The iPad Pro from Apple has always been a cut above the rest. There’s no way around the fact that it’s too expensive, too powerful, and too touch-focused to be a regular tablet. This vision is most clear in the M5 iPad Pro, which comes out in 2026. And the next M6 won’t come out until spring 2027, so a lot of people are still thinking about the M4. That’s why the real question isn’t whether this is a great gadget. It’s about whether current upgrades are worth making.
Design: Impossibly Thin, Unmistakably Pro
It’s good that the iPad Pro’s shape hasn’t changed since the M4 redesign. With a thickness of only 5.1 mm for the 13-inch and 5.3 mm for the 11-inch, it is still one of the coolest pieces of tech you can buy. A sheet of high-quality aluminum and glass that runs Final Cut Pro. It’s stiff, doesn’t creak, and is very light, but it still feels a bit like magic. There is a Thunderbolt 3/USB 4 port on it, and no other Android tablet has been able to really beat its build. When it comes to design, the iPad Pro continues to be the best tablet on the market.
Display: The Best Portable Screen on the Planet
In 2026, the Tandem OLED screen is the main reason to get an iPad Pro. It hasn’t changed since it was first seen on the M4. There’s no need to explain how good it is.
At its brightest, the M5 iPad Pro’s Tandem OLED screen is 1,600 nits bright. It also has deep blacks, which makes it great for editing photos and videos. When you stack two OLED panels on top of each other, you don’t have to choose between OLED’s high contrast and high brightness needs for professional use.
As a result, the screen is 1,000 nits bright, the contrast is 2,000,000:1, and the ProMotion adaptive refresh rate ranges from 1 to 120Hz, making every interaction feel instant.
With the M5 Pro, you can connect and drive a single external display at a refresh rate of up to 120Hz. It’s like switching from a regular screen to one with Apple’s ProMotion technology—you can really tell the difference. It’s impossible to find a better portable display for color grading, reviewing architecture, or reading late at night. Anyone who has used a Tandem OLED iPad Pro knows how bad it is to switch back to a different screen.
Performance: Laptop Power in a Tablet Shell
The M5 chip is a genuine improvement over the M4. Apple has increased the memory in the iPad Pro models with less storage by 50%, to 12GB. This is because memory is important for AI and an operating system that can now keep many app windows open at once. The base M4 models came with only 8GB of storage, which iPadOS 26’s increased multitasking could quietly show as a limitation. The iPad Pro’s storage has also been updated to use PCIe Gen 5, which is twice as fast. This is important for apps that use a lot of disk space.
The numbers show that the M5 is clearly the best. The M5 iPad Pro scores 4,193 for single-core tasks and 16,777 for multi-core tasks in GeekBench 6. This is laptop-level performance in a 5mm slab. Sessions in Procreate, LumaFusion, Logic for iPad, and even light DaVinci Resolve don’t stop. The Apple Intelligence features in iPadOS 26 work entirely on the device, privately, and right away.
There are also big improvements to connectivity that happen behind the scenes. The M5 iPad Pro has Apple’s C1X and N1 chips instead of the Qualcomm 5G and Broadcom Wi-Fi and Bluetooth chips that were in earlier models. Apple’s N1 chip lets you connect to Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth, which means faster wireless speeds and significantly less latency for professional tasks.
Apple Pencil Pro: Worth Every Penny
The Apple Pencil Pro is still a separate $129 purchase that creative users must have.
You can use Apple Find My to find the Pencil Pro. It has haptic feedback and you can squeeze it to see the tool palette. For drawing, calligraphy, and 3D work, a barrel roll gesture lets you precisely control the orientation. Hover detection lets the screen respond before the tip hits the glass.
The hover and squeeze gestures of the Apple Pencil Pro, along with the fine tip, make editing photos and drawing on the OLED screen a joy. For illustrators who are switching from Wacom tablets, the Tandem OLED and Pencil Pro is the only tablet that comes close to replicating that experience while also being a full computer. With the optional Magic Keyboard, you can get a trackpad, full-travel keys, and USB-C pass-through, making this a really capable laptop replacement setup.
Is the Upgrade Worth It?
What you start with makes all the difference. If you’re coming from an iPad Pro older than the M4, the answer is clear: yes. The Tandem OLED display alone makes the step up worth it. The M4’s value now depends on how much it’s discounted, how good it is, how long the warranty lasts, and how easy it is to get. At this point in time, the M5 is the better long-term buy. The M5 does have some improvements over the M4, but they are small. It has faster storage, better base memory, Apple’s own connectivity chip, and Wi-Fi 7. A good upgrade, but not one that you have to have.
There will not be an update for the iPad Pro in 2026. The next update will likely come in the spring of 2027 and include an M6 chip and vapor chamber cooling. If you buy the M5 now, you’ll have to wait the full 18 months, which is good news because this device is already far ahead of what iPadOS 26 needs.
In 2026, the M5 iPad Pro with Apple Pencil Pro is the best tablet in the world for people who work as artists. For everyone else, the iPad Air is a better deal. But you already know where to find the best if you want it.
Read Also: These 9 iPad Features Will Completely Upgrade How You Use It
