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- Apple iPad 11in (A16, 2025): What you need to know
- Apple iPad 11in (A16, 2025) review: Price and competition
- Apple iPad 11in (A16, 2025) review: Design
- Apple iPad 11in (A16, 2025) review: Display
- Apple iPad 11in (A16, 2025) review: Performance and battery life
- Apple iPad 11in (A16, 2025) review: Verdict
- Remarkably reasonable price
- iPadOS is still the best tablet OS
- Makes a competent, cheap, laptop replacement
- Example ConDisplay is sRGB only
- 60Hz refresh rate
- Rivals are better value
Apple’s budget iPad is a bit of an outlier. It’s one of the few devices in Apple’s range that could be considered good value; in fact, one of only two in my opinion, the other being the M4 MacBook Air. Everything else, it could be argued, commands the infamous ‘Apple tax’.
In fact it’s an outlier not only within Apple’s range but across the industry, because this is a product whose price has barely changed since 2017 – except for an ill-advised (and slightly odd) price hike to £499 for the 10th generation iPad, and even that quietly dropped back to £329 last year when its predecessor was finally retired.
That makes it, regardless of the shortcomings (which you can read about below), a fantastic bargain. What other piece of technology can you buy today that hasn’t seen a price rise in eight years?
Apple iPad 11in (A16, 2025): What you need to know
In fact – and this is even harder to wrap your head around – the 2025 iPad is cheaper than the very first iPad, which was unveiled to the world by Steve Jobs way back in 2010. So what do you get for your rather measly £329? Or rather, what don’t you get, compared with tablets further up the range like the iPad Air or iPad Pro?
The first item on the list is Apple Intelligence, which isn’t as big of a miss as you might think – at least not right now. I wasn’t all that impressed with it on the iPad Air and iPhone 16 phones; but with Apple pushing AI hard right now, it might get better, and this device will miss out.
Next on the list is the display: the iPad is limited to sRGB output, where the iPad Air can deliver the whole of the DCI-P3 space, and it’s capped at 60Hz. It’s perfectly sharp at 2,360 x 1,640, though, the same size as the iPad Air at 11in, and colour accurate so again, it’s no great loss.
It’s the same story with the short list of other limitations: you can live with them. For example, you can’t use the standard iPad with the new Magic Keyboard or Apple Pencil Pro either, but the Apple Magic Folio Keyboard and Apple Pencil USB-C get the job done for less money. And although Stage Manager, which lets you extend your “desktop” onto an external display, is missing, this doesn’t prevent you using the iPad on the move as a compact, lightweight laptop replacement.
Apple iPad 11in (A16, 2025) review: Price and competition
For £329, as I said, you’re getting an awful lot of (Apple) tablet for your money. The base model comes with 6GB of RAM, 128GB of storage and Apple’s two-generation-old A16 processor. As with other Apple devices, upgrading is expensive. If you want more storage, the price rises to £429 for the 256GB model and £629 for the 512GB model, while adding cellular 5G connectivity will set you back another £150.
Should you want to use the iPad as a laptop replacement, you can add the Magic Folio Case for £249, while the Apple Pencil USB-C is another £79. For the full package (with Wi-Fi), you’re paying a base price of £657, which represents a £340 saving over the iPad Air 11in with Magic Keyboard and Apple Pencil Pro. If you want to save even more, you can pick up a Logitech Combo Touch case for iPad, which at the time of writing was discounted to £140.
As for rivals, you have a couple of options. The OnePlus Pad 2 is a little more expensive at £499 but (at the time of writing) that’s being sold in a bundle with a keyboard case and stylus included, which makes it competitive