iPad 8th Gen Review 2020

 

This is the 2020 iPad or the 8th generation iPad or the 10.2 inch iPad for 2020.  call it what you will. This is apple's most affordable iPad model it starts at 329 which has been the starting price of the base iPad for a while but you know something that strikes me as just even more delightful because products are just getting so darn expensive to get something decent and this one well it's a lot of tablet for not that much money.

We're gonna look at it now so yes it starts at 329 however that doesn't get you a lot of storage just 32 gigs if you want more storage 128 gigs that's 100 additional these days a lot of people have stuff on the cloud so maybe it's okay for you but you know the best about that and if you want it with 4g LTE no 5g this isn't super premium Apple hasn't released any 5g products yeah well that adds 130 so you get the idea there I pretty much like the last generation but it has a faster CPU inside they went from the a10 to the a12 bionic CPU so that's the same processor that's in the latest-gen iPad mini and it was in the iPhone 10 and it's a very competent and pretty fast CPU here very fast given what the tablet costs and you know no matter what game you play anything that you do with it it's going to seem responsive enough, to be honest, we have three gigs of ram here and which is for apple a base tablet not too bad so pretty similar specs to the iPad mini if you get that this is a 10.2-inch display anomaly retina and you can see the resolution on screen and the other specs as well so that's plenty of resolution it's a nice enough display it's still not laminated glass but the air gap isn't as obvious as it used to be a couple of generations ago where it just looked a little murky it's 500 and it's a brightness it doesn't seem it to me maybe because we have the gold model with the white bezels but it's supposed to be 500 nits and there's glare and all that sort of the thing.

It brings a lot of what the more expensive ipads have to the table is it all trickles down so you've got support for the apple pencil one that's the first gen pencil the one that you stuck in the iPad's but you know the lightning connector the parent and to charge the pencil and that pencil is 99 not included and it's also compatible with the smart keyboard cover and that one's around 159 dollars and that's a fabric-covered origami-style folding one the keys don't feel bad on it though it's actually pretty nice they move them work no trackpad on this but so for those of you who are looking for something that does turn into something more productivity-oriented than there and it has that smart connector which is nice so no fiddling with Bluetooth or anything like that it doesn't exist in a vacuum of course for those of you who are open to the idea of android, there is the Samsung galaxy tab s6 lite that we reviewed which pro is priced similarly enough and that one comes with an s pen in the box so take that apple the challenge with android tablets though as you probably know is the app selection of tablet-optimized apps is not so great and some of those real killer apps for iPad particularly for pencil users like procreate and Pixelmator are just not there for android and also things like apple's own iMovie which is a pretty great mobile video editor well those are the selling points the world's your oyster when it comes to software for the iPad.

Did you read it? iPad Air 4 and iPad 8 first impressions - Apple's newest iPads

The iPad is a touch id sensor the usual kind you're familiar with and I know a lot of people like it has noticeable bezels on the top and bottom there are more premium ipads. I'll talk about that get rid of some of the bezel or all the bezel depending on how you feel about that you have wi-fi five you have Bluetooth 4.2 on here if you get the cellular model you get a GPS as well there is a headphone jack yay that and we're up to a 20-watt charger. Now in the box yay apple's still including chargers with tablets and yeah that's a faster charger so that's a plus so speaking of the other iPad models we're trying to decide they just announced an updated iPad air which instead of having this kind of slim rounded edge design has straight sides much like the pro model so it gets confusing that one's 5.99 that will have an even nicer display smaller bezels faster CPU so that's the price you're going to pay for that and that's important to see apple pencil as well when you move up to the iPad pro models then you get things like 120-hertz promotion even faster apple pencil too level drawing support less latency with the pen which means it feels a little bit more fluid but to be honest despite the air gap on this which means there's a little different distance between the pencil tip touching the glass and you know where your ink is going down and despite the fact that it doesn't have a 120-hertz display

It's still enjoyable to draw I was surprised that I did notice though the difference because it felt a little like my hand was ahead of where the line was going but not enough to really ruin the experience and the apple pencil even gen 1 is so glorious and so fluid and natural not just for note-taking but for doing artwork that this is delightful. If you're looking for entry-level art a way to do that drawing on the display without spending way lots of crazy money on a Wacom Cintiq or a more expensive iPad pro model it's pretty cool that you can get this at the same price obviously it'll run the mobile version of ms office the enquire included apple works suite all that sort of thing productivity is great gaming is great on this and um you can do a zoom video conferencing on this so for those of you looking for something that is as affordable as possible from apple for a tablet well you've got it here.

You've got schoolwork on the go you've got zoom video conferencing the usual 1.2-megapixel facetime camera it's not earth-shattering but it's competent speaking of cameras you still get an 8-megapixel f 2.4 camera on the rear which is pretty much like the last generation but you know it's not bad especially after reviewing the Microsoft surface duo with this 11 megapixel not really very good camera I was I really feel like this one did a better job taking photos as long as lighting is decent with this you get very colourful photos and video is limited to 1080p recording on this and 30 frames per second though so if you're hoping for 4k video recording that's a more expensive iPad or more likely your phone

This is a 32.4 watt-hour battery and Apple claims 10 hours of wi-fi battery runtime live or 9 hours. If you're using cellular which is pretty much the same as last generation and their claims are fairly true except this is a tablet folks so what if you are editing video you know that's going to reduce your battery runtimes what if you are playing a game again battery reductions but if you are doing things like well-streaming Netflix or youtube or office documents or zoom or all those things then you will get pretty much what they claim so that's the 2020 base iPad model again a lot to like here given the price and a lot of the perks that you set to spend more for and get more advanced iPad models, you've got keyboard support you've got apple pencil support great for note-taking and for art you've got ios 14 onboard shipping that way with the new scribble and other features that it brings along for even more pencil functionality and you get your choice of gold silver or the usual space grey.