The iPad Professional has lastly fulfilled its future, with a bit assist from the M5

It’s not fairly proper to say that for the primary 5 years of its life, the iPad was an iPhone (or an iPod Contact) with a very massive display meant to be a lean-back consumption machine. In any case, the very first iPad shipped with a productiveness accent within the type of the Keyboard Dock.

However ten years in the past, Apple bought severe. It shipped the very first iPad Professional, and started a decade-long dialog about whether or not the iPad might be used for work and even whether or not or not it was a pc.

Immediately, the M5 iPad Professional and iPadOS 26 have settled quite a lot of outdated scores. Nevertheless it’s been a protracted, unusual journey from “Hey Siri” day in San Francisco to now.

A giant display and equipment

What made the unique iPad Professional was its measurement and its assortment of equipment. Although Apple would later add a smaller mannequin, the first iPad Professional had a 12.9-inch diagonal display, offering more room than ever earlier than on an iOS machine.

What are you able to do with all that area? Shortly earlier than the iPad Professional shipped, Apple shipped iOS 9, which added iPad multitasking for the primary time within the type of Slide Over and Cut up View. Sure, it might take a decade for Apple to toss that strategy fully away and begin once more with iPadOS 26, however the capability to run two iPad apps directly, on that massive display, was an enormous deal.

The opposite factor you are able to do with an iPad that’s larger than ever earlier than is connect a keyboard to it, and so Apple launched the Good Keyboard alongside the iPad Professional. By at this time’s requirements, it was rudimentary–a thick multi-fold case with membrane keys and no trackpad. Actually, on the time, I felt that you just’d be higher off simply utilizing a case and a Bluetooth keyboard if you wished to write down on the iPad!

However crucial factor in regards to the Good Keyboard is that it existed. Its existence meant that Apple felt that toting round a keyboard and utilizing an iPad as an almost-laptop was an endorsed use case. It mattered.

The opposite iPad Professional accent launched a decade in the past was the Apple Pencil. Sure, at this time it’s straightforward to have a look at that authentic mannequin (with its Lightning plug hidden beneath a cap!) and take into consideration how far we’ve come. However the Apple Pencil was a game-changer. For years, artists had gravitated towards the iPad as a strategy to be free of PC graphics tablets and work anyplace, at any time. This led to a cottage business of styluses that attempted to emulate the iPad’s finger-sensing touchscreen. They labored, to a level, however it couldn’t be clearer that it was a use case Apple simply didn’t endorse.

Thiago Trevisan/Foundry

The Apple Pencil modified all the things. It allowed precision enter on the iPad for the primary time, with low latency. Not solely have been all of the artists who had struggled to work on the iPad rewarded with a product designed only for them, however it additionally confirmed that Apple wished the iPad for use as an expert instrument for many who make their dwelling by holding a pencil (or equal).

I’m somebody who hates writing by hand, however the Apple Pencil even modified how I work. That’s as a result of the Pencil didn’t simply help drawing, however (after a number of software program updates) supported driving the iPad’s total interface. I found that I cherished utilizing the Apple Pencil to edit podcasts. Utilizing considerate iPad apps like Ferrite Recording Studio made even an inveterate stylus-hater like me into a real believer. The Apple Pencil is an effective way to drive all types of apps. There’s nothing prefer it on any of Apple’s different platforms–and it began with the iPad Professional.

New sizes and modifications

Through the years, the iPad Professional and its equipment have advanced in quite a few methods. For the final 5 years, the Magic Keyboard has supplied iPad customers with not only a keyboard, however full-on mouse pointer help. (It’s exhausting to even keep in mind the Mouse Wars, however there was a time when saying {that a} pointing machine may be helpful on an iPad was controversial!) The Apple Pencil has additionally gotten higher, with magnetic on-device charging and improved precision.

And the iPad Professional itself has by no means been extra spectacular. Because the daybreak of the Apple silicon period 5 years in the past, it’s been powered by the identical chips discovered on Macs. (You could possibly argue that two particular iPad Professional chips, the A12X and A12Z, have been the testbed for the M sequence.) At this level, there’s no efficiency distinction between a MacBook Air and an iPad Professional, as a result of they often run the identical chips. And the tandem OLED iPad Professional show launched in 2024 with the M4 mannequin is legitimately one of the best show on any iPad, Mac, or iPhone, ever.

The largest change within the iPad Professional over the past decade has in all probability been the place it sits inside the iPad product line. The unique iPad Professional began at $799–expensive! Immediately’s giant iPad Professional begins at $1299… however there’s another choice.

The iPad Air is now principally what the iPad Professional was. (The massive mannequin even begins on the similar value, $799.) The iPad Air helps the Apple Pencil Professional and a Magic Keyboard and provides a reasonably nice worth… simply with out that OLED show with ProMotion, Face ID, ProMotion, and some different niceties.

Britta O’Boyle

In a decade, the iPad product line has progressed to the purpose the place the iPad Air can possess a load of options that debuted within the iPad Professional in a lower-priced, “mainstream” iPad. In the meantime, the iPad Professional itself has shot into the stratosphere, with cutting-edge processors and an outrageously good show, to not point out the thinnest physique in any Apple machine ever.

The place the iPad Professional goes subsequent is anybody’s guess, however it’s exhausting to disclaim that it’s modified the notion of what iPads are able to. And because of the quite a few multitasking upgrades in iPadOS 26, it feels just like the iPad’s software program has additionally embraced all the chances an iPad Professional provides.

It took a bit too lengthy, I feel. However a decade on, it seems like at this time’s M5 iPad Professional is fulfilling the unique mannequin’s future.

Apple iPad Professional 11-inch (M5, 2025)

Value When Reviewed:

$999

Apple iPad Professional 13-inch (M5, 2025)

Value When Reviewed:

$1,299