For those who say "you're always going to be waiting if you're shopping for deals".. well, this went from $330 not long ago to $290. I am not bitter because I got to use my 9th gen iPad for a cruise, which is also an additional 5 months.
Am glad that Apple now has an iPad this cheap. I only purchased my ipad Air (1st gen, the one that came out in 2013) because I got a used model for $400 (and that was half off!). I know iPads are nice, but there's no way I would buy one if it would set me back $550+. And yeah, this is to support their subscription models. Apple does make money off their hardware, but there's only so much of it they can sell (especially when iPads are generally well built and can last 6+ years
). Myself, I still have a couple of trial months left on my Apple TV+ and Apple Arcade. I can see myself perhaps continuing AA, but will likely cancel ATV+. I'm willing to extend those a few months to wrap up some things if need be (they're only $5 a month)
Honestly, this tablet is enough for 90% of the tablet community. If it had magic keyboard capability, it would be perfect (though, I understand wanting to keep some features for the Air if they MUST have so many tiers of products). This price point makes it a no-brainer recommendation over the Fire Tablets. I have to justify the price increase for some people that are asking my opinion on tablets when they are trying to determine between a cheap fire tablet and an iPad. Sub-$300 puts this right in line with those since the functionality is heads and tails above those.
That was my thought process when I was in the market for a new tablets. I use my IPad as a glorified gaming device. While it'd be nice to have the nicer screen and higher specs of the Air and Pro lines, I wasn't willing to pay for those. My previous purchases on iOS still carry over. One wrench into the works is some AA games are big (up to 4.7 GB
apiece!). However, I should be able to make it work none of the less.
Also nice for general computing like internet, although on longer trips, I always bring my Chromebook. Here, this is convenient since it fits in the bag much better.
