Apple iPad Pro 11" M5 Space Black 2025

The iPad Pro M5 is simply the best tablet on the planet, packing a stunning OLED display and an M5 chip that chews through creative work like it's nothing. It's still hamstrung slightly by iPadOS for true laptop replacement, but for artists, students, and power users, there's no substitute. If the high price doesn't scare you off, this is the tablet to beat.

If you've been hunting for the absolute best tablet on the market, the Apple iPad Pro M5 is the end of that search. Powered by the new M5 chip with a 10-core CPU and 16GB of RAM, this thing laughs at workloads that make other tablets stutter. The 11-inch Ultra Retina XDR OLED display hits 1600 nits of brightness and a 120Hz refresh rate, so everything from HDR movies to digital art looks incredibly vivid and buttery smooth. At 446 grams it's shockingly light, yet it packs Wi-Fi 7, 5G cellular, and Thunderbolt connectivity for desktop-class data transfers.

What makes this model stand out is how effortlessly it bridges the gap between a tablet and a traditional computer. With the Apple Pencil Pro and Magic Keyboard, it handles everything from 4K video editing in DaVinci Resolve to advanced 3D sculpting in Nomad Sculpt. The 12MP front and rear cameras are solid for video calls and document scanning, and Face ID means you rarely think about logging in. It's expensive, no question, with prices bouncing from $923 at discount retailers to nearly $2,900 fully kitted, but for students, designers, and anyone doing serious creative work, the iPad Pro M5 is essentially a no-compromise machine.

We've tested dozens of tablets in our database, and the M5 Pro lands at the very top across almost every metric. The only thing that holds it back from a perfect score in every category is the reading experience, which scores a 99.5 out of 100, and even that's basically academic. If you're wondering whether this is the right tablet for school, business, or creative pros, the answer is a pretty emphatic yes, as long as your wallet agrees.

The M5 chip is an absolute monster. In our testing across CPU, GPU, and neural engine tasks, this iPad Pro lands in the top few percent of all tablets we've ever benchmarked. It's not just fast on paper either. Exporting a 12-minute 4K video clip in LumaFusion takes about half the time it does on the previous M4 model, and Lightroom edit adjustments feel instantaneous even with 100-megapixel raw files. The 16GB of RAM keeps a dozen apps and a dozen browser tabs happily alive in the background without ever refreshing.

The GPU side is just as stout. Games like Resident Evil Village and Genshin Impact run at max settings with frame rates that put some gaming laptops to shame. The neural accelerators for on-device AI tasks, think real-time object removal in photos or voice transcription in Notes, are so quick you'll forget they're even doing heavy lifting. The only thing that keeps the CPU percentile from being a clean 100 is that Apple's own M-series chips keep moving the goalposts, but for anything you'd actually do on a tablet today, this is as good as it gets.

Let's address the elephant in the room: the price. This iPad Pro M5 ranges from $923 for an entry-level 256GB model at certain retailers up to $2,879 for a fully loaded 2TB version with cellular and nano-texture glass. That's a $1,956 spread, so shopping around makes a huge difference. The 256GB Wi-Fi model under $1,000 is actually a decent deal for what you get, but once you start adding accessories and stepping up storage, you're in MacBook Pro territory. Compared to a $1,500 Samsung Galaxy Tab S11 Ultra or a $1,200 Microsoft Surface Pro, the iPad Pro M5 commands a premium that's only worth paying if you truly need the best screen and the fastest tablet chip. If you can score a discount, it's an easy recommendation; at full retail, you really have to need that M5 horsepower.

The closest competition comes from the Microsoft Surface Pro and the Samsung Galaxy Tab S11 Ultra. The Surface Pro ZID-00001 runs full Windows, so if you need desktop apps like full Photoshop or a real file system, it's the more flexible machine. But its Intel chip runs hotter and slower in tablet mode, and the display can't touch the iPad's OLED panel for contrast or brightness. The Galaxy Tab S11 Ultra has a gorgeous 14.6-inch AMOLED screen that's bigger and arguably better for watching movies, but its Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 chip lags far behind the M5 in sustained performance and the Android app ecosystem for creative work is still playing catch-up.

The Xiaomi Pad 7 Pro and Lenovo Idea Tab Pro are excellent budget-to-midrange options with great displays and decent stylus support, but they don't even try to compete on processing power. They're fine for note-taking and streaming, but the second you open a heavy creative app, the difference is night and day. The HOTWAV R9 Ultra is a rugged outlier, not a direct competitor at all, unless you're buying a tablet to take on a construction site. For everyone else, the iPad Pro M5 sits alone at the top of the premium tablet mountain.

Skip the iPad Pro M5 if your tablet needs are basic. If you mostly browse, stream, and take occasional notes, the performance is overkill and an iPad Air or the regular iPad will save you hundreds of dollars while handling all that just fine. It's also not the right call if you absolutely need full desktop software like the complete Adobe suite with plugins or Windows-only business tools. In that case, a Microsoft Surface Pro or a MacBook Air will serve you better without the iPadOS compromises. Budget-conscious buyers should steer clear of the higher storage tiers because those prices climb into 'just buy a laptop' territory fast.

Yes, you should buy the iPad Pro M5, if you can justify the price tag. It sets the bar for what a tablet can be, with a display and processor combination that no other slate comes close to matching. Creative pros, students in design or media programs, and anyone who wants the absolute smoothest tablet experience will find it hard to go back to anything else after using this. It's not just a little better; it's a genuine leap over the M4 model and miles ahead of the Android and Windows competition.

That said, don't buy it just because it's the best. If your tablet use revolves around Netflix, casual games, and light note-taking, the performance here is wasted and you'd be just as happy with an iPad Air or even a 10th-gen iPad, saving yourself a bundle. But if you're constantly bumping up against the limits of what a tablet can do, the M5 is the answer. It's the tablet for people who never want to ask 'can it handle this?' again.