iPad Pro Question only for 16GB RAM iPP owners (M1, M2, M4)

[Populus]

Hello.

This time I wanted to open a thread to scrutinize if having a 16GB of RAM iPad is a good investment. And, no, I’m not talking necessarily about the newest M4 iPad Pro, which has one extra core on the 16GB configuration. I’m asking in general, wether it is an M1 iPad Pro, an M2 iPad Pro, or an M4 iPad Pro.

Obviously, if you’ve been using an 8GB model previously, or if you have one of each to compare (M1, M2 or M4, it doesn’t matter), that could help you provide a better insight about the benefits in the day to day use. Maybe less apps reloads, or less Safari tabs reloads? Maybe better efficiency or a more snappy behavior?

I have the suspicion that iPadOS 18, with its Apple Intelligence feature, will demand more RAM, so if you’re running iPadOS 18.1 and have access to Apple Intelligence, your experience would be invaluable if you would share it.

Please share if you have noticed any improvement, and if the answer is affirmative, please specify in which regard your experience with iPadOS 17/18 is better. Also, maybe if I want to run a virtual machine with Windows, Linux or macOS on my iPad sharing the resources, having 16GB of RAM could show a real benefit down the road.

Thank you for reading, and I’m looking forward to reading your experiences!

 

[alecgold]

I’ve come to the conclusion that it is not such a black and white story.
For my work I use a huge Notability file with over 1000 hand written pages at the end of the year. I want it in one file, so I can search through it. This makes it rather difficult to handle for most iPads: opening really slow, not turning pages well, indexing takes forever, searching is really slow etc. etc.

So:
I have an old 2018 iPP. This one has 6Gb. It is really not workable with the huge notability file, it does get rather hot. When connecting an external display it refuses to charge beyond 80%.
I have an M1 iPP 11” 1Tb. this one has 16Gb and it is workable with the huge notability file the iPad does get really warm. When connecting an external display it refuses to charge beyond 80%.
I have an M2 iPP 12.9”. This one has 16Gb and works well with the huge notability file, but it still gets warm a bit. When connecting an external display it refuses to charge beyond 80%.
I have an M4 iPP 11”. this one also has 16Gb and works really well with the huge notability file, it flies through it. No slow turning of pages, nothing gets warm, even when I attache the external display it doesn’t break a sweat.

So in this case the processor seems to make a much bigger difference then the memory.

When looking at other signs an iPad might run out of memory is the switching of apps and the amount of safari pages that stay open. Here I do notice that the 2018 one doesn’t hold many pages open, where the M4 nearly never shuts down anything. Also the M4 is (for me) much better at working with an external screen and stagemanager because the apps never seem to shut down (or the M4 is so blithering fast that I don’t notice it).

I’m now running iPadOS 18 on the M4, it runs well, but I don’t have 18.1 yet. And I live in Europe, so it’s questionable if/when/what Apple AI features we will be getting.

 

[JaraCz]

Basic rule is: IF you need 16 GB RAM, you will know.

 

[Populus]

I’ve come to the conclusion that it is not such a black and white story.
For my work I use a huge Notability file with over 1000 hand written pages at the end of the year. I want it in one file, so I can search through it. This makes it rather difficult to handle for most iPads: opening really slow, not turning pages well, indexing takes forever, searching is really slow etc. etc.

So:
I have an old 2018 iPP. This one has 6Gb. It is really not workable with the huge notability file, it does get rather hot. When connecting an external display it refuses to charge beyond 80%.
I have an M1 iPP 11” 1Tb. this one has 16Gb and it is workable with the huge notability file the iPad does get really warm. When connecting an external display it refuses to charge beyond 80%.
I have an M2 iPP 12.9”. This one has 16Gb and works well with the huge notability file, but it still gets warm a bit. When connecting an external display it refuses to charge beyond 80%.
I have an M4 iPP 11”. this one also has 16Gb and works really well with the huge notability file, it flies through it. No slow turning of pages, nothing gets warm, even when I attache the external display it doesn’t break a sweat.

So in this case the processor seems to make a much bigger difference then the memory.

When looking at other signs an iPad might run out of memory is the switching of apps and the amount of safari pages that stay open. Here I do notice that the 2018 one doesn’t hold many pages open, where the M4 nearly never shuts down anything. Also the M4 is (for me) much better at working with an external screen and stagemanager because the apps never seem to shut down (or the M4 is so blithering fast that I don’t notice it).

I’m now running iPadOS 18 on the M4, it runs well, but I don’t have 18.1 yet. And I live in Europe, so it’s questionable if/when/what Apple AI features we will be getting.

