A year after it went on sale, the iPad Pro M5 is still Apple's best tablet, and it is still the one I would talk most people out of buying new. Not because anything is wrong with it. Because the price went up £200 in June, every big UK retailer followed Apple to the pound, and the cheapest good one is now a refurbished unit that costs £31 more than a brand-new iPad Air.
That is the gap nobody on the first page of Google is talking about. Search for the iPad Pro M5 and you get Apple's spec sheet, a YouTube video, an accessories page and a launch article quoting US dollars from October 2025. So here is what it costs in Britain today, where to actually buy it, and whether you should wait for the next one.
What the iPad Pro M5 costs in the UK right now
Apple announced the M5 iPad Pro on 15 October 2025 and it went on sale on 22 October. In the UK it launched at £999 for the 11-inch and £1,299 for the 13-inch. On 25 June 2026 Apple raised prices across the Mac and iPad range, and the Pro went to £1,199 and £1,499.
The 11-inch Wi-Fi ladder on Apple's UK store now looks like this:
- 256GB - £1,199
- 512GB - £1,399
- 1TB - £1,799
- 2TB - £2,299
Cellular adds £200 at every size. The 13-inch starts at £1,499 for 256GB.
My arithmetic on the June rise: £200 on the 11-inch is 20.0 per cent, and £200 on the 13-inch is 15.4 per cent. No new hardware came with it. The tablet you could have bought for £999 on 24 June cost £1,199 two days later, which I covered at the time in my full iPad price UK breakdown.
Nobody big is undercutting Apple on this one
This is where the iPad Pro differs from most Apple products I write about. Usually the trick is to buy anywhere but Apple, because Currys, Argos or Amazon knock a chunk off within a few months. Not here.
When I checked this morning, Currys had the 11-inch 256GB at £1,199 with no "was" price, and John Lewis had it at £1,199 with no discount either. Argos was also at £1,199 at the start of October. The only Currys saving on the page was £55 off if you buy a laptop or another iPad at the same time, which is not a saving on the iPad.
PriceSpy's lowest tracked listing for the 11-inch Wi-Fi 256GB is £959.99. That would be £239.01 under Apple, or 19.93 per cent by my maths. I could not see which shop it belongs to, and it sits next to a cellular listing priced below the Wi-Fi one, which tells you some of these are marketplace sellers rather than the big names. Treat it as a number to check, not one to bank.
The iPad Pro M5 deal that actually works: refurbished
The refurbished market is where the iPad Pro M5 price finally moves. A year of launch-window buyers upgrading, returning and trading in has put enough stock out there to matter.
As of yesterday evening, refurb.me had the cheapest 11-inch 256GB Wi-Fi in Excellent condition at £880 from Back Market. Hoxton Macs had the same model in Excellent condition at £895, with a one-year hardware warranty and free next-day delivery. On the 13-inch, Hoxton listed Excellent at £1,195 and Fair at £995.
My arithmetic on the 11-inch:
- £880 is £319 under Apple's £1,199, or 26.6 per cent off
- £895 is £304 under, or 25.4 per cent off
- £880 is £119 under the launch price of £999, even though that launch price no longer exists anywhere new
If refurbished makes you nervous, it is worth knowing what you are actually getting, and what you are not, before you rule it out. I went through how Apple's own refurbished stock differs from new, including the battery question, which matters more on a tablet than people think.
iPad Pro M5 vs iPad Air: the £31 problem
Here is the comparison that changes the decision for a lot of people. The iPad Air 11-inch with the M4 chip is £749 at 128GB and £849 at 256GB. The iPad Pro starts at 256GB, so the fair comparison is the £849 one.
New against new, the Pro costs £350 more than the Air. That is a real gap and, for most people, not one worth paying. But a refurbished Pro at £880 is £31 more than a new 256GB Air. Thirty-one pounds.
For that £31 you get a lot:
- The M5 rather than the M4
- An OLED Ultra Retina XDR display at up to 1,000 nits full screen and 1,600 nits peak HDR, against the Air's LCD
- 120Hz ProMotion, which the Air does not have
- 12GB of memory, which Apple says is 50 per cent more than the previous iPad Pro's base
- Wi-Fi 7 through Apple's N1 chip
What you give up is a new-in-box machine and, depending on the seller, some of the warranty comfort. If the £749 128GB Air is enough storage for you, the gap is £131 instead, and the Air is still the sensible buy. If you were going to spend £849 anyway, I would look very hard at a refurbished Pro first.
