Apple iPad (A16, 2025) Review: Brilliantly Basic

My champion friend precocious called my 13-inch iPad Air the “giant-ass iPad.” All my friends cognize however overmuch I trust connected Apple's slate, and that's due to the fact that my lone hobby extracurricular of speechmaking is binge-watching everything and anything. (Someone get maine connected Summer House.) But I besides reappraisal iPads for my job, and person the entire lineup to take from. As tempting arsenic the ample surface is, if I were to spell retired and bargain my ain close now, I'd get Apple's basal iPad.

Apple refreshed its entry-level tablet successful March, and it's astir identical to the 2022 exemplary that preceded it. It's mostly a processor upgrade with the A16 Bionic, the aforesaid spot wrong the iPhone 14 Pro and iPhone 15, and you yet get 128 GB of retention alternatively of 64. It's specified a basal update that it doesn't adjacent person Apple Intelligence—you know, the happening Apple won't halt talking astir with each caller merchandise motorboat and bundle update. Some mightiness adjacent relish that, escaped from having AI shoved into each product.

The constituent is that, arsenic basal arsenic it is, Apple's regular-ass iPad is each you need. (If you bash really need a caller tablet.) Whether it's going to beryllium utilized to watercourse each the world TV, to instrumentality notes successful class, oregon to constitute emails, this instrumentality tin bash astir everything and remains the champion iPad.

Same Old, Same Old

Apple is moving distant from utilizing generations to separate its tablets. Technically, this iPad is the 11th-gen model, but Apple officially calls it the iPad (A16), named aft the processor inside. It looks similar the aged one, though I would've appreciated adjacent much amusive colour options. Apple sent maine the yellow, which cheers maine up whenever I look astatine it, but a fewer other shades couldn't hurt.

The LCD surface is present 11 inches, a measly 0.1-inch size summation from the anterior model. Barring that, you inactive get the USB-C port, a 12-megapixel centered scenery selfie camera, and a Touch ID fingerprint sensor baked into the powerfulness fastener connected the edge. The bezels are chunky, a signature of all "cheap" tablets and screens. The smaller size is noticeable coming from the 13-inch iPad Air, but it's comfy for getting enactment done (even with aggregate apps and windows open), and I had nary occupation binge-watching TV. (It is easier to carry, though not arsenic portable arsenic the iPad Mini.)