There are other differences with the iPad Pro lineup unrelated to the SoC. It's just strange to think that a very capable laptop chip is being put into a device with far more limitations.
It was mentioned, as almost a side comment somewhere, that the M chip is in there for multitasking and higher end image/video editing for "Pros". I could certainly use the M4 in an iPad Pro for iPadOS 26 and it's multitasking. I run into occasional slowness when multitasking on my M2 iPad Air.
