Apple iPad 9.7-inch
THE MOST AFFORDABLE IPAD EVER BRINGS SOME BRILLIANT UPGRADES.
THE NEW IPAD for 2018 is designed to deliver the best of Apple’s tablet efforts at a more affordable price. The cost is still higher than many other tablets out there — but the new upgrades bridge the gap between a ‘standard’ slate and the more impressive iPad Pro range.
It comes with a range of storage and connectivity options, with prices starting at $469 for the 32GB Wi-Fi model, and the equivalent cellular version adding $200.
In the looks department, the metal back, the well-machined buttons, the home button at the base of the tablet with TouchID integration are all present and correct. The screen is bright, with a resolution of 1,536 x 2,048 pixels, at 264ppi. It’s a shame not to see HDR or OLED supported, but Apple is trying to keep the costs down. Everything still looks crisp and sharp, with colours well reproduced.
It’s tough to work out whether the Apple Pencil is a genuinely innovative tool or not. We’ve been using it for a few years now, and have found that it’s great for some things, but useless for others — plus, it costs $145. If you’re looking for something to replace a notepad, we wouldn’t recommend the new iPad, as it’s really difficult to write legibly on them, thanks to the way the tip of the Pencil glides across the surface. Apple could make the glass more matte and ridged to help, but that would make the display harder to see, so it’s not an easily solved conundrum.
The Notepad app is fine, and allows you to write and sketch. The iWork Suite is now collaborative, too, and you can mark-up documents on it. This would be a lovely feature if writing on it was easy.
Where the stylus does become worth the outlay is when you want to be artistic, and there are a few good apps out there that let you colour, change the shading of a photo or get deep into some photo/video manipulation. The multi-level pressure of the Pencil comes into its own here, and if you’re in any way artistic, then you’ve got loads of different styles of brush, pen and other drawing implements you can work with. It’s worth remembering, though, that the new iPad doesn’t come with a keyboard in the box.
One of the main ideas Apple is pushing with the new iPad is that it deserves a place in the classroom. There are apparently 200,000 apps on the App Store for educators and students, and teachers are also getting access to Schoolwork and iTunes U, for course materials and the ability to set assignments and see how students are progressing. Making the iWork suite collaborative and Pencil-friendly will help push this idea, as well as the 200GB of online iCloud storage for students.
The A10 Fusion chip that powered the iPhone 7 and 7 Plus is present here. That’s combined with 2GB of RAM, so there’s more than enough power for emailing, browsing or watching video. In our tests, the iPad returned a similar single-core benchmarking score to the more powerful iPad Pro 10.5. In our general testing, we found that it lasted just as well as the iPad Pro 10.5, too. Running the Geekbench 4 battery rundown test saw the new iPad yield 2,620, compared to 2,690 for the Pro. The battery was toast in around 4.5 hours, running at full power. Apple needs the new iPad to last the day if it’s going to be used in schools, which should be possible.
In the end, the only upgrades are Apple Pencil support and the faster A10 Fusion chipset at the core, plus Apple’s concentration on education. It sounds obvious, but you’ll need to know what you want the new iPad for before you can decide if it’s for you.