Many thanks for your in-depth and elaborated response. As you stated at the beginning, it’s not a simple question that can be answered easily, especially if you want to furure-proof your purchase, or your use cases aren’t the typical.

You just gave me an idea: I currently have an 11” M4 iPad Pro for testing purposes, and despite being a base model with just 8GB of RAM, I also have some big PDF that my previous iPads always struggle with, especially when I try to look for a word in thousands of pages.

So I’m going to try them on this M4 iPad Pro, just to see if it’s a CPU thing, or it could be related to the RAM amount.

 

[hovscorpion12]

Basic rule is: IF you need 16 GB RAM, you will know.

Yes, but that doesn't apply to iPads.

16GB does have some benefits over 8GB.

- With procreate, 16GB RAM users have more layer options
- Game performance is slightly higher. [Resident Evil, Death Stranding..etc]
- Video exports are a bit faster in Davinci Resolve, FCP & LumaFusion.
- General app reloads are almost non existent.

As per the OP question. The M4 chip is the key to it all. 10-Core CPU at 4Ghz w/10-Core GPU is crazy

 

[Digitalguy]

I have 2 M1 iPad pros, 1 with 8GB (12.9") and one with 16GB RAM (11"). In theory they should be comparable in speed (contrary say to M1 vs M4) but they are not on the same OS version.
The 8GB one is up to date. The 16GB one is in its original iPadOS version. Why? Because iPadOS 15 supports hypervisor, which allowed me to install full Windows 11 on ARM via UTM at full speed (like on a Mac). I don't know how long I will keep it on 15, as there are things that I would like to have (estended display support, AI etc) but then Windows 11 won't run anymore or become painfully slow without hypervisor.

Having said that, to answer your question, I don't see any more reloads on 8GB vs 16GB. Especially in Safari, both reload equally. And while they are both better than my 6GB RAM iPad pro, they are not much better in Safari (but they are way, way better than any 4GB RAM iPads, which are a disaster in terms of reloads). I suspect that Safari has some trigger, some speculate it's around 2GB, past which it will start reloading anyway. So if someone plans to get 16GB to have less reloads in Safari, well... don't.

 

[Populus]

I have 2 M1 iPad pros, 1 with 8GB (12.9") and one with 16GB RAM (11"). In theory they should be comparable in speed (contrary say to M1 vs M4) but they are not on the same OS version.
The 8GB one is up to date. The 16GB one is in its original iPadOS version. Why? Because iPadOS 15 supports hypervisor, which allowed me to install full Windows 11 on ARM via UTM at full speed (like on a Mac). I don't know how long I will keep it on 15, as there are things that I would like to have (estended display support, AI etc) but then Windows 11 won't run anymore or become painfully slow without hypervisor.

Having said that, to answer your question, I don't see any more reloads on 8GB vs 16GB. Especially in Safari, both reload equally. And while they are both better than my 6GB RAM iPad pro, they are not much better in Safari (but they are way, way better than any 4GB RAM iPads, which are a disaster in terms of reloads). I suspect that Safari has some trigger, some speculate it's around 2GB, past which it will start reloading anyway. So if someone plans to get 16GB to have less reloads in Safari, well... don't.

No, but I’ve been thinking about virtualization. Actually, right now I’m toying with UTM SE, and I think having 16GB of RAM for that purpose might be interesting.

However, I still haven’t managed to install Debian or Ubuntu. Do I need hypervisor for Linux? Should I install x86_64 versions of the Operating Systems, or rather the ARM64 versions? Debian 12 has a version with Rosetta. But I’m not sure if that’s for a macOS installation.

The app allows you to allocate RAM for the virtual machine, but I’m not sure if I’ll need or I’ll be able to use more than 4GB… Do you think a 16GB iPad Pro could be more useful to have a virtual machine? Or, how about future-proofing it? Maybe for Apple Intelligence?

 

[hovscorpion12]

No, but I’ve been thinking about virtualization. Actually, right now I’m toying with UTM SE, and I think having 16GB of RAM for that purpose might be interesting.

However, I still haven’t managed to install Debian or Ubuntu. Do I need hypervisor for Linux? Should I install x86_64 versions of the Operating Systems, or rather the ARM64 versions? Debian 12 has a version with Rosetta. But I’m not sure if that’s for a macOS installation.

The app allows you to allocate RAM for the virtual machine, but I’m not sure if I’ll need or I’ll be able to use more than 4GB… Do you think a 16GB iPad Pro could be more useful to have a virtual machine? Or, how about future-proofing it? Maybe for Apple Intelligence?

For VM, yes. Like Macs, RAM is shared. If your allocating RAM, you would have less RAM on the iPad itself. Gaming handhelds have this problem. The recent ASUS handheld ships with 24GB of RAM giving adequate headroom for allocations. [Was hoping that M4 iPads would have been the first to have 24GB RAM]

 

[blkjedi954]

Hello.

This time I wanted to open a thread to scrutinize if having a 16GB of RAM iPad is a good investment. And, no, I’m not talking necessarily about the newest M4 iPad Pro, which has one extra core on the 16GB configuration. I’m asking in general, wether it is an M1 iPad Pro, an M2 iPad Pro, or an M4 iPad Pro.

Obviously, if you’ve been using an 8GB model previously, or if you have one of each to compare (M1, M2 or M4, it doesn’t matter), that could help you provide a better insight about the benefits in the day to day use. Maybe less apps reloads, or less Safari tabs reloads? Maybe better efficiency or a more snappy behavior?

I have the suspicion that iPadOS 18, with its Apple Intelligence feature, will demand more RAM, so if you’re running iPadOS 18.1 and have access to Apple Intelligence, your experience would be invaluable if you would share it.

Please share if you have noticed any improvement, and if the answer is affirmative, please specify in which regard your experience with iPadOS 17/18 is better. Also, maybe if I want to run a virtual machine with Windows, Linux or macOS on my iPad sharing the resources, having 16GB of RAM could show a real benefit down the road.

Thank you for reading, and I’m looking forward to reading your experiences!

I do have both, an M1 ipad pro 11in 256gb w/8gb of ram AND an M1 ipad pro 12in 2T/cell w/16gb. I am currently running a local LLM on my 12.9 (mistral) and have ipadOS beta installed. There is definitely a difference in the feel. Its not so substantial that it would deter anyone from getting the 8gb models, but noticeable if you're looking for it. That being said, I do look for it. I got the 16gb model for longevity. These products are a luxury. I will stay with my 2TB 12.9 for as long as its snappy and does what i need. I will however upgrade my 11 inch for the M5 when that comes, or if i find an M4 at an amazing deal...lol.

 

[blkjedi954]

I’ve come to the conclusion that it is not such a black and white story.
For my work I use a huge Notability file with over 1000 hand written pages at the end of the year. I want it in one file, so I can search through it. This makes it rather difficult to handle for most iPads: opening really slow, not turning pages well, indexing takes forever, searching is really slow etc. etc.

So:
I have an old 2018 iPP. This one has 6Gb. It is really not workable with the huge notability file, it does get rather hot. When connecting an external display it refuses to charge beyond 80%.
I have an M1 iPP 11” 1Tb. this one has 16Gb and it is workable with the huge notability file the iPad does get really warm. When connecting an external display it refuses to charge beyond 80%.
I have an M2 iPP 12.9”. This one has 16Gb and works well with the huge notability file, but it still gets warm a bit. When connecting an external display it refuses to charge beyond 80%.
I have an M4 iPP 11”. this one also has 16Gb and works really well with the huge notability file, it flies through it. No slow turning of pages, nothing gets warm, even when I attache the external display it doesn’t break a sweat.

So in this case the processor seems to make a much bigger difference then the memory.

When looking at other signs an iPad might run out of memory is the switching of apps and the amount of safari pages that stay open. Here I do notice that the 2018 one doesn’t hold many pages open, where the M4 nearly never shuts down anything. Also the M4 is (for me) much better at working with an external screen and stagemanager because the apps never seem to shut down (or the M4 is so blithering fast that I don’t notice it).

I’m now running iPadOS 18 on the M4, it runs well, but I don’t have 18.1 yet. And I live in Europe, so it’s questionable if/when/what Apple AI features we will be getting.

Amazing feedback. Thank you for your insight! Cheers!

 

[Apple_Robert]

I haven’t had any browser reloads with my M4. I do with my mini and do with my 2020 iPad Pro.

 

[Fraserpatty]

I have a 16 GB of ram one terabyte M2 iPad Pro. I can’t say whether I notice it is any snappier than the 10.5 inch iPad Pro that I had, but I specifically got this iPad for future proofing. Not so much for a “snappier“ experience. I had the feeling from all that I had read, that whenever artificial intelligence finally became a real thing that extra storage or extra ram would be necessary.

 

[Populus]

I have a 16 GB of ram one terabyte M2 iPad Pro. I can’t say whether I notice it is any snappier than the 10.5 inch iPad Pro that I had, but I specifically got this iPad for future proofing. Not so much for a “snappier“ experience. I had the feeling from all that I had read, that whenever artificial intelligence finally became a real thing that extra storage or extra ram would be necessary.

I concur.

 

[dabirdwell]

FWIW, I am able to run the new LLaMA 3.1 8B LLM (Quantized 4_0) on my 11” M1 8GB iPP, using LLMFarm. Not super fast, but functional. I tried the F16, but that crashed.

 

[Digitalguy]

No, but I’ve been thinking about virtualization. Actually, right now I’m toying with UTM SE, and I think having 16GB of RAM for that purpose might be interesting.

However, I still haven’t managed to install Debian or Ubuntu. Do I need hypervisor for Linux? Should I install x86_64 versions of the Operating Systems, or rather the ARM64 versions? Debian 12 has a version with Rosetta. But I’m not sure if that’s for a macOS installation.

The app allows you to allocate RAM for the virtual machine, but I’m not sure if I’ll need or I’ll be able to use more than 4GB… Do you think a 16GB iPad Pro could be more useful to have a virtual machine? Or, how about future-proofing it? Maybe for Apple Intelligence?

As far as I know virtualisation is only possible with hypervisor, without it the only thing you can do is emulation. And emulation of a heavy OS like Windows makes it totally unusable. Linux is lighter, but it will be much slower anyway in emulation. How usable, I don't know.
As for UTM I don't use the SE version that you find on the store, that one is a limited version because they had to limit it significantly for Apple to approve it. I use the full version, but for that you need to sideload. But as far as I know in the latest version of iPadOS 17 Apple has made it impossible to sideload and 18 is going to be even worse apparently. At least outside of the EU (I am not in the EU).
So unless you buy a new M1 and not update it, I'd say virtualization is not an option (hypervisor access was remove at some point on iPadOS 16, probably to avoid that sideloading in the EU would allow VMs)

Anyway I can allocate as much RAM as I want (up to 12GB I think) and as much CPU.
I made some tests the other day and I see that the allocation is dynamic. For instance if I run Geekbench with the VM open I still get full score, same if I ran from Windows (although lower than on iPadOS). But if I run on both at the same time, scores go down quite a bit. I don't know if it's the same with RAM since there is no resource manager in iPadOS.

Honestly Windows is the only use I have for those 16GB of RAM, since Safari reloads just as much. Future proofing I don't know... Maybe local LLMs (but at the moment it's not something I am very interested in).
In theory we should have Disk Swap since iPadOS 16, but nobody knows anything about how it works.
What is not clear is if it's used like on a Mac or PC or only with Stage Manager, or only if some RAM intensive apps makes some special requests for more RAM. Nobody has a clue.

 

[Populus]

In theory we should have Disk Swap since iPadOS 16, but nobody knows anything about how it works.
What is not clear is if it's used like on a Mac or PC or only with Stage Manager, or only if some RAM intensive apps makes some special requests for more RAM. Nobody has a clue.

Indeed, I still remember when memory swapping was announced for iPadOS 16 but I haven’t read anything about that since then.

As for UTM I don't use the SE version that you find on the store, that one is a limited version because they had to limit it significantly for Apple to approve it. I use the full version, but for that you need to sideload. But as far as I know in the latest version of iPadOS 17 Apple has made it impossible to sideload and 18 is going to be even worse apparently. At least outside of the EU (I am not in the EU).
So unless you buy a new M1 and not update it, I'd say virtualization is not an option (hypervisor access was remove at some point on iPadOS 16, probably to avoid that sideloading in the EU would allow VMs)

Well, I happen to live in the EU, so side loading is an option for me. Never liked the idea of installing apps from outside the App Store but… I guess I’ll eventually try the AltStore. If the full version of UTM provides better performance even on iPadOS 17, that’s it.

 

[Digitalguy]

Indeed, I still remember when memory swapping was announced for iPadOS 16 but I haven’t read anything about that since then.


Well, I happen to live in the EU, so side loading is an option for me. Never liked the idea of installing apps from outside the App Store but… I guess I’ll eventually try the AltStore. If the full version of UTM provides better performance even on iPadOS 17, that’s it.

I haven't used the AltStore in years, when i used it you had to keep a server on a pc, update things every week.. it was a pain. Now I used the Trollstore (I know, terrible name...) which works with none of the issues of the Altstore. But it can only be installed untill iPadOS 17.0... But maybe Altstore has improved since or there are other ways...
Anyway there is a nice video on youtube talking about UTM etc. title is "I Turned The iPad Pro M4 Into a PC!", worth a watch

 

[A.R.E.A.M.]

2tb cellular 13 inch variant running beta - i use it for davinci and the MINIMUM is 16gb of ram for desktop class performance. i use the speed editor ( and color wheels) and when i drag the timeline its fluid with no jerky motion.

 

[Cheffy Dave]

Hello.

This time I wanted to open a thread to scrutinize if having a 16GB of RAM iPad is a good investment. And, no, I’m not talking necessarily about the newest M4 iPad Pro, which has one extra core on the 16GB configuration. I’m asking in general, wether it is an M1 iPad Pro, an M2 iPad Pro, or an M4 iPad Pro.

Obviously, if you’ve been using an 8GB model previously, or if you have one of each to compare (M1, M2 or M4, it doesn’t matter), that could help you provide a better insight about the benefits in the day to day use. Maybe less apps reloads, or less Safari tabs reloads? Maybe better efficiency or a more snappy behavior?

I have the suspicion that iPadOS 18, with its Apple Intelligence feature, will demand more RAM, so if you’re running iPadOS 18.1 and have access to Apple Intelligence, your experience would be invaluable if you would share it.

Please share if you have noticed any improvement, and if the answer is affirmative, please specify in which regard your experience with iPadOS 17/18 is better. Also, maybe if I want to run a virtual machine with Windows, Linux or macOS on my iPad sharing the resources, having 16GB of RAM could show a real benefit down the road.

Thank you for reading, and I’m looking forward to reading your experiences!

I will report back on that when I install iOS18

 

[heretiq]

Hello.

This time I wanted to open a thread to scrutinize if having a 16GB of RAM iPad is a good investment. And, no, I’m not talking necessarily about the newest M4 iPad Pro, which has one extra core on the 16GB configuration. I’m asking in general, wether it is an M1 iPad Pro, an M2 iPad Pro, or an M4 iPad Pro.

Obviously, if you’ve been using an 8GB model previously, or if you have one of each to compare (M1, M2 or M4, it doesn’t matter), that could help you provide a better insight about the benefits in the day to day use. Maybe less apps reloads, or less Safari tabs reloads? Maybe better efficiency or a more snappy behavior?

I have the suspicion that iPadOS 18, with its Apple Intelligence feature, will demand more RAM, so if you’re running iPadOS 18.1 and have access to Apple Intelligence, your experience would be invaluable if you would share it.

Please share if you have noticed any improvement, and if the answer is affirmative, please specify in which regard your experience with iPadOS 17/18 is better. Also, maybe if I want to run a virtual machine with Windows, Linux or macOS on my iPad sharing the resources, having 16GB of RAM could show a real benefit down the road.

Thank you for reading, and I’m looking forward to reading your experiences!

I have a 2024 13” 16GB M4 iPad Pro running the latest iOS 17 production build .. that I upgraded to from a 2021 12.9” 16GB M1 iPad Pro which was an upgrade from a 2020 12.9” iPad Pro with 6GB RAM. I’ve always used Safari so page reloads have not been an issue for me. However, I can say that since upgrading to the M1 I’ve had zero performance issues using primarily Swift Playgrounds, Mail, Pages, Keynote, Notes, Freeform, NotePlan, Pixelmator, Affinity Designer, Outlook, Teams, Word, Excel, Edge and Adobe Comp as my primary apps.

I attribute this problem-free experience to a combination of (a) using the iPad Pro as a tablet and not trying to force it to do things that my MacBook Pro is better suited for, (b) using apps that largely respect the Apple platform and UX conventions (the exceptions in my stack are the MS products, but they don’t cause too many issues), and (c) having 16GB RAM — in that order.

 

[JaraCz]

ups

 

[Macintosh101]

I have the 16gb M4 13 and notice the difference. However I would also say this. If you‘re going to get the 16gb version, get the Nano Texture Glass. I made another thread on it a few days back, having been an initial sceptic and then a complete convert. I sat outside today in blazing sunlight and was able to read and do work in a way I’ve v been able to do on able mobile device, with zero glare.

 

[Populus]

Ok, I’m being offered an M2 iPP with 16GB of RAM for the same price of a base M4 with 8GB of RAM… decisions…

 

[Aenean144]

I’ve come to the conclusion that it is not such a black and white story.
For my work I use a huge Notability file with over 1000 hand written pages at the end of the year. I want it in one file, so I can search through it. This makes it rather difficult to handle for most iPads: opening really slow, not turning pages well, indexing takes forever, searching is really slow etc. etc.

My immediate thought is "WTF is Notability doing?!" Maybe if it was 100,000 pages, I can see any hardware from 2015 having a hard time with it. Like, it is hosting and running Python, and putting all the stuff into a pickle database. It is not indexing anything and searches through the raw data for every search?

 

[Aenean144]

Ok, I’m being offered an M2 iPP with 16GB of RAM for the same price of a base M4 with 8GB of RAM… decisions…

11" or 13"? Then, what are the storage sizes?