Without much fanfare, Apple has unveiled three new flagship products today via a press release—no special event, no pre-recorded show. That might be because the new iPad Pro, MacBook Pro, and Vision Pro don't change the mold—they're identical to their predecessors—but internally, they're debuting Apple's highly anticipated M5 chip.
All of the devices are available for preorder today and go on sale on October 22. Here's everything you need to know.
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The New M5 Chip
The M5 processor is the heart of the announcements today as it powers all the new Apple hardware. It's built on the 3-nanometer process, with a 10-core GPU and a neural accelerator in each core, which Apple claims improves performance in GPU-based AI workloads and provides four times the peak GPU compute performance over the M4 chip.
Graphics performance in general is 30 percent higher than the M4, and the 10-core CPU offers 15 percent faster multithreaded performance. (Apple claims this is the “world's fastest CPU core.”) The 16-core Neural Engine has also been enhanced, which should mean Apple Intelligence and other AI tasks (like transforming a 2D photo to a spatial scene) should be faster. Apple says there's a 30 percent increase in unified memory bandwidth, allowing larger AI models to run on the device, but it also helps deliver better performance for the CPU, GPU, and Neural Engine.
The New iPad Pro
It has been roughly a year and a half since the debut of the M4-powered iPad Pro, but the new M5 iPad Pro tablets don't change much outside of the processor. You still have two sizes to choose from: 11 or 13 inches. Both of them feature fast charging—you can get 50 percent in 30 minutes when using a compatible charger—though annoyingly, Apple only includes a 20-watt USB-C power adapter in the box.
Both feature Apple's N1 networking chip that debuted in the iPhone 17, which includes Wi-Fi 7, Bluetooth 6, and Thread. Also in tow is the C1X 5G modem from the iPhone Air for 50 percent faster cellular performance and 30 percent less power usage than the M4 iPad Pro. Over its predecessor, you'll see a 3.5x boost in AI performance, 1.5x faster 3D rendering with ray tracing, up to 1.2x faster video transcode performance in Final Cut Pro, and 2.3x faster AI video upscaling performance in DaVinci Resolve. The 256- and 512-GB models use 12 GB of unified memory now, twice as much as before, and the faster memory bandwidth means everything gets a speed boost.
Many of the other specs are the same. They're just as thin as before, feature Apple's Tandem OLED display technology, and can hit 1,600 nits at peak brightness. You still get the nano-textured glass upgrade if you want to reduce glare on the screen. Speaking of the screen, Apple says there's a new capability for these iPads to drive external displays at up to 120 Hz; if you already have a 120-Hz screen, a new Adaptive Sync feature will ensure the lowest possible latency between iPad and monitor.