iPads are pretty commonly gifted during the holidays, with 9% of iPad owners reporting that they received their iPad as a gift during Q4 2024. If you’re looking to gift an iPad to a loved one, especially given the fantastic Black Friday Week deals – you might be wondering, which iPad is more worthwhile? We’ll be comparing Apple’s recently released M5 iPad Pro to its recently released M3 iPad Air.
First of all, if you’re buying a new iPad as a gift, you’re probably more likely to be considering the cheaper iPad models, like the iPad (A16) and iPad Air. If that’s the case, you can read my comparison for those two models.
If you’re shopping for yourself, or just have much deeper pockets to afford gifting an iPad Pro, you can keep on reading.
Displays
The key upgrade with the iPad Pro is the display. iPad Pro features a Tandem OLED display, versus the typical LCD panel on the iPad Air. That means the iPad Pro offers up to 1000 nits of brightness (versus 500 on iPad Air), excellent HDR performance, much punchier colors, and deeper blacks.
iPad Pro also offers a ProMotion display with an up to 120Hz refresh rate, meaning you’ll notice much smoother scrolling, faster animations, and a more responsive experience. Unfortunately, iPad Air still offers a typical 60Hz panel.
That’s not to say the iPad Air display is bad, necessarily – it still offers P3 color support, and 500 nits is still plenty bright. That said, if you’re someone who’ll use your iPad as your Netflix/Disney+/etc machine, the iPad Pro could be worth springing for.
Performance
Apple refreshed the iPad Pro with the M5 chip last month, utilizing the 3rd generation 3nm process. The M3 chip in the iPad Air utilizes the 1st generation 3nm process.
In all honesty, you’re unlikely to feel a difference here when it comes to typical iPad activities. I will note, though, that the M5 iPad Pro offers 12GB of unified memory, whereas the M3 iPad Air offers 8GB. With heavy multitasking and web browsing, this might be a difference you feel.
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