You might not believe it, but two new iPads dropped yesterday. Apple seemed intent on glossing over the refreshed iPad 2025 as much as possible, preferring that we focus on the iPad Air 2025 instead. And there are reasons to do so; the more expensive of the pair is doubtless the shinier of the two. It’s more powerful, gorgeous, and includes the much-trumpeted Apple Intelligence too. The basic iPad has a slower, less impressive mobile processor, is largely unchanged from the last year, and is one of the few Apple mobile products to not come with Apple Intelligence as standard.
But even with all this in mind, it’s that iPad I have my beady eye on. While most of the upgrades are quite small, Apple has made one small change that means I will now be buying the basic iPad, instead of something more expensive. In fact, it’s made the iPad into the perfect tablet once again.
The iPad was the best value of all the iPads
When it comes to buying a tablet, my advice over the years was always the same: Buy the basic iPad.
While there’s always an argument to buying the iPad Air, or even the iPad Pro, I find that most people simply won’t need anything more powerful or capable than the bog-standard $329 iPad. Sure, it’s not got the prettiest display, and you shouldn’t use it to edit videos or anything that requires large amounts of processing power. But if you, like me, just need a tablet to browse the internet, read some books, watch Netflix, and play the occasional game, you don’t need anything other than the iPad. Pound-for-pound, and indeed, dollar-for-dollar, it’s the best value proposition in the tablet market, with only the Amazon Fire Max 11 coming close.
My love for the basic iPad is beyond question. So why is it that, even though I’ve been in serious need of an iPad upgrade, I held off buying the 10th generation iPad? That’s because it had one serious issue that held me back.
The old iPad had one serious problem
My seventh generation iPad is still going strong. The design is old, yes, but the performance is undeterred by its age, and the battery capacity is still working fine for me. So it should be good to go for another five-plus years right? It would be, but for one thing: The storage.
My iPad was the bottom tier when it was bought, which means it came with a measly 32GB of storage. That wasn’t great when it was new, but it was manageable. But in 2025? It’s downright shambolic. Nary a day goes past where I discover yet another app I want to use has been offloaded to make room, while it’s still unable to update to the latest version of iPadOS because the 10.5GB download requires almost a third of my remaining storage. I’d have to delete the rest of my apps to update, and considering it spends most of its current life as entertainment for a toddler, I’m not willing to risk the wrath of a two-year old should it not be ready at a moment of need.
There’s an easy solution to this, of course: Buy a new iPad. But that’s easier said than done.
The 10th gen iPad was a big upgrade. It has a bigger display, a better processor, but still works with my first gen Apple Pencil. The base model came with 64GB of storage as standard, and hat may be double what I currently have, but I’m wise to that now. I’d much rather have a safety net and up that a little bit more. Double it again; grab the 128GB version. That would be, what, $50 more? Sounds fair.
The next version of the 10th gen iPad rocked in at 256GB, for $150 more. There was no 128GB option.
And that’s where our story ended. 64GB? Not enough. 256GB? Way too much. Heck, at that price I might as well be considering the iPad mini, or even upgrading up the iPad Air. And cynically, that may have been why it existed in the first place.
That’s where I left it. Contemplating buying a more expensive iPad that I didn’t really need. That was, until yesterday.
The new iPad is perfect again
The new iPad is a beautiful thing, isn’t it? Yes, it looks basically the same as the iPad before, and the jump to the A16 processor isn’t massive — but Apple choosing to upgrade the internal storage to 128GB is a gamechanger. This represents perfect ratio of storage-to-dollar, and takes the iPad back to being my Goldilocks tablet once again. It’ll play games, run Netflix, and let me read my favorite books — and now it’ll finally have room for them all. It may lack Apple Intelligence, but honestly, I couldn’t care less about Apple’s AI, and given how precious I am about storage space, I’m happy to keep the storage free.
For the first time in years, the basic iPad is perfect again, and I couldn’t be happier.
