The low-end iPad is much more than a media consumption device, though it does well in that area too. You don’t get desktop-level processing power or Apple Intelligence, but you do get one of the friendliest, most useful tablets around, especially if you combine it with a Pencil for sketching or notes.
For
Very well built
Screen is bright and colourful
App ecosystem is huge
Against
Peripherals get expensive
USB port limited in speed
No Apple Intelligence
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Without a desktop-class M-chip inside it, merely a version of the iPhone 15’s A16, the bottom-rank iPad may look like it has much less to recommend it to creatives than the Air and Pro models. And while you’re certainly going to be locked out of some apps (mostly games) by the lack of M, and there's no Apple Intelligence either, the 2025 edition of the iPad (the 11th generation of the device) remains superb value if you’re looking for one of the best tablets with a stylus pen, note-taking, browsing, streaming or even hooking up to a Bluetooth keyboard and pretending is a kind of small laptop. It’s nicely made, responsive, comes with a broad software library and some excellent accessories, and is one of the best tablets for most people.
Key specifications
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CPU:
Apple A16 (5 cores)
Graphics:
Integrated (4 cores)
Memory:
6GB
Storage:
128-512GB (version tested)
OS
iPadOS 18
Screen size:
11in
Screen type:
Liquid Retina IPS LCD touchscreen
Resolution:
1640 x 2360px (7:10 aspect ratio)
Refresh rate:
60Hz
Brightness (claimed):
500 nits
Rear camera
12 MP, f/1.8
Front camera
12 MP, f/2.4
Ports:
1x USB 2.0 Type-C
Wireless connectivity:
Wi-Fi 6, Bluetooth 5.3
Dimensions:
248.6 x 179.5 x 7 mm
Weight:
477 g (Wi-Fi) / 481 g (LTE)
(Image credit: Future / Ian Evenden)
Design, build and display
• Meet the new boss • Same as the old boss
We all know what an iPad looks like by now. Apple’s tablet is more than a giant iPhone, it has a wide 7:10 aspect ratio that makes 16:9 screens look absurdly long and thin, and is ideal for reading and browsing on at the expense of some black bars while streaming video. It’s unchanged from the previous model, which was released in 2022, with the same dimensions and same colour options. Apple has clearly seen no reason to change something that’s been so successful.
So you get a blend of aluminium and glass, flat sides and some noticeable sections where the antennas are allowed to poke through. The Apple logo on the back is flat and shiny, and the single camera lens rises up from the flat back panel just enough to be noticed (and poke through a case). It’s worth noting that there's no IP rating on this iPad, unlike the company’s phones, so it’s not a device to use in the bath.
The lock switch on top of the tablet is also the Touch ID sensor, allowing you to unlock the device and approve payments with your fingerprint. This has always struck us as a more elegant solution than Face ID (and probably helps keep the cost down, as a cheaper front camera unit can be used), and it only takes a short while to activate during setup. Due to the way we hold tablets, which is different to the way phones are handled, it’s worth setting up two fingerprints from different hands, but the OS enables this smoothly and hopefully it’s only something you’ll want to do once. The volume buttons are on the side, which again makes sense, and of course there's a single USB-C port which is used for charging and attaching peripherals and is flanked by speaker grilles, as well as the three-pin port for keyboards. That’s all you get.
Design score: 4/5
(Image credit: Future / Ian Evenden)
Features
• Slow USB port • Screen nice and sharp
If you want to use 5G data with your iPad you’ll need an eSIM, as the physical tray has been dropped from the feature set. There's a sparse ecosystem of accessories available, including a Magic Keyboard that costs almost as much as the tablet itself, and a pair of Apple Pencils which, should you buy one, attach magnetically to the side of the iPad with a satisfying snap.
The screen is typically extremely nice, though while it has an oil-protection layer to try and keep your sweaty fingermarks off it, there's no anti-glare coating on this model, unlike the Air and Pro. You still get up to 500nits of brightness (or so Apple claims) from the LED backlights, and Apple’s True Tone colour management keeps things well saturated. It’s not an OLED, but it’s certainly not bad, especially if you can keep it away from background glare or other strong light sources. You can only turn it up so far, but at full blast it’s more than good enough to read or digitally paint outside.
With only a USB 2.0 level of transfer speed on its USB-C port, you won’t be transferring files over a cable from a camera particularly fast, like you can over the Thunderbolt ports provided on the iPad Pro tablets. There's Wi-Fi 6 for fast internet connections, however, and you may be able to find a way to transfer files wirelessly or through the cloud, though this isn’t always an optimal situation. With up to 512GB of (non-expandable) storage on offer, there's a lot of space here for apps and media files.
iPadOS has a good number of tiling options that allow you to multitask on a tablet, and while the 11in screen is just about big enough if you’re using drawing apps, which tend to take up more space, a 13in model like the iPad Air would probably be better. Things like an app’s interface can take up a frustratingly large amount of screen space, as was the case with the long-abandoned 11in model of the MacBook Air.
Cameras on a tablet are nice to have, but aren't really the focus of the operation. The 12MP sensor here is the same one as in the iPad Air, and is fine as long as you feed it lots of light. The same is true of the stabilised front-facing lens, which will probably get more use as a platform for video calling, though is limited to 1080p. You can get 4K video out of the rear lens, but you’re really much better off using a phone with more options, both hardware and software.
