For the first time in more than two years, there’s a new base-model iPad on the market. Apple just announced the 11th-generation iPad with a press release, as it has done with a number of recent devices.
The new iPad comes equipped with an upgraded A16 chip, along with “double the starting storage” at 128GB. It starts at $349 and will be available starting March 12th in an array of colors, including blue, pink, yellow, and silver.
The story of this iPad is the same as a bunch of recent Apple announcements, like the iPhone 16E or last fall’s iPad Mini: the company is upgrading practically everything it makes in order to support Apple Intelligence. In some cases, all that takes — and all the device gets — is a chip bump. Whether Apple Intelligence support makes for a compelling upgrade is another question entirely, but it’s always nice to get a faster chip.
The 10th-generation iPad, this new device’s predecessor, was a somewhat confusing entrant in Apple’s tablet lineup. Apple launched the device in 2022 with a more modern design, a faster chip, and a bigger screen than the 9th-gen iPad, but it also cost $449 instead of the long-standing $329 base price. (Just to make things more complicated, Apple kept selling the 9th-gen model for $329 — so which one was really the base iPad is hard to say.) Since then, we’ve gotten a new iPad Pro, a new Air, and a new Mini, which left only the base model feeling out of date. All Apple had given it was a price cut, down to $349.
The iPad lineup has been confusing for a while, but as ever, the good news is that there are no bad iPads. And minor upgrade or not, the base iPad is still likely the right iPad for most people.
