All iPads WiFi vs Cellular... My personal observations

So, what is your decision?

Personally, I have had cellular on every iPad since day 1of 1 and thus have grandfathered unlimited.

ugcop said:

So, what is your decision?

Personally, I have had cellular on every iPad since day 1of 1 and thus have grandfathered unlimited.

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I wish I had an unlimited tablet data plan...

What I do have though is unlimited data on my phone. It is a slight pain to tether but other than that...it isn't too bad.

This is why I do not have a single iPad with cellular. Everything tethers off my unlimited phone data. Including my laptop etc.

Public wifi is generally not that great, I agree. I was pleasantly surprised to see that wifi at SFO is now quite fast. One hotel I stayed at, a Holiday Inn in rural Oregon had incredibly fast wifi.

I was in Englanlast month and both cellular and wifi were terrible. My switched between Edge and GPRS. At home I download the PDF of our paper in 10 seconds or so. In the hotel it took an hour.

I have cellular data on my iPad air with AT&T. Coverage is pretty good, speeds vary a lot. With our plan it is $25 a month to add the iPad and we pool all the data in the family.

I got the iPad 1 with cellular. I dropped service after a few months because I rarely used it. I'll never buy another tablet with embedded cellular. If I'm ever someplace where Wi-Fi is unavailable, I can just tether.

Do they really lose a lot of its value when you try and sell cellular ones?

I have data plans on two phones (250mb and 300mb) and both ipads (3gb and 5gb) ... 4 data plans

You can never have enough internet ...

michael31986 said:

Do they really lose a lot of its value when you try and sell cellular ones?

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For a percentage of what you get selling them compared to what you paid for them brand new, they don't return as much as the base 16gb wifi versions. Those are the ones most people go for.

Meister said:

I have data plans on two phones (250mb and 300mb) and both ipads (3gb and 5gb) ... 4 data plans

You can never have enough internet ...

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This. I have T-Mobile on my iPad and 5S, plus I have the $30 5GB T-Mobile plan on my old Nexus 4 just for the data on it that I can tether on as well.

Good for when the power goes out.

Doesn't matter what I get when I resell my iPad to buy next years, it will always pay for at least half of next years model.

Anything other than the base spec is going to have a higher depreciation rate - it's normal.

Personally, I tend to upgrade my iPad every 2 generations. So that works out to be an extra £50/year. £25/year once resale is added on. I think I can stomach £2 a month for the convenience.

Brian Y said:

Anything other than the base spec is going to have a higher depreciation rate - it's normal.

Personally, I tend to upgrade my iPad every 2 generations. So that works out to be an extra £50/year. £25/year once resale is added on. I think I can stomach £2 a month for the convenience.

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Same here. I had the iPad 2. Now got the air. I'll have the air for probably two years since the next iPad will probably be an S type upgrade. I bought the 16gb cellular so we will see how much it gets me later on.

michael31986 said:

Same here. I had the iPad 2. Now got the air. I'll have the air for probably two years since the next iPad will probably be an S type upgrade. I bought the 16gb cellular so we will see how much it gets me later on.

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Yep, I held out for a retina mini. I can't see myself wanting anything more for a couple of generations - I love this thing!

Brian Y said:

Anything other than the base spec is going to have a higher depreciation rate - it's normal.

Personally, I tend to upgrade my iPad every 2 generations. So that works out to be an extra £50/year. £25/year once resale is added on. I think I can stomach £2 a month for the convenience.

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You buy cellular because you have a need for cellular. You're not going to get much of that 130 back. Everyone who tries to offer to buy my iPads get shocked when I quote them a price $100 over the price of a wifi only version they saw on craigslist. Most weren't even willing to pay a dime more than the wifi version. I told them exactly where they could stick their money. I quote those prices because if they really want to buy it off of me at those prices, I will go ahead and sell it to them and upgrade to the next model. Otherwise, I will continue using my iPad happily.

16GB Wifi Air will get lots of buyers second hand because price sensitive people who want to "buy in" to an Air would be willing to deal with second hand to get a bargain because it still gets them an iPad air.

128GB Cellular Air will get very few second hand buyers. People looking to buy these models are generally not price sensitive, and would rather have the convenience of buying from Apple directly versus saving a few bucks and buying off of someone else.

I don't give a crap about resale values. I pass my used devices onto my family and by the time they're done with them, they may take those overseas and give to relatives as "gifts".

KeepCalmPeople said:

My observations really concern the US, for iPad users who cannot tether:
1) Cellular iPads do not hold their value. You pay $130 extra for cellular capability but you'll be lucky to recover $30 of that selling used.

