Apple loaded its newest flagship tablet with all of the essentials — Wi-Fi 7, dedicated Neural Accelerators to run AI on-device instead of in the cloud, and the M5 processor and N1 networking chip working side-by-side to deliver truly elite performance. It’s all shown on the industry-best Ultra Retina XDR display, with a stellar camera set for work and play. The new Amazon price of $1,249 suddenly looks a lot smaller once you read through the full list of features.
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Best Networking Setup Ever
Wi-Fi 7 support alone would be an appealing feature. Apple’s addition of the N1 networking chip alongside Wi-Fi 7 is less routine. The N1 is a dedicated co-processor handling wireless performance independently from the M5, which means network efficiency doesn’t compete with application performance for chip overhead. Apple’s creation results in faster, more consistent wireless speeds for large file transfers — think photos, ProRes video, graphics-heavy documents — without taxing the main processor. For a device increasingly positioned as a laptop replacement, the underlying network architecture matters more than the spec sheet suggests.
The visuals are, of course, peerless. Apple’s Liquid Glass design backed by iPadOS 26 features a new windowing system that lets apps run in resizable, overlapping windows rather than the fixed split-view layout iPadOS has used for years. That’s a huge change for workflow management on a 13-inch screen with this much processing power behind it. The Ultra Retina XDR display supports ProMotion adaptive refresh, P3 wide color, and True Tone, which is the same panel technology Apple uses in the MacBook Pro.
