray a bunch of stuff on it.
Now the M5 iPad Pro is also powerful enough to drive a 6k display at 60 Hertz or 4k at 120 Hertz. I would have tested that but my studio display is not 120 Hertz. Is that a sign of things to come? Studio display with 120 Hertz maybe? We'll see.
And one last word on display. Coming from an 11 inch running iPadOS 26 and not finding windowing super useful just because it felt a little cramped on the smaller screen. The 13 inch iPad Pro windowing now makes total sense. I actually found myself using more windowing over the last five days even getting into stage manager creating a stage to check my social media another stage when I'm working on videos. So if you want to use the iPad Pro as a computer device with lots of. Maybe more often in the Magic Keyboard than as a tablet. I think windowing really takes advantage of the larger screen size of the 13-inch.
Also, if you're looking at a Magic Keyboard, Apple sent me the Black Magic Keyboard with the M5 iPad Pro. And this is my white one from last year. As you can see, the white one does get marked up, especially this bottom part, which will be sitting on like cafe tables and such. But overall, the white holds are pretty good. Supposedly, if you take a Magic Eraser, that can remove some of the stains. But it feels like even just after a couple days, the Black Magic Keyboard was showing more smudges and marks. I can probably wipe these out as well. But if you do need help deciding, I think I prefer the White Magic Keyboard.
So, should you upgrade to the new iPad Pro with M5? It still starts at $1,000, comes in two sizes, the 11 and 13-inch. Again, if you're going to do more windowing, I'll look at that 13-inch, but it is $300 more. You get a huge variety of color choices, silver and space black. It does start with 256 gigs of storage, and then you can go all the way up to 1 and 2 terabyte. If you want that nanotexture, you have to do a 1 or 2 terabyte. You see, if I choose 512, you can't click nanotexture glass. Also, you do get more unified memory on the 1 and 2 terabyte models and Apple is even putting that in the pricing here on their page. 12 gigs of unified memory for 5, 12 and under. 1 terabyte gets 16 gigs and higher.
If you're looking to upgrade and you have an M1 or older iPad Pro, maybe you got the 2018, which was one of the goat iPads because it was the new design. I do think this is a great year to upgrade. From an M1 and earlier iPad Pro, you're going to get a huge display upgrade with the tandem OLED. You have the option for nanotexture if you want that. Way faster performance with that M5 chip if you're doing video editing, or any AI workflows the M5 is really gonna be a huge leap. Now you do lose the ultra wide camera if you're coming from an older iPad. I literally never used that but just so you know. Also the cameras now on the landscape side the better position especially if you use it in a Magic Keyboard. You get better Wi-Fi and cellular performance. You do get fast charging and if you're getting a Magic Keyboard you actually get a function row. Here's the older style Magic Keyboard on the right where you just have the large numbers on top and no functions. So coming from that older model now you get that whole function row of keys which I do use often, plus you. and typing on the 13-inch Magic Keyboard definitely feels really nice. And if this is going to be your main computing device, I would also think about that 13-inch screen size. Not just for windowing, but typing experience with the Magic Keyboard. Bottom line, M1 and even M2 and earlier iPads, this is a great year to upgrade. Huge difference.
But what if you already had an M4, like I did? Well, you do get better AI performance if you're doing transcriptions, image generation, and using on-device models. And remember, if you're just using the ChatGPT app on your iPad, that's not using a local on-device model. It's using ChatGPT in the cloud. But if you're playing games or have workflows that are using on-device models, like transcription, you will see that benefit. You do get Wi-Fi 7 versus 6E if you have a network that supports it, Bluetooth 6 over 5.3, fast charge, which is new to the M5, and you also have a faster SSD and memory bandwidth. But if you're happy with your M4 iPad Pro, that is a harder sell. Only if you have a very specialized workflow using lots of AI tools and apps. Maybe you're on cellular all the time, so faster cellular speeds and better battery life on cellular matters. You could consider upgrading, but I really think this is for older models. If you were on an M1 or earlier, now is a great time.
And if you were waiting for the day when you really could replace your MacBook or other computer with just an iPad, I think today is the day. With iPadOS 26, windowing and stage manager, background tasks so you can export video and audio while you do other things, fast Thunderbolt 4 connector, magic keyboard with that function row, I think the combination of iPad Pro with M5 and iPadOS 26 finally makes iPad Pro truly pro.
If you have any questions about the M5 iPad Pro, leave them down in the comments and get subscribed and hit that like button. More reviews coming extremely soon if you're watching this when it comes out. Or if you want to see my reviews on the iPhone 17 Pro Max or iPhone Air, I'll put one of those right up here. I'll also put a link to that shortcut I mentioned that was generating images from a prompt down in the video description. And if you want to join my shortcuts community, several thousand of you are already joined. I share my shortcuts of the week. You get access to my shortcuts database and a ton more. You can do that at create.beard.fm. And I'll put another video up here that YouTube thinks you'll really like. Thank you for watching. I'll catch you next time.