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With the exception of Black Friday and Cyber Monday, you probably won’t find a better opportunity to save on an iPad than during Amazon Prime Day. Right now, for example, the 10th generation iPad with Wi-Fi and 64GB of storage dropped to an all-time low of $299 ($49 off) in Amazon It is Best buy – no membership required. The 256GB variant is also on sale at Amazon It is Best buy for a record low $449 ($50 off), although some colors require a Prime membership on Amazon.
Apple’s latest entry-level iPad looks a little more modern than the outgoing ninth-generation model, and with the current discount, it probably makes more sense to go for the new kid on the block. Apple stretched the screen a bit to 10.9 inches and updated its design to make it more like the latest iPad Air, iPad Pro, and iPad Mini models. However, in the process, it swapped its Lightning connector for a USB-C port and lost the home button (the Touch ID sensor is now built into the power button). It also repositioned the 12MP front camera so it’s centered in landscape orientation and removed the 3.5mm audio jack, for better or worse (mostly for worse).
Unless you fetishize smaller devices or have a specific need for the pro-focused features of the iPad Air and iPad Pro, the standard iPad is the ideal choice for most people. It uses Apple’s A14 Bionic chipset, which is more than powerful enough for basic tasks like browsing, productivity, multimedia, and running the vast majority of App Store games. However, it can’t do everything the M-series chips can do, which will exclusively support Apple Intelligence features arriving as part of iPadOS 18 later this year.
If you’re coming from a ninth-generation iPad or older and using the First generation Apple Pencil, you will not need to update it. If you don’t have a pen yet and would like to know how to write and draw, you can skip to the Apple Pencil (USB-C)which is also on sale now for its all-time low of $69 ($10 off) at Amazon. It’s the only other Apple Pencil compatible with the latest iPad; however, it cannot be charged magnetically while attached to the side of the iPad, as the second-generation version does with newer tablets. Instead, you charge it by plugging it directly into your iPad. It’s not pretty, but it works.
