It's a Bad Time to Buy the Low-Cost iPad

Apple's i Pad that's just an ‌i Pad‌ with no Air or Pro attached is its most appealing tablet because of the affordable starting $349 price tag, but if you've been thinking about buying one, you should wait. Apple refreshed the ‌i Pad‌ in March 2025, so it's over a year old. That's reason enough not to buy when there's a new model on the horizon, but this year, there's even more to lose by purchasing now. The 2025 ‌i Pad‌ has an A16 chip inside that does not support Apple Intelligence. It does not have features like Writing Tools, Image Playground, Clean Up, Live Translation, notification summaries, Smart Reply, Priority Messages in Mail, Visual Intelligence, and multiple other AI-related tools. ‌Apple Intelligence‌ is still new so it might not sound like a big deal to miss out on those capabilities, but not having access to it is going to become more of a problem as Apple continues implementing new AI features. Rumors suggest there are big changes coming in iOS 27. Siri is going to get smarter and turn into a full chatbot, the Camera app is going to get ‌Visual Intelligence‌ integration, the Photos app will have AI image editing tools, Shortcuts may be more automated, and there are probably features coming that haven't even been rumored yet. The A16 ‌iPad‌ will likely feel outdated in the next year or two because of the feature set it won't have access to. The next ‌iPad‌ is likely to get the A18 chip, and the A18 does support ‌Apple Intelligence‌. It will have faster performance, more RAM, and most importantly, future-proofing and access to the AI features that Apple is investing in. Holding out for the next ‌iPad‌ will take some patience, because right now, we don't know when it's coming. Updating the ‌iPad‌ alongside the low-cost iPhone 17e would have made sense, but that didn't happen. A new entry-level ‌iPad‌ isn't coming in the first half of 2026, so