iPad Pro Does iPadOS 26 use more RAM than 18? Here are my test results.

[Digitalguy]

You claim "any comparison will never be scientific, but it's still better than nothing." I disagree and say it is not "still better than nothing."

Simply be aware that apps and the OS will constantly be taking more advantage of RAM on an ongoing basis. Like they have for >40 years now [Macs; obviously less time for tablets]. And vendors will constantly be making more RAM available on an ongoing basis. Like they have for >40 years now.

Apps are the same on both with the same updates since both iPad come from the same restore. Anyway, let's agree to disagree on this potentially being useful to someone (who doesn't have 2 spare iPads to compare 2 different OS versions). People can decide by themselves if this is useful to them or not.

 

[Homme]

Imagine if OS 26 does use less RAM than iOS/iPadOS 18. Because the XS has 4GB, 64GB of storage while the 8th Gen iPad has 3GB of RAM and 32GB of storage. XS/XR Users will feel robbed ( but nowhere around the iPhone X’s level when it didn’t get iOS 17).

Considering that even A12 iPads/3GB of RAM supports multitasking it’s possible that Apple reduced the RAM Slightly than iPadOS 18😊. But my guess really

 

[Allen_Wentz]

Imagine if OS 26 does use less RAM than iOS/iPadOS 18. Because the XS has 4GB, 64GB of storage while the 8th Gen iPad has 3GB of RAM and 32GB of storage. XS/XR Users will feel robbed ( but nowhere around the iPhone X’s level when it didn’t get iOS 17).

Considering that even A12 iPads/3GB of RAM supports multitasking it’s possible that Apple reduced the RAM Slightly than iPadOS 18😊. But my guess really

RAM has [generally] always increased, year after year. Not a straight line, but the trend is inexorable. "Imagine if OS 26 does use less RAM than iOS/iPadOS 18" is not IMO a useful thing to waste time thinking about, because even if it strangely did happen iOS 27 would revert to the long term trend.

 

[Digitalguy]

RAM has [generally] always increased, year after year. Not a straight line, but the trend is inexorable. "Imagine if OS 26 does use less RAM than iOS/iPadOS 18" is not IMO a useful thing to waste time thinking about, because even if it strangely did happen iOS 27 would revert to the long term trend.

I don't think that RAM usage by the OS and first party apps (by the third party apps it's a different story) has descreased, I think it's more a matter of RAM management, maybe with some swapping to disk or some harder compression (I can see some tabs freezing instead of reloading, that is become unresponsive, at least temporarily, instead of reloading). But this needs to be compared also once the final version of 26 is there.

 

[Brapple]

2025 M5 Pro 256 better come with more than 8gb of ram. Ridiculous the cost of the “Pro” model and I’m constantly hitting 8gb walls.

Do we think the M5 256 will have 12gb or 16gb?

 

[QuarterSwede]

iPadOS 26 sure as hell uses more battery though.
I use my iPad for about 30mins every day and with 26, I need to charge at least 2 times a week, maybe 3. I use it mostly to read news every morning, and every morning it has at least 15% less battery than the day before.

Betas always use more battery than RCs or public stable releases because it’s logging everything you’re doing in case Apple needs the logs. Battery life on betas is not an indicator of how the battery life will be on public release.

 

[bollman]

Betas always use more battery than RCs or public stable releases because it’s logging everything you’re doing in case Apple needs the logs. Battery life on betas is not an indicator of how the battery life will be on public release.

I'm well aware of that, been in AppleSeed for at least 15 years...
The OP said it used more memory, but I haven't seen that.

 

[Digitalguy]

I'm well aware of that, been in AppleSeed for at least 15 years...
The OP said it used more memory, but I haven't seen that.

I never said that, if anything I said that 26 seems to manage RAM better than 18...

 

[Digitalguy]

2025 M5 Pro 256 better come with more than 8gb of ram. Ridiculous the cost of the “Pro” model and I’m constantly hitting 8gb walls.

Do we think the M5 256 will have 12gb or 16gb?

Given that iPhone pro is coming with 12, I am betting on 16. And I agree I hit the 8GB wall (reloads) every day. I guess some people never do because they use their iPad differently, but some of us do...