Apple iPad 5th gen

6owners with an opinion

83%of verdicts positive

1/0positive/negative since 2024

0happy after 3+ years

Praised for ease of use and performance; criticized for battery and repairability.

What people wrote

Likes it

I recently dug up my old iPod Nano 5th gen (small square one) from 2010 and charged it up, and still works fine. What I forgot, and it totally surprised me, is that it has FM radio! I selected some stations and it worked great. And that Nano was tiny, would be cool to have this feature back in current iPhones / Apple Watches. I know it’s not the same as having full tx/rx on the 2m/70cm bands, but still, even just just listening to normal radio on iPhone would be cool.

Likes it

I did a lot of personal travel with an iPad Mini (plus BT mouse and keyboard) and do just fine with RDP connections to my office and home as needed. In fact, I’m typing this on the second iteration (the 5th Gen one) and hope to get a new one as soon as it’s launched. There is certainly a lot you can do with an iPad if you have the right apps (I run full-fledged vim, with plugins, inside a-Shell and code Python, Lua, Janet and Guile inside a-Shell or iSH as required). I also dabble in music (plenty of amazingly cheap synth apps), but most people don’t have the patience to try these things out (and Jason Snell’s audio woes are something that runs deeper).

Doesn’t like it

iOS 12 is way too new. I have a Retina iPad stuck on iOS 9, which is now essentially an ebook reader and movie player. I had two of them stuck on iOS 5. Perfectly working, cosmetically perfect, lots of battery life, but bricks. Whereas I have a 1st gen Pro and a 5th gen (when the stock iPad got the Air form-factor) which both run the latest iPadOS, but their battery life is now a couple of hours if that. They're nearly useless. I had a new battery fitted to the 5th gen. It is no better but now the screen is damaged with multiple artifacts visible. There is no battery replacement for the Pro: it's too big and too fragile. In other words, in important terms, the old ones were BETTER but they are now useless because of an outdated OS.

Likes it

I have two 6th gen and one 5th gen iPad. All 3 run iPadOS 16 fine. Currently the 5th gen iPad is the oldest iPad that iPadOS 16 supports.

Likes it

I pad mini gen 5 has headphone jack as does the iPad 6 I have, wouldn't have bought if it didn't I use it among other things to listen to podcasts in bed with my comfy memory foam headphones (that double as ear plugs). It's funny, I would never buy a.mac but I live my iPads as media consumption devices that just work they are fantastic.

Likes it

I never looked at an iPod until at least the 4th gen, although fairly expensive compared to the competition, it had 60Gb space on the photo model. I didn't care about that much space for music, but it also doubled up as an external hard disk! I bought a 5th gen in the end, which I still own. Most of my music plays off my phone so it was not worth upgrading but I still keep it synced and the battery lasts longer than phone!

Likes itDoesn’t say they own it

This seems likely. Early iPhones and iPod Touches were much more attractive targets for jailbreaking, given their more generalized nature, better hardware, and more capable native OS — the range of possibilities was far more great. It's also not practical to upgrade the storage in flash-based iPods, which reduces the utility of something like Rockbox. The stock OS is perfectly serviceable for the size of library one would be carrying around on a Nano.