I’m the guy who bought an Apple device right before a new one came out. I don’t regret it one bit
… if you already have an M4 iPad Pro, you shouldn’t worry about buying a new one.
A few weeks ago, I went to buy a new iPad. This time around, I decided to go with the M4 13-inch iPad Pro with cellular, which I love, by the way. I did this despite strong rumors that an M5 version would be coming out soon.
Once the M5 launched, I second-guessed my decision and thought maybe I should have waited the extra two or three weeks and just gotten the new one. However, I’m pretty much in the same boat as Filipe Esposito from Macworld.
Like him, I decided to get the M4 version for a few reasons. First and foremost, I needed the bigger screen iPad, so waiting wasn’t completely an option. Yeah, I could have pushed through and worked around things to make do, but I decided not to.
Second, I got some pretty good deals on it. For one, I got the educational discount, which I could have gotten with the M5 as well, but they also had some other promotions for accessories. I decided to go with the Magic Keyboard and got it almost half off its regular price.
After reading Filipe’s Macworld article, it confirmed what I already suspected: there’s not a lot of difference between the M4 and M5 versions of the iPad.
The screen is the same, the keyboard accessories are the same, the cameras are the same, and the speakers and hardware are all the same. As far as I can tell, the only two things that changed were the M5 chip and the fact that it comes with 12GB of RAM instead of my 8GB. Actually, come to think of it, I think the new M5 model also has Apple’s new modem in it, but again, the current modem in my M4 model works perfectly well.
Despite these upgrades, I don’t feel my iPad is suffering from any kind of slowness. I do everything on it and never wish it was faster.
As an aside, if you’ve never used a cellular-enabled iPad, I highly recommend it. Yeah, it’s a little more expensive and yeah, you have to pay the carriers, but it’s so freeing to just use it anywhere.
Before, I used to tether it with my phone’s hotspot, but that wasn’t always ideal and I had data caps on my hotspots to contend with. With the cellular plan, I get “unlimited” data.
As of yet, I haven’t even been throttled, so I think it really is unlimited with AT&T. Either way, it’s just nice to have one self-contained device, and I’m glad that it’s my M4 iPad Pro.