Winter 2025 iPad Buyer's Guide

Nov 29, 2024

3 min read

An Apple picture of an iPad 10th-generation, an Apple picture of an iPad mini (A17 Pro), an Apple picture of an M2 iPad Air, and an Apple picture of an M4 iPad Pro, arranged in a square with two black lines separating them. Red, 100pt text "Winter 2025 iPad Buyer's Guide" at bottom. White background. — Source: Me (iPad images source: Apple)

Macs weren't the only products that were updated this fall; the iPad mini was also updated. Because of this, it's time to make a new iPad buyer's guide! First, we need to ask some questions.

What type of user are you?

Budget/Regular (note that the only budget/regular screen size is 10.9")
Mid-range
- What screen size do you prefer?
  - 8.3"
  - 11"
  - 13"
Professional (note that there is no 8.3" professional iPad)
- What screen size do you prefer?
  - 11"
  - 13"

If you chose...

An Apple image of a blue iPad (10th-generation). — Source: Apple

Budget/Regular

If you chose this, the $349 iPad 10th-generation will suit you. However, if it's not that urgent, you can wait until springtime, when the 11th-generation is coming out (especially because the 10th-generation is from late 2022), which will start at 128GB of storage instead of today's measly 64GB. However, this means that the 10th-gen is on sale for up to $100 off on Amazon for Black Friday (stay tuned for my Black Friday deal guide for more).

An Apple image of a Space Gray iPad mini (A17 Pro). — Source: Apple

Mid-range, 8.3"

Those who want a small size can opt for the new, $499 iPad mini 7 (officially the iPad mini (A17 Pro)). As you can see in its official name, compared with the 10th-gen iPad, it has the faster A17 Pro chip, made for last year's iPhone 15 Pro (it is binned, however, which means that it has 5 GPU cores instead of 6). Other features include Apple Intelligence, Wi-Fi 6E, Apple Pencil Pro support, and better storage tiers (instead of 64GB and 256GB there's the bigger and better variety of 128GB, 256GB, and 512GB), a laminated, antireflective display, True Tone flash, and Smart HDR 4, and the iPad mini has several features less than the 10th-gen: Magic Keyboard Folio support (because of its size it only supports Bluetooth keyboards) and the related Smart Connector, a landscape front camera (it's still in portrait, for some reason), Nano-SIM, and Apple Pencil 1st-gen support (although the 1st-gen is considerably old, so this shouldn't matter much).

An Apple image of a Space Gray 11" M2 iPad Air. — Source: Apple

Mid-range, 11"

For $100 more than the mini (price is $599), you can get a "powerful" M2 chip (meant for Macs and with 2 more CPU and 4 more GPU cores than the mini, plus a media engine and 8GB RAM), a 1TB storage size, a landscape front camera, and Apple Magic Keyboard support because of the sufficient size (which also brings the Smart Connector), while losing True Tone flash.

An Apple image of a Space Gray 13" M2 iPad Air. — Source: Apple

Mid-range, 13"

For $200 more than the 11" (price is $799), you can get a bigger size plus better audio (no battery life increase) in the 13" iPad Air.

An Apple image of a Space Black 11" M4 iPad Pro. — Source: Apple

Professional, 11"

For $400 more than the 11" Air (at $999), you can get the more powerful M4 chip (starting at 1 more CPU and 1 more GPU core), an Ultra Retina XDR OLED display with ProMotion, up to 1,000 nits of brightness (2x more than the Air) and 1,600 nits for HDR resulting from the XDR tech a nano-texture option for models with 1/2TB of storage, the 2TB storage option itself (plus a base storage of 256GB), ProRes video, a USB-C port with USB/Thunderbolt 4, Face ID (enabled by a TrueDepth front camera, which also adds Animoji and Memoji), two more speakers and microphones, Portrait mode features (like better background blur and effects), and a LiDAR scanner in the 11" iPad Pro.