Apple is about to refresh its cheapest iPad after 2.5 years, but don’t get too excited

Apple last updated its cheapest iPad in October 2022, introducing the largest refresh to the base model iPad since it returned in 2017. This marked the 10th generation of the iPad, and even though it’s been 2.5 years since then, the 11th generation model won’t bring anything substantial, for one big reason.

Main confirmed upgrade: new chip

Much like the iPad mini 7 that debuted last fall, the iPad 11 is also rumored to be just a spec bump. Specifically, it’ll be bumping up from the A14 Bionic chip to the A17 Pro chip, according to rumors.

This’ll bump it up from the chip that debuted in 2020 alongside the iPhone 12, to one that debuted in 2023 alongside the iPhone 15 Pro. That upgrade will provide a roughly 40% speed improvement, at least on the CPU side of things.

Furthermore, it’ll bump the system memory from 4GB to 8GB, allowing for better multi-tasking and more.

Apple Intelligence is all but confirmed for iPad 11, which’ll bring Apple’s latest suite of AI features to the cheapest iPad for the first time. These features include Genmoji, Image Playground, ChatGPT support, and an all-new Siri.

Potential upgrades

Unfortunately, there aren’t any other noteworthy upgrade rumors on the table. Colors might change a little, and Apple might bump up the connectivity standards. We could possibly see Wi-Fi 6E and Bluetooth 5.3.

There is one possible wildcard feature: Stage Manager. Apple introduced Stage Manager back in iPadOS 16, requiring an A12X (or newer) iPad Pro, or an M1 (or newer) iPad Air. Apple hasn’t yet brought this feature to other iPads, but one could easily argue that an A17 Pro with 8GB of RAM would be more capable of running the software feature than an A12X chip with 4GB of RAM. Only time will tell though.

Wrap up

Ultimately, despite the long gap between refreshes, this is just going to be yet another minor iPad spec bump. One of the larger iPad upgrades across the lineup in 2024 was moving the camera to landscape orientation, but the base model iPad already received that upgrade in 2022.

Hopefully they increase the base storage from 64GB to 128GB to make things a little more interesting. This new iPad model is expected to debut this spring.