In advance of its unveiling of the latest MacBook Air, Apple quietly announced the arrival of a new base model iPad.
The new 11th-generation iPad features the same hardware design as the previous, 10th-gen model which was released back in 2022 and marked the end of the home-button based design for Apple’s entry level tablet.
That means all of the changes to the 11th-generation iPad are internal. The 11th-gen iPad features the A16 chip which was launched within the iPhone 14 back in 2022. This should be provide a nice performance bump from the A13 Bionic that was inside the 10th-gen iPad but it also means that the base model iPad won’t be able to run Apple Intelligence features.
Apple says the new iPad is 30% faster than the previous generation and users can expect to see “up to a 50 percent improvement in overall performance.” Battery life remains quoted as “all day.”
Additionally, Apple has doubled the amount of internal storage available on the cheapest configuration of this new iPad. While the previous generation started at 64GB of storage, the new iPad now offers 128GB.
Pricing and availability
The 11th-generation iPad is available for pre-order starting today and will officially be released March 12. The new iPad starts at $349 for a configuration with 128GB of storage.
