Apple Cuts 11-Inch iPad Pro M5 to $899 in Prime Day Deal

Q: If the iPad Pro is an award-winning tablet, why did its Prime Day deal only earn a 3/5 rating?

It earned only a 3/5 because ZDNET’s deal score measures the value of the discount, not just the quality of the product. The iPad Pro M5 is clearly a premium device: ZDNET gave it a Lab Award, praised its more than 15-hour battery life in testing, and highlighted its flagship performance and connectivity. That strong reputation helped lift the deal’s score. But the Prime Day offer itself is relatively modest. At $899, the tablet is only $100 off its $999 list price, a 10% discount. Under ZDNET’s deal-rating approach, percentage-off matters heavily, and 10% is not a deep markdown for a shopping event built around standout bargains. The searched material also suggests expert deal ratings can be adjusted upward when a product is award-winning, rarely discounted, or especially notable. That appears to be what happened here: the iPad Pro’s status as a flagship Apple product and Lab Award winner likely pushed the score higher than the raw discount alone would justify. There is also a practical value argument against a higher score: some reporting indicates better iPad Pro prices have appeared before, including a lower historical price around $799. If that is the benchmark, this Prime Day price is good, but not exceptional. So the 3/5 reflects a middle ground: excellent product, worthwhile sale, but not a rare or dramatic discount.

Q: Is the iPad Pro M5’s cutting-edge Wi-Fi 7 held back by a surprising hardware limitation?

Yes. The iPad Pro M5 supports Wi‑Fi 7, but its implementation appears limited by hardware that tops out at 160MHz channels and 2x2 MIMO, rather than the full 320MHz channels and higher spatial streams that define Wi‑Fi 7’s maximum potential. That means the tablet can deliver strong real-world wireless performance, including faster downloads, better AirDrop reliability and smoother hotspot use, but it cannot reach the headline peak speeds often associated with Wi‑Fi 7. The cited specs put its maximum PHY rate at about 2400Mbps on 5GHz and 6GHz, which is well below what top-end Wi‑Fi 7 hardware can theoretically achieve. There is also a second likely constraint around Multi-Link Operation, one of Wi‑Fi 7’s marquee features. Current Apple client devices are widely understood to use a more limited single-radio style of MLO rather than the more advanced simultaneous multi-radio approach. In practice, that improves stability and latency more than it boosts total throughput. So the answer is nuanced: the iPad Pro M5 is not missing Wi‑Fi 7, and it should still outperform older Wi‑Fi 6E Apple devices. But its Wi‑Fi 7 is a restrained version of the standard, shaped by hardware choices that prioritize efficiency, thermals and battery life over absolute wireless peak speed. For most buyers, that will matter less than the tablet’s standout battery life and overall performance, but it does mean the “Wi‑Fi 7” label comes with caveats.

3 articles · Updated · ZDNet · Jun 23

$100 off drops Apple's 11-inch iPad Pro M5 to $899 on Amazon, down from its $999 list price during Prime Day.
15 hours of battery life at maximum brightness helped the tablet top ZDNET's test of 10 popular models, making endurance the main selling point behind the deal.
C1X and N1 chips add Wi-Fi 7, Bluetooth 6, Thread and faster 5G, extending the pitch beyond battery life to connectivity and laptop-replacement use.
June 23-26 marks Amazon's earlier-than-usual Prime Day window this year, with the outlet rating the offer 3 out of 5 and warning deals can expire or sell out.