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Apple’s cheapest iPad has gotten faster with refreshed chips to keep it ahead of the competition.
The 8th-gen iPad starts at £ 329, and falls under the iPad Mini, iPad Air and iPad Pro lines, but offers much of the same experience.
The design of the iPad has changed little in recent years. Apple added a larger 10.2-inch screen last year, which remains for the 2020 iPad, as do the thick bezels around it, the traditional Touch ID home button, and the aluminum back.
The 10.2-inch LCD screen is sharp, colorful, and bright for the price. It feels a bit hollow when you hit it and flexes when you press it with a little force, emitting a little puff of air from the bottom like a tight toy. This is because the screen and touch layer are not fully laminated together like on high-end tablets and most smartphones.
The iPad has features that were once restricted to high-end Apple tablets. It has the Smart Connector on the back to add an optional Smart Keyboard Folio case (£ 179) and is compatible with the first-generation Apple stylus (£ 89).
There are stereo speakers on the bottom of the tablet, but that means you only get stereo sound vertically, not horizontally when watching videos. They still sound great and much better than what you get from most other tablets anywhere near this price. There is also a standard headphone jack on top, which is missing on the iPad Air and iPad Pro.
The new iPad has the same 8-megapixel rear camera and 1.2-megapixel front camera as previous models. Neither will beat a good smartphone camera, but the front camera does ring the rings around most laptop webcams for video calling.
specs
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Screen: 10.2-inch 2160×1620 Retina display (264ppi)
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Processor: Apple A12 Bionic
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RAM: 3GB
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Storage: 32 or 128 GB
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Operating system: iPadOS 14
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Camera: 8MP rear camera, 1.2MP selfie camera
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Connectivity: Wifi 5 (optional 4G, eSim), Bluetooth 4.2, Lightning, Touch ID
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Dimensions: 250.6 x 174.1 x 7.5 mm
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Weight: 490g (4G version: 495g)
Faster performance, more than 9 hours battery
The new iPad has Apple’s A12 Bionic chip that debuted on the iPhone XS in 2018. The A12 Bionic replaces the A10 used in the last two versions of the iPad, matching the fifth-generation iPad Mini released last year.
The new chip is up to 40% faster than the old one with twice as powerful graphics, but it also contains an artificial intelligence chip, which speeds up machine learning-based tasks such as handwriting recognition and manipulation. images.
Overall, the chip greatly increases the performance of the low-end iPad and makes it considerably more powerful than most of its competitors. But the iPad lacks support for the latest Wi-Fi 6 and Bluetooth 5 standards, which have become commonplace on both tablets and smartphones in recent years.
Battery life varies slightly depending on what you’re doing. The tablet lasts more than nine hours while watching stored offline videos in medium to high brightness, and for a similar length of time when using productivity and browsing apps for a little work. Playing games drains your battery faster.
The iPad ships with a compact 20W USB-C charger and USB-C to Lightning cable and takes three hours to fully charge. It can also be charged with older USB-A Lightning cables and power adapters.
Sustainability
Apple does not give a nominal life cycle for the iPad battery, normally 500 full charge cycles, but it can be replaced for £ 99. The tablet can generally be repaired, with an out of warranty service costing £ 246.44, which includes the screen. The previous-generation iPad only received two out of 10 for repairs by specialist iFixit.
The iPad uses 100% recycled aluminum in its case, 100% recycled tin in the solder of its main board, and at least 60% recycled plastic in many other components. Apple is also using renewable energy for the final assembly of the machine and analyzes the environmental impact of the tablet in its report.
Apple also offers free and exchange recycling schemes, even for non-Apple products.
iPadOS 14
Apple’s IPadOS 14 is the best mobile tablet software available, offering a balance of utility, entertainment, and broad application compatibility unrivaled on Windows 10 or Android. You can also expect at least five years of software support from Apple, so you can use iPad safely longer than its competitors.
The interface has been revamped this year with new widgets on the home screen for at-a-glance information such as upcoming appointments, battery life, Google search and other data from third-party applications. Updated Universal Search now works more like the excellent Spotlight on a Mac, allowing you to search for data in applications, launch applications, find emails, and search the web from a quick pop-up box. Apple’s apps and toolbars also look more like a computer with toolbars, sidebars, and drop-down menus, while Siri has been redesigned to launch faster and not take up the entire screen.
The new operating system also improves privacy with greater control over tracking, location access, access to photos, and other items. But one of the most impressive features requires the £ 89 Apple Pencil: Scribble, which lets you handwrite text in any text box.
With on-device handwriting recognition, you just scribble in any box and the iPad does the rest. Then there is a collection of editing gestures like scribbling over a word to delete and so on. It’s completely impressive, recognizing some really terrible handwriting, and while it’s slower than typing, for those who make handwritten notes, it’s a huge improvement compared to having to switch to the keyboard to enter text.
For the 8th generation iPad, iPadOS 14 has the right balance of entertainment, learning and productivity features and apps to make it a great all-rounder. The only thing really missing is multi-user support, which means a family sharing the iPad will have to share a login without separate profiles of apps, email accounts, and other features for each person.
Observations
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Despite having a home button, you can use some of the more modern gestures on the iPad, like swipe up to go home or for recently used apps.
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iPadOS 14 supports external Bluetooth keyboards and mice on iPad
Price
The Wi-Fi-only 8th-gen iPad costs £ 329 with 32GB or £ 429 with 128GB of storage. 4G capable models cost an additional £ 130.
For comparison, the RRP of Amazon’s Fire HD 10 is £ 149.99, the iPad Air is £ 579, the iPad Pro is £ 769, the Samsung Galaxy Tab S7 + is £ 799 and the Microsoft Surface Go 2 is £ 399.
Verdict
The 8th-gen iPad for 2020 isn’t a radical upgrade from the previous few versions of Apple’s cheapest tablet. But the company has done enough with new chips and software to keep it well above the competition at a price tag of around £ 300.
It may look dated with chunky bezels and the old-style Touch ID home button, but the screen is good for the money. The build is solid even if the screen and body flex a bit more than Apple’s more expensive models, plus it has a recycled aluminum casing. The solid battery life of more than nine hours and the fast and efficient performance more than get the job done. The limited 32GB storage is a bit disappointing and might not be enough if you use a lot of apps and store your photos and videos on the tablet.
The biggest advantage the iPad has over its rivals is iPadOS and the depth and breadth of its app ecosystem. You can expect at least five years of software support. All streaming media apps are available, there are a host of productivity apps, and education apps abound. The only thing missing is cloud game streaming and Fortnite, which might be a deal breaker for some, but that particular situation could eventually be resolved.
The iPad is the tablet for most people, balancing cost, capacity, longevity, and software like no other.
Pros: good performance, good battery life, good screen, iPadOS, lots of apps, good speakers, long stand, recycled aluminum.
Cons: Older design, no USB-C, fairly slow charging, no Fornite or cloud game streaming, no multi-user support, little storage in the initial model with no way to add more.