Feature score: 3/5
(Image credit: Future / Ian Evenden)
Benchmark scores
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Header Cell - Column 0
Header Cell - Column 1
Apple iPad 2025
GEEKBENCH 6
CPU Single-core:
2598
Row 1 - Cell 0
CPU Multi-core:
6338
Row 2 - Cell 0
GPU OpenCL:
19875
3D Mark
Solar Bay
3623
Row 4 - Cell 0
Wild Life Extreme
2664
(Image credit: Future / Ian Evenden)
Performance
• Excellent performance for its price point • The iPad Air is much faster
While this might look like a tablet for consumption, the fact it’s compatible with Apple Pencils means there's the opportunity to use it for sketching and painting. With an 11in screen it’s certainly portable, and the ability to hook up a Bluetooth keyboard means you can use it for note-taking too, or go right ahead and use the Pencil for text input. There's tilt recognition and Apple’s low-latency connection on offer, as well as pressure sensitivity if you choose the older, 1st-gen Pencil - the newer, cheaper USB-C model doesn’t have it. Unlike the iPad Air, the iPad 2025 doesn’t support the Apple Pencil Pro.
The 2025 iPad has neither the processor nor the RAM to run Apple Intelligence, which may be an incentive to move up to the iPad Air, which now comes with an M3 processor, or perhaps send you the other way to avoid AI. Even though it’s running a smartphone processor rather than a laptop one, the iPad 2025 manages creditable scores, and has no trouble running the likes of GarageBand or iMovie. The mobile version of Photoshop is snappy enough too, though the slow USB port is going to be a big problem here unless you're using iCloud and a fast internet connection. Overall, it’s a smooth experience, though the large software update that occurred during the setup of the device seemed to take an unusually long time - this may have been an artefact of local internet conditions, but we’re sure the iPad Air M3 was faster.
In our benchmark tests, the 11th-gen iPad scored lower than other iPad models. Its CPU single-core Geekbench 6 score (2598) is about 430 points lower than that of the Air’s M3 (3029), and the CPU multi-core figure (6338) slightly more than half of the M3’s (11888) - this is because the basic iPad has far fewer cores, just five, split between two P cores for the real work, and three E cores for background tasks. The M3 Air has a total of eight. For reference, the M4 in the latest iPad Pro (nine cores) scores 3656 and 14662 in the same tests. It’s still more than enough power for most tasks, however, and it rips through games well too, even though its GPU score in Geekbench is again half that of the M3 Air (19875 vs 46023). In 3D Mark’s Solar Bay test the A16 iPad manages 3623 against the M3 Air’s 9594. It’s clear that the M3 Air is a big step up in terms of power for video editing or music production, but if you won’t be using that processing oomph, the basic iPad represents good value.
Apple estimates ten hours for the iPad’s battery life. In our tests, which are admittedly probably slightly less scientific than the Cupertino company’s, consisting of using the iPad for browsing, video, a little light image editing and some Google Docs tasks, it managed more like six and a half, maybe seven. That’s still not bad, especially when the tablet is mostly screen and needs to keep itself thin so there's less room to hide extra battery capacity. You get Apple’s standard 20W charger in the box, though you’ll also be able to hook it up to hotter bricks for a bit of a faster fill-up.
Performance score: 3/5
(Image credit: Future / Ian Evenden)
Price
Compared to many other tablets, the bottom-rung iPad is a bit of a bargain. It’s way better than a cheap Android model, and will probably last longer too, while having just about enough power for creative apps. It’s well made, has excellent software support, and while buying the official peripherals may cost more than the tablet itself, you can build yourself a very usable computing system with one. At $349 / £329 you’ll have to go a long way to beat it, perhaps the £999 Samsung Galaxy Tab S10 Plus, though the iPad’s price goes up steeply when you start adding extra storage and accessories.
Value score: 4/5
Who is it for?
• Students and artists
The combination of iPad and Apple Pencil makes a great digital art platform, especially given the number of apps available to facilitate this. You can put the iPad to a broad range of creative tasks, then take it with you to watch videos after you’re finished, or perhaps read an ebook. It may not be a specialist device, but this adds to its appeal, it’s a general-use tablet that will find a use in families, with students, and with professionals too.
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Apple iPad (A16, 2025) score card
Attributes
Notes
Rating
Design:
No change over the previous generation.
4/5
Features:
Slow USB, but a sharp screen.
3/5
Performance:
A lot of oomph for the price, but clearly the low-end product.
The iPad Air M3 is an iPad Pro in all but name, and is compatible with both the Apple Pencil Pro and its non-Pro sibling. It’s supremely versatile, able to act as a laptop replacement for when you need to do office work, and a sketching pad when you don’t.
An exceptional Android tablet that caters to creative professionals. It has a premium price tag which makes it hard to recommend for casual users, but a ton of great features (including Galaxy AI) combined with powerful performance that justify the spend for those who can afford it.
Another amazing piece of creative hardware from Apple. If you aren’t a professional creative or power user then this is overkill in most cases.
The Verdict
8.2
out of 10
The 'low-end' 2025 iPad is still a high value tablet - tested
The low-end iPad is much more than a media consumption device, though it does well in that area too. You don’t get desktop-level processing power or Apple Intelligence, but you do get one of the friendliest, most useful tablets around, especially if you combine it with a Pencil for sketching or notes.
Ian Evenden has been a journalist for over 20 years, starting in the days of QuarkXpress 4 and Photoshop 5. He now mainly works in Creative Cloud and Google Docs, but can always find a use for a powerful laptop or two. When not sweating over page layout or photo editing, you can find him peering at the stars or growing vegetables.
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