Anika Begay
While Apple’s tablet lineup has undergone several shakeups in recent years, we’ve long considered the iPad 9th generation to be the best budget iPad you could get. That changed when Apple lowered the price of the 10th-generation iPad to a more reasonable $349 and discontinued its base model. But the 2021 iPad remains a great slate, especially now that the base model with 64GB of storage has dropped to a new low of around $224 ($105 off) at Amazon, Walmart, and Best Buy.
Hardware-wise, the ninth-generation iPad is largely a holdover from Apple’s previous design language. The 10.2-inch tablet has a traditional iPad look with large bezels, a dedicated home button, and a Lightning port, not to mention a 3.5mm audio jack for using a wired pair of headphones.
Inside, you’ll find Apple’s A13 processor, which, despite first appearing in the iPhone 11 in 2019, still delivers fast performance when you’re gaming, watching movies, browsing the web, and tackling all the usual things you might use a tablet for. It’s still tied to the first-generation Apple Pencil and older accessories like the Smart Keyboard, yes, but given its age and price, that’s an understandable tradeoff.
If you’re worried about support, you can rest assured that Apple’s latest-generation iPad will be compatible with iPadOS 18 when it launches this fall. However, it won’t support any of Apple’s upcoming Apple Intelligence features, which require a newer iPad Pro or iPad Air model with an M1 chip or later. I guess the new calculator app will have to do.
