iPad Is the iPad (A16) a good buy?

[Homme]

I’m hesitant about the recommendation of the A16. I received mine in early April and my battery already looks like this (I never leave it charging overnight):

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Maybe that curve will flatten out at some point but I am looking at 76% health by the time it’s two years old 😕

That’s not surprising considering how bad the A16 is when it comes to cycle counts ( iPhone 14 Pro users suffer the most)

IMO Apple should have released 11th gen iPad with A18 and battery life will be so much better.

 

[bob_zz123]

They used the A16 because it's cheaper, it provides good enough performance for the intended use case of these iPads (which is content consumption and basic computing) and they can get rid of old parts from the parts bin too. But generally speaking, I think it's a perfectly fine tablet for the price. I have one and it doesn't get a lot of use apart from watching Netflix or reading e-books and for that it's great. It was nice that all of the iPad OS 26 features came to it, I wasn't necessarily expecting all the nice multitasking features especially as previously it didn't have Stage Manager, and haven't noticed any particular slowdown because of the new OS. I'm pretty happy with it for the price and comfortable that it'll get a good few years of updates to come. If you're using it for heavier stuff then the smarter buy might be a refubished M1 or M2 Air which will have 8GB of RAM too, although they may not have as many years of software support, especially the M1.

 

[CrownVic]

I just picked one up through Verizon. Honestly it’s a great buy, iPad os26 is smooth and the battery is great. I’m a basic iPad user though, I scroll forums, Facebook, watch videos.. and I plan to upgrade in another 3 years or so to the next base iPad again through Verizon, so this iPad does everything I need and more!