M4 iPad Pro CPU cores and RAM amount are tied to storage capacity

Enlarge / The new M4 iPad Pro. (credit: Apple)

When Apple announced the Apple M4 chip during its iPad Pro event yesterday, it mentioned that the chip came with “up to” four high-performance CPU cores.

Those short, easily missable words always mean that there’s a lower-end version of the chip coming that doesn’t include that many CPU cores, and the tech specs page for the new iPad Pro has the full details: iPad Pros with 256GB or 512GB of storage use a version of the M4 with three high-performance CPU cores and six smaller efficiency cores. Only the models with 1TB and 2TB of storage have an M4 with all four high-performance CPU cores enabled.

The 256GB and 512GB models also ship with 8GB of RAM, where the 1TB and 2TB models come with 16GB of memory installed. Though these changes are clearly spelled out on the Tech Specs page, the actual configuration page for the iPad Pros in Apple’s online store doesn’t give any indication that upgrading storage also upgrades your CPU and RAM.