Apple provided us with a review unit for one of our writers to test, which he returned after his thorough evaluation. Read on for his full thoughts.
Apple's Most Affordable iPad! 8th Generation iPad Review
The 8th-generation iPad 10.2-inch doesn’t shake things up quite as much as its predecessor, but it does introduce a few significant improvements under the hood. The biggest change in the 2020 iPad is the addition of the A12 Bionic chip, previously seen in the iPad Air 3. It also features improved battery life and better screen sensitivity when used with the Apple Pencil, among a handful of other tweaks.
Curious to see how these changes would translate to real life, I put an 8th-generation iPad 10.2-inch to the test for a few weeks. I paired the iPad 10.2-inch with a Smart Keyboard and put the tablet to work handling everyday activities like writing, checking email, browsing the web, and entertaining. While I couldn’t ditch my laptop entirely, the 8th-generation iPad 10.2-inch presents a compelling combination of usability, price, and portability that’s impossible to ignore.
The iPad line got a major facelift in 2019, and the 2020 iPad is still riding that wave. If you’ve been using a 7th-generation iPad, picking up an 8th-generation one will feel like coming home. It has the same curved edges, the same lightweight aluminum and glass construction, the same thick bezels, and features the same Smart Connector, which enables connectivity with old iPad Air and iPad Pro accessories like the Smart Keyboard. While Apple has dropped the Lightning port from some of its lines in favor of the more ubiquitous USB-C, that’s not the case here.
