Apple iPad Pro (2025) review: faster, faster, faster

What do you offer the tablet that has everything? Last year, Apple launched a massive redesign of the iPad Pro, with a slim new design, a gorgeous new screen, lots of updated accessories, and a fast new chip. I called it the best iPad ever. I was also wondering how it could be even better.

The answer, at least this year, is seemingly impossible. The new iPad Pro is, in every way, exactly the same as last year’s Pro. It’s still available in 11- and 13-inch models, which start at $999 and $1,299, respectively. It still comes in two colors. It’s still so magnificent. Okay, fine, there’s one noticeable difference: it doesn’t say “iPad Pro” or a line of fine print on the back. Apple has taken a step off the assembly line. Talk to your grandchildren about it.

Inside there are other changes with a similar effect. The latest Pro has a new chip, the M5, and Apple has replaced its own networking chips: the C1X for cellular and the N1 for Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and (theoretically) Threads. As you might expect, everything is a bit faster, and as you might expect, none of this makes any practical difference in your daily iPad use.

And yet, after spending the better part of a week using a 13-inch iPad Pro, I’m more convinced by it than I expected. The biggest reason by far is not the new hardware but iPadOS 26, which finally gives the iPad PC-like powers, from free-form multitasking to the menu bar to the massively improved Files app. There are still a lot of things that are easy on the Mac and extremely complicated on the iPad, and Liquid Glass remains a mistake, but Apple has clearly decided that iPads should just look more like Macs.

You can get iPadOS 26 on many iPads, including last year’s Pro. The M5 Pro is the best but also the most expensive, as the Pro always is: I’m not sure why you would get this device unless you also buy an Apple Pencil or Magic Keyboard or both, and at this point that’s at least a $1,500 outlay. If you need a computer, I would still recommend a Mac to most people. But if you want an iPad and the best iPad, there’s no other choice.

For almost everything you need to know about the iPad Pro, you should read my review from last year. Only a few things have changed. The first is of course the M5 chip. In benchmark tests, it performs about 11% better than the M4 on standard CPU tasks and 34% better on GPU tasks. That’s a big number, and it bears out: the M4 Pro was a fast machine for playing games, exporting videos, and editing photos, but the M5 Pro is still a little faster and a little sharper. (Did I win my first round of Fortnite on the M5 Pro just because the graphics were so good? Who can say?) It doesn’t heat up and it doesn’t seem to strangle under duress. It’s just a great processor.

If you’re coming from, say, an M1-powered iPad Pro, you’ll immediately notice the performance improvement. Elements that were previously loaded and buffered are now simply rendered and saved almost instantly. The jump over the M4, however, will only really show up if you’re moving huge amounts of video or 3D renders through the machine. For all but the most aggressive creative and professional workflows, the M4 was and is a more than adequate processor.

When Apple began adopting its own networking chips rather than buying them from companies like Broadcom, the overarching question wasn’t whether they would be better, but whether they could even be as good. Rest assured: they are. In fact, my internet speeds are consistently faster on the M5 Pro than the M4 Pro. Sometimes path faster. There are many possible reasons why internet speeds fluctuate, so I don’t want to get too excited about Apple’s work here, but I can confidently say that you don’t have to worry about changing chips.

There’s a new charger in the box with the new Pro, which might actually be the coolest new thing in iPad land this year. This is a small, lightweight 40 watt charger that can, for short periods of time, boost its power up to 60 watts to charge your device much faster. My tests matched Apple’s exactly: I put the M5 Pro on the dead charger, and exactly 30 minutes later it was at 50%. I did the same thing with the M4 Pro, and it was at 33% after half an hour. It’s good material in both cases! This charger now goes everywhere with me.

That’s it. That’s what’s new with the iPad Pro M5. It’s faster! Somewhere between a little faster and a lot faster, depending on which iPad you’re upgrading from. Apple wants you to believe that every performance gain counts as AI workflows become ubiquitous and core models become part of everything you do. Whether you think the slightly faster AI image generation is a killer app is between you and your god, but so far Image Playground isn’t tempting me to upgrade. This is a chip shock through and through.

If you’re buying an iPad Pro, I’d tell most people to see if you can get a good deal on an M4 Pro, which is still very good and very powerful for almost everything. But if you’re on the cutting edge when it comes to iPads, I’m hard-pressed to find a reason why you won’t like the M5 Pro. It’s the best, even better.

I was concerned with last year’s model that the iPad Pro would be almost too capable of hardware, given the limitations of iPadOS. These channels aren’t completely disappearing with iPadOS 26, but they’re getting there. The M5 Pro now feels very much like a super-fast laptop that never seems to slow down, even when I have 10 overlapping apps open just because I can. Navigation is more intuitive, especially with a trackpad and keyboard. You can find items in Files now! There are still plenty of desktop apps left to fall short of a total “what is a computer” crisis, but iPadOS 26 makes it clear that Apple views the iPad as more or less just a laptop. And the M5 Pro is one of the nicest, best-looking laptops I’ve ever used.