What the M5 actually changed over the M4
If you are looking at an older M4 iPad Pro on the second-hand market, this is the bit that matters. Apple's claims for the M5 are up to 3.5 times the AI performance of the M4 iPad Pro and up to 1.5 times the 3D ray-traced rendering, with memory bandwidth above 150GB/s, which it puts at nearly 30 per cent more.
It also added the N1 wireless chip with Wi-Fi 7, Bluetooth 6 and Thread, Apple's own C1X modem on cellular models, and fast charging to 50 per cent in about 30 minutes. Read the small print on that last one: it needs an optional higher-wattage USB-C adapter, and there is no charger in the box at all.
The design did not change. Same thickness, same Face ID position along the long edge, same Magic Keyboard and Apple Pencil Pro compatibility. That is why the M4 is still hanging around, and why I would not buy one now. PriceSpy's lowest tracked 11-inch M4 Wi-Fi 256GB is £914.03, which is only £45.96 under the cheapest tracked M5 listing, and more than a refurbished M5.
Is the 1TB iPad Pro M5 worth £600 more?
The storage pricing has a pattern worth seeing in numbers. By my maths, Apple charges £200 for the extra 256GB going from 256GB to 512GB, and £400 for the extra 512GB going to 1TB. Both work out at 78.1p per gigabyte. The jump to 2TB is £500 for another terabyte, or 48.8p per gigabyte.
The 1TB model is not just more storage, though. The 256GB and 512GB versions get 12GB of memory, and the 1TB and 2TB versions get 16GB and the full 10-core CPU. They are also the only ones offered with the nano-texture glass option.
So £1,799 for the 1TB is £600 over the base. If you are cutting 4K video on it or running heavy creative apps for hours, the memory is the reason to pay it, not the storage. If you are mostly writing, browsing and drawing, 256GB and 12GB is plenty, and the £600 is better spent on the keyboard and Pencil.
Should you wait for the next iPad Pro?
Bloomberg's Mark Gurman has reported that Apple is working on new 11-inch and 13-inch iPad Pro models for spring 2027. The reporting says no external design change, a vapour chamber cooling system still in testing, and either an M6 or an M7 chip depending on which is ready. That is reporting, not an Apple announcement.
The practical read: the next one is probably five months or more away, looks identical, and is a chip and thermals upgrade. Nothing in it fixes a problem the M5 has for normal use. And with Apple having blamed June's rise on memory costs, I would not bet on the next model launching under £1,199.
The one thing waiting does do is push more M5 stock into the refurbished market when the new one lands. If you can really hold off until spring, a refurbished M5 will be cheaper then than it is now. If you need a tablet this side of Christmas, that is not a reason to wait.
Two ways to pay less for a new one
If you want new rather than refurbished, there are only two routes that reliably work. Apple's education pricing takes the iPad Pro to £1,099, which is £100 off, or 8.3 per cent by my maths. Apple's £80 gift card offer for education buyers ended yesterday, so that £1,099 is now the whole saving.
The second is to stop looking at the Pro. A 13-inch iPad Air at 256GB is £1,049, which is £150 under the 11-inch Pro and gives you a bigger screen. For a lot of people that is the better trade.
iPad Pro M5 questions people actually ask
Is the iPad Pro M5 worth it in 2026?
New at £1,199, only if you need the OLED display, 120Hz and the M5's headroom for video or creative work. Refurbished at around £880 to £895, yes for most people who were considering a 256GB iPad Air, because the gap is just £31 to £46.
Is there a cheaper iPad Pro M5 deal in the UK than Apple?
Not from the big names. Apple, Currys, John Lewis and Argos have all been at £1,199 for the 11-inch 256GB. PriceSpy has tracked lower listings from smaller sellers, and refurbished units from Back Market and Hoxton Macs start at £880 and £895.
When is the next iPad Pro coming out?
Reporting from Bloomberg points to spring 2027, with the same design and an M6 or M7 chip. Apple has not announced anything, so treat the timing as a rumour rather than a date.
My take
The iPad Pro M5 is the best iPad Apple sells, and a year in it has not aged at all. What has aged badly is the price. £1,199 for the same tablet that cost £999 at launch, with every major retailer refusing to budge, is not a price I would pay unless the tablet is a work tool.
At £880 refurbished it is a different conversation. That is £31 more than the iPad Air most people end up buying instead, for a better screen, a faster chip and more memory. If you were going to spend Air money, spend it on a refurbished Pro. If you were going to spend Pro money, keep £300 of it.
Source: Apple introduces the powerful new iPad Pro with the M5 chip, Apple Newsroom
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