Just like last year’s iPad, this year’s model is still the best tablet at its price point for watching videos, playing games, reading emails, and browsing the Web. But by adding Pencil support and extolling the device’s virtues for educators, Apple has tried to position this new release as an entry-level machine not just for consuming content but for creating it.<\/p>\n
In 2017, iPad sales grew year over year for the first time since 2013. Obviously, Apple improved the iPad Pro by introducing a 120Hz display, but it might have been that year’s low-end, $329 iPad\u2014which we had good things to say about<\/a>\u2014that finally started to move the needle upward.<\/p>\n This year’s edition is almost exactly the same iPad. The price point, display, design, camera, and most of the internals are identical. The only substantial changes are Apple Pencil support and an upgrade to the A10 processor that Apple used in the iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus.<\/p>\n The fact that\u00a0this tablet is great for consumption is old news, and there’s not much more to be said on that topic. Nothing has changed on that end. But does the new iPad really offer enough to entice schools and artists to use it to create amazing things?<\/p>\n Specifications<\/strong><\/p>\n In terms of specs and internals, the star of the show is the A10 processor. It’s less than two years old, and it’s still in a sweet spot for running recent apps. The A10 has four cores\u2014two high-performance and two efficiency\u2014and only two can be powered at any given time. It’s only about 20-percent slower than Apple’s latest phones or the iPad Pro in single-core benchmarks, though it’s about 40-percent slower in multi-core tests. We found that it is about 30-percent faster than the A9 chip in its immediate predecessor.<\/p>\n