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Who buys a cellular iPad for the resale value?

KeepCalmPeople said:

1) Cellular iPads do not hold their value. You pay $130 extra for cellular capability but you'll be lucky to recover $30 of that selling used.

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Resale value was not part of my decision matrix. I chose my LTE rMini for its features not for when I get ready to sell it.

2) Cellular iPad data is relatively cheap IF you have a shared data plan or can get away with using 200MB a month or less on T-Mobile.

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I pay 10 dollars a month, that's pretty cheap, less then the cost of 2 coffees.

3) If you NEED a reliable, high-speed data connection while out and about, free public wif-fi hotspots just don't cut it. The bandwidth isn't there. The fastest I have found is at Target (I downloaded an HD movie while shopping there once, in less that an hour).

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I had a wifi only iPad and found it very difficult to find public wifi. Sure if you go to a starbucks or something but how about in the car, or in a building that locks it down.

4) Public wi-fi can be difficult to connect to. If you cannot connect, you have no recourse.

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Correct, and I find that the LTE enabled iPad gives me a lot more flexibility and freedom. Well worth the initial investment and small monthly increase in my cellular bill.

maflynn said:

Resale value was not part of my decision matrix. I chose my LTE rMini for its features not for when I get ready to sell it.


I pay 10 dollars a month, that's pretty cheap, less then the cost of 2 coffees.


I had a wifi only iPad and found it very difficult to find public wifi. Sure if you go to a starbucks or something but how about in the car, or in a building that locks it down.


Correct, and I find that the LTE enabled iPad gives me a lot more flexibility and freedom. Well worth the initial investment and small monthly increase in my cellular bill.

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$10 a month for LTE on the Ipad is indeed cheap and would not have a problem at that price wonder what you get for that. Personally, I use an LTE Iphone with free tethering for my Ipad and am happy to save the extra cost of the Cellular Ipad.

Where do you pay $5 for a coffee seem high.

I have the $25 for 1GB plan that I have three months to use. So, that's about 333 MB a month for about $8 bucks a month. Not too bad and is more than I'd ever need. It's also NON auto renewing which I like.

The jury is still out for me on whether the cell support was worth it or not. I've only used a few MB thus far. Have to see how things look in six months.

I'm happy with my mobile wifi router, LTE and can connect 5 (or 10?) devices the same time. Good for my iPad and iPod touch. Or MBA ...
My first two iPad had SIM; but since then wifi only. Don't need it for navigation normally plus wifi-based navigation seems good enough for where I am. The iPhone fills the gap in case needed.

nebo1ss said:

Where do you pay $5 for a coffee seem high.

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I was just going to ask where he drinks coffee

I'm just going to use my phone to tether. My first iPad was Cell, but my other ones were not. I just went to Speedtest.net and it showed 16Mb/s download speed. That's fast for where I live. When downloading from Steam and other sources at home, I get about 2-3Mb/s. When I'm at my girl's house where she has DSL, the average speed is 70Kb/s. Yes, 70 kilobits. It's ridiculous, but when you're other options are even worse there's not much you can do about it.

I've given up on cellular iPads, personally. Too little extra resale value and an extra bandwidth bill every month I don't need. I already lose money from the 32gb upgrade. Co-workers got me hooked on Karma Wireless which has those little hotspots and pre-paid bandwidth. Much cheaper, and I can use it on my laptop too. They use Sprint's WiMAX network, so there's a few dead zones, but they're planning an LTE upgrade in the first half of this year.

Between that and all the free wifi around here, I'm set.

Edit: I should add that I end up using the hotspot a lot when there's public wifi but it's super-busy. The deal with Karma is that strangers can log into your hotspot to get 100mb free, and then you get 100mb free as "karma". I've gotten at least half a gig so far just turning it on at Starbucks.

I upgraded to a wifi-only iPad mini 2 as well. Rationale being that after almost 2 years of using my ipad3 with 3g, I realised that 99% of the time, it was on wifi (either from home or at work, where I have my own 3g router). I rarely ever used 3g on my iPad at all (the notable one time probably being when my home internet went out for a day).

I don't really care about resale value much, but hey, if I know I won't need it, why spend extra on it?

just purchased my first iPad, an iPad mini 2.

Even though I don't have, and don't plan to purchase a data plan, I made sure to get the cellular model.

at least for me, the extra expense of the cellular model is worth it for the built in GPS alone.

I would not own an iPad without cellular as I use mine in the field. I have no desire to download movies at target, I would not even shop there!

Resale value does not even occur to me when I make a purchase like an iPad. I am looking for function and it's ability to get my work done when ever. And where ever I want.