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Apple’s latest 10.2-inch iPad sticks to the familiar of this generation, focusing on performance above all else, and it’s exactly what its target audience needs.
The 2020 incarnation of the iPad has little to offer in terms of new features. It’s designed with a purpose and an audience in mind, and one that Apple precisely targets.
Apple saves its most exciting changes for its newest high-end tablets, and the 10.2-inch iPad 2020 is not. This allows the company to add the best or most useful features to its inexpensive iPad that is often adopted by children, families, schools, and businesses who need a simple, functional device to get the job done.
That includes the overall design of the body, the screen itself, and the authentication methods. It’s more apparent than ever this year with the iPad Air debuting with a square body and Liquid Retina display first appearing with the iPad Pro. Apple even ditched the Home button on the iPad Air, though Face ID still remains to be seen. the iPad Pro.
This 8th-gen iPad has only adopted one major advantage from previous devices: the processor. Otherwise it’s the same iPad you’ve known for years.
8th generation iPad design
There is not much new to say this year about the design of the iPad. Read our 7th Gen iPad 2019 review and performance aside, everything will still be relevant to this 2020 model. The design in 2020 is exactly the same, year after year. It still has a 10.2-inch non-laminated 2160×1620 Retina display set in an aluminum body.
Home button on the 8th generation iPad
The home button persists as does Touch ID. There are still two speakers at the bottom and a 1.2-megapixel front camera that feels inadequate in our current Zoom-based world.
The 8th generation iPad has the same camera
The rear camera is the same 8-megapixel BSI module that has been around since 2018, using a five-element lens that can capture HDR photos from 43MP panoramic shots and can shoot at 1080p with 120 frames per second in slow motion at 720p.
It still boasts version 4.2 of Bluetooth, Wi-Fi is still 802.11ac, and Apple’s infamous U1 chip is nowhere to be found.
There is still the smart connector on the side for use with the smart keyboard and the few third-party keyboards that use the connector instead of Bluetooth. It is also compatible with the first generation Apple Pencil that charges from the iPad’s Lightning port.
Eighth generation iPad performance
What comes down mostly to the 8th-gen iPad upgrade is performance. That’s the name of the game here and Apple of course was able to move on. Unsurprisingly, it’s not the same robust A14 Bionic processor found in the latest iPad Airs, but it’s more than enough to get the job done.
It has gone from an A10 Fusion processor to the A12 Bionic processor. The A10 is a quad-core chip that consists of two high-efficiency and two high-performance cores. In use, only two cores can be active at a time, effectively making it a dual-core chip when it comes to benchmarks.
The A12 Bionic has six cores, two high-performance, and four tempest cores, all of which can run at the same time, showing up as a six-core design in benchmarks like Geekbench. The A12Z Bionic processor found in the latest iPad Pros is similar but has additional graphics cores, shown as an eight-core design.
Show on the 8th generation iPad
In the latest Geekbench 5.2 tests, the 2019 7th Gen iPad scored 746 single-core and 1326 multi-core. The new iPad scored 1117 and 2645 in the single and multi-core tests, respectively. For the sake of comparison, our 2020 iPad Pro with its A12Z Bionic processor scored 1117 single-core and 4690 multi-core. As a general rule of thumb, iPad casual tasks only use a single core, which makes the multi-core score for that market mostly moot.
For the Compute Metal graphics test, we saw 5366 on the new 8th gen iPad. Our 2020 iPad Pro delivered 12,021, mainly due to its additional graphics cores.
What we miss about the iPad Air and iPad Pro
We have been strong users of the iPad Pro since its launch and have become used to many of the specific features of the Pro. The last couple of weeks we have been using the new iPad and there are some things that we miss very much, and many not.
Just because we lost these features doesn’t mean the iPad is wrong, it justifies our choice to go for the iPad Pro. Most of the features were all “nice to have” features that are not essential in any way.
