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SoYoung

macrumors 68000
Jul 3, 2015
1,545
955
The big difference is with 16GB of ram, all your safari tabs will always stay where they are no matter what you do (as long as you don't close the apps of course) and all apps will always stay exactly like they are in the background without never ever slow down the device. Both my M1 11' and M2 12,9 ones have 16GB of ram and that's why I'm not upgrading to the new M4 one because its too expensive for now because once you experience an iPad with so much ram, you don't want to go down.

When I use my 2018 iPad pro with 6GB of RAM, I immediately see the difference. Safari tabs reloads almost all the times.
 
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Digitalguy

macrumors 601
Apr 15, 2019
4,641
4,469
The big difference is with 16GB of ram, all your safari tabs will always stay where they are no matter what you do (as long as you don't close the apps of course) and all apps will always stay exactly like they are in the background without never ever slow down the device. Both my M1 11' and M2 12,9 ones have 16GB of ram and that's why I'm not upgrading to the new M4 one because its too expensive for now because once you experience an iPad with so much ram, you don't want to go down.

When I use my 2018 iPad pro with 6GB of RAM, I immediately see the difference. Safari tabs reloads almost all the times.
My 6GB iPad does not reload all the time, it's so much better than the 4GB one. I don't keep many tabs open (just 2-3 generally) but they stay in memory for a long time. The 4GB reloads even just one tab pretty quickly.
The 8GB has more tabs open and reloads even less, but I have heard people complaining that they don't see any difference in reloads between 8 and 16GB, but I don't have 16GB to compare.
 
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SoYoung

macrumors 68000
Jul 3, 2015
1,545
955
My 6GB iPad does not reload all the time, it's so much better than the 4GB one. I don't keep many tabs open (just 2-3 generally) but they stay in memory for a long time. The 4GB reloads even just one tab pretty quickly.
The 8GB has more tabs open and reloads even less, but I have heard people complaining that they don't see any difference in reloads between 8 and 16GB, but I don't have 16GB to compare.
And I don't have a 8GB device to compare lol. But according my 2018 iPad pro and my iPhone 13 pro max that both having 6GB of RAM, my safari tabs reloads way too frequently. Even the new Reddit design always crash on these device because it seems the ram can't handle this website. I often have around 5~8 tabs open.
 

Rogifan

macrumors Penryn
Nov 14, 2011
24,733
32,195
And I don't have a 8GB device to compare lol. But according my 2018 iPad pro and my iPhone 13 pro max that both having 6GB of RAM, my safari tabs reloads way too frequently. Even the new Reddit design always crash on these device because it seems the ram can't handle this website. I often have around 5~8 tabs open.
I wonder if this is a RAM issue or an OS issue? I would think even with 6GB RAM Safari tabs shouldn’t constantly be reloading. I don’t have that issue with Reddit but I use the old interface (just change the url to new.reddit.com) because I hate the new one.
 

EugW

macrumors G5
Jun 18, 2017
14,878
12,855
I too have read many reports that 8 GB and 16 GB Safari don’t behave all that differently in terms of tab reloads. It could be that Safari isn’t allowed to reserve all that RAM unlike some content creator apps. I thought I read that somewhere but I’m a little fuzzy on that.
 

Rogifan

macrumors Penryn
Nov 14, 2011
24,733
32,195
I too have read many reports that 8 GB and 16 GB Safari don’t behave all that differently in terms of tab reloads. It could be that Safari isn’t allowed to reserve all that RAM unlike some content creator apps. I thought I read that somewhere but I’m a little fuzzy on that.
I remember when I had the first iPad Air. The worst app on it by far was Safari. Every time I switched tabs they would reload. That iPad was by far the worst Apple product I’ve ever owned.
 

rui no onna

Contributor
Oct 25, 2013
14,915
13,259
I remember when I had the first iPad Air. The worst app on it by far was Safari. Every time I switched tabs they would reload. That iPad was by far the worst Apple product I’ve ever owned.

Guessing you've never owned the iPad 3rd gen. :p
 
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EugW

macrumors G5
Jun 18, 2017
14,878
12,855
Finally, a good YouTube review on both the 8 GB memory and the 16 GB memory. Bottom line do not waste your money on the 16 GB.

I'm not sure that is really a good set of tests for 16 GB. He basically just ran a few benchmarks, and I don't think any of those would have required that much RAM. So while I agree for most people 16 GB is probably not necessary, there are likely apps out there like select content creation apps where the extra RAM (up to 12 GB?) could indeed come in handy.
 

losta

macrumors member
Jul 23, 2002
63
16
NY Metro area
Once iPad OS 18 comes out things should be optimized for the M4. That’s why though I originally ordered the 512GB I decided to go with the 1TB or I know I would eventually have RAM envy.
 

FrozenDarkness

macrumors 68000
Mar 21, 2009
1,828
1,124
one thing to also keep in mind, there’s no way apple will make big pronouncements with 16gb ram like “this feature will be better for 16gb ram”. their segmentation strategy is so confusing, they’d get a bunch of angry customers.

Apple is much more fond of segmenting features by product lines. remember htey tried to tell us stage manager won’t work on non-m1 ipads. by the time all of these are fixed, apple will probably have a new chip and lock features behind that instead.
 
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Digitalguy

macrumors 601
Apr 15, 2019
4,641
4,469
And I don't have a 8GB device to compare lol. But according my 2018 iPad pro and my iPhone 13 pro max that both having 6GB of RAM, my safari tabs reloads way too frequently. Even the new Reddit design always crash on these device because it seems the ram can't handle this website. I often have around 5~8 tabs open.
I guess it's a matter of how many tabs you keep. I keep 3-4, they never reload on 6GB, I guess 5-8 trigger reloads. My 4GB iPad pro can't keep a single tab in memory sometimes.
 
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BradGD

Suspended
May 6, 2024
21
121
Don't forget that the M2 iPad Pros also had 16GB on the higher storage variants and I've never seen any reports that it made a observable difference beyond a few specialized apps.
 
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