Switcher 2026: The iPad Pro Has an Achilles Heel (Almost) No One Talks About ⭐

to the power of iPadOS 26 and its incredible hardware, the iPad Pro M5 should be the ultimate iPad. But there’s just one problem, and it’s an issue I’d never noticed in any reviews.

The battery life is terrible.

It’s terrible compared to my previous iPads, most recently an 11-inch iPad Air M3, but also compared to all current non-Pro iPads and every iPad I’ve ever owned. And I’ve owned a bunch of them.

It’s particularly terrible compared to my two-year-old MacBook Air M3 15-inch, which has a larger display and a more powerful--and, yes, complex--OS platform. The only asterisk here is that the iPad Pro M5 probably gets better battery life than a MacBook Neo based on the reviews I’ve read. And of course that Mac’s other limitations make it a lot less appealing anyway.
📝 What the reviews said
This is me, so I could have just missed something. It’s not like I spend my life pouring over iPad reviews. But I did read two or three of them, and my experiences over the past three days caused me to look up some more. An AI overview in Google Search doesn’t mention battery life as a pro or a con in its summary, which is perhaps telling. But what about the actual reviews?

They’re all over the map, go figure. But the warnings are there. Sometimes.

👎 Engadget dicks around the issue, noting that the thinness of the device prevented Apple from including a larger battery, so its uptime is the same as the previous-generation Pro. But it never describes real-world battery life, even generally as being good or bad. Instead, it just gives Apple an incredible out: “A tablet is meant to be held in your hands and carried around with you even more so than a laptop,” the reviewer writes, “so I understand why Apple values portability over extending the iPad Pro's battery life.” Coward.

👍 Gizmodo put “solid battery life” as a pro and noted that it has “surprisingly strong battery life.” But then it issued a caveat warning that “it’s far from an ‘all-day’ device if you plan to use it as routinely as you may on a Mac.” That seems like a pro, not a con, since this thing has the word “pro” in its name.

👎 The word “battery” doesn’t even appear in CNET’s review, which seems impossible and seriously undercuts anything that publication has to say about this or any devices. Seriously, that’s insane.

👍 AppleInsider, of all publications, is honest about the battery life, writing that “one surprise I have had is how quickly I can make this battery go down. I haven't timed it and my work hasn't been consistent enough to spot patterns, but still that battery goes down fast.” It then places battery life in its cons list and adds, “There's nothing else wrong with this device than its battery life. Even then, I feel like I'm exaggerating, but it is the one thing I've repeatedly noticed.” This is the one review that maps exactly to my (admittedly short) experience so far.

👎 Tom’s Guide puts battery life in its pros list and notes that the iPad Pro M5 features...