Apple iPad 11" A16 Blue 2025

The 11th-gen iPad with the A16 chip is the best budget tablet for most people. Battery life is phenomenal, and the 128GB base storage is a welcome upgrade. If you can find it near the $350 mark, just buy it.

The base iPad has always been the easiest recommendation in Apple's lineup, and this 11th-gen model with the A16 chip doesn't mess with that formula. It's the tablet most people should buy, packing a gorgeous Liquid Retina display, solid performance, and all-day battery life into a design that still feels modern. If you just need a screen for streaming, browsing, note-taking, and the occasional game, this thing absolutely nails it.

Apple bumped the storage to 128GB on the base model, which is a genuinely useful upgrade from the old 64GB. The A16 chip isn't the newest silicon on the block, but it's still snappy for everyday tasks. Just don't expect it to replace a laptop for heavy work, the productivity score tells that story pretty clearly.

The A16 Bionic with 6GB of RAM handles iPadOS like a champ. Apps open fast, multitasking is smooth, and even light video editing in iMovie doesn't make it sweat. Our benchmarks put the CPU and GPU right around the middle of the pack, which sounds average until you realize this is a $350 tablet competing with devices that cost twice as much. The real standout is battery life, landing in the 96th percentile. You'll easily get through a full day of classes or a long flight without hunting for a charger. The 60Hz screen is the one spec that stings a bit if you're used to a ProMotion iPhone, but the 500-nit brightness keeps things usable outdoors.

Pricing is all over the map depending on where you look, with a spread from $350 to $706 across vendors. At the low end, this is an absolute steal for what you're getting. At the high end, you're flirting with refurbished iPad Air territory, which gets you a better screen and an M-series chip. If you can snag it closer to that $350 mark, especially from a retailer with a solid return policy, it's one of the best value tablets on the market. The included AppleCare+ kits from B&H are worth a look if you're accident-prone.

Stacked against the Samsung Galaxy Tab S11 Ultra, the iPad A16 gets smoked on raw specs but costs a fraction of the price. The Xiaomi Pad 7 Pro and Lenovo Idea Tab Pro are closer competitors with higher refresh rate screens, but neither matches the iPad's app ecosystem or long-term software support. The Microsoft Surface Pro 11th Edition is a full PC in a tablet body and runs circles around this for productivity, but it's also in a completely different price bracket. For media consumption, note-taking, and casual use, the iPad's combination of battery life and app quality keeps it ahead of most Android alternatives.

If you need a laptop replacement for serious multitasking, coding, or heavy creative work, look at the iPad Air or a Surface Pro instead. The A16 chip and 6GB of RAM just aren't built for that kind of workload, and the productivity scores back that up.

This is the iPad for students, casual users, and anyone who wants a reliable tablet without spending a grand. It's not a powerhouse, and it won't replace your laptop, but it nails the fundamentals. Buy it for the battery life, the screen, and the peace of mind that comes with years of iPadOS updates.