Face ID makes unlocking, authenticating apps, and more, much easier. We do not have to physically interact with the iPad in any way to use Face ID, except when making a purchase. So having to constantly press the home button with our finger when we have to login to the iPad, go to the home screen, or enter a password seems tedious on a device with a larger form factor than an iPhone.
The sound is also hollow and one-sided. Watching movies with large bezels, a non-laminated screen, and shallow audio was not as good an experience as it is on the iPad Pro.
We were a bit surprised that we didn’t miss our Magic Keyboard more than we did. Instead, we opted for an Apple Magic Mouse and a Bluetooth keyboard with our iPad supported by the Smart Cover. This was a great experience that worked out well for us.
With this setup, the iPad could be a bit further away and Apple’s Bluetooth mouse is just as responsive as the Magic Keyboard. We may have missed the all-in-one design a bit more if we traveled more to get the job done.
The 8th Gen iPad still has a headphone jack
As we got into the heavy lifting on our iPad, editing massive 45mb RAW photos or exporting 4K videos, we noticed the difference in speed, but the daily tasks are all single-core operations that were almost as fast as our iPads. Pros 2020. Opening apps, browsing online, shopping, editing documents, sorting photos, accessing Twitter, handling emails, and making Zoom calls seem almost as fast as our Pro.
A note on Zoom, the 1.2MP front-facing camera at 720p is quite low resolution for video calling, and when using the iPad in landscape mode, it’s harder to focus on the camera. When the iPad is horizontal, the camera is on the side instead of centered at the top, which decenters it when it sits square in front of the tablet. Using the Smart Cover made things easy for us to rotate the iPad to be as close to the center as possible.
On the iPad, Apple sticking with Lightning is an option Apple can’t win. At the lower end of Apple devices, Lightning prevails.
At the higher end, USB-C is the name of the game and a cross-platform standard. The storage devices, our camera, and more are all USB-C, which means that while we were testing the iPad, we needed an adapter every time we plugged in those high-end accessories.
When we wanted to import photos to an external drive, we had to connect our camera, save them locally, disconnect the camera and connect our SSD, transfer the photos to the drive, and then delete them from the local folder. This is not as straightforward in Lightning as it is in the same workflow with USB-C.
Daily use of this smaller, slower iPad with “Pro” workflows eventually felt like a chore and required several steps or solutions to do things we didn’t need on the iPad Pro. But if you don’t participate in those tasks, you won’t notice. a big difference, which is exactly why this exciting little iPad is so good.
Should you buy the 8th generation iPad?
iPad in a Smart Cover
There is a clear market for the entry-level iPad. It’s for those users who want a surprisingly powerful tablet to get work done, be it school work, notes, emails, a business store registration, or just browsing the news, and want it to last for several years. You don’t need Face ID, an extra set of speakers, or slimmer bezels.
It’s a mobile workhorse that’s exactly what you need and little else. That is what Apple has delivered here. It has the same single-core performance as the latest iPad Pros, which will guarantee its use for years to come.
Certainly there are things that could be better, like maybe a USB-C connector instead of Lightning, but that’s more for convenience these days than the functional needs of professionals. Apple took at least a half step in the right direction here by including a powerful 20W USB-C power brick and a USB-C to Lightning cable in the box.
Relaxing on the couch with the new 8th generation iPad
If you don’t mind compromises on features and the dated look of the tablet, the new 8th Gen iPad is a solid buy, just make sure you have enough storage.
- Reliable and well replicated design
- Solid speed improvements
- Excellent tabet for families, children, industrial, commercial or educational use.
- Same design means old cases will work
- Headphone jack
- Smart Keyboard and Apple Pencil support
- 20W USB-C power brick
- Limited storage
- Old design
- Not compatible with 2nd generation Apple Pencil
Rating: 4 out of 5
Where to buy the new iPad
Apple’s 2020 iPad is on sale now, with 8th-generation iPad prices dropping to just $ 299. Be sure to check out the AppleInsider IPad Price Guide for up-to-date deals and discounts on every capacity and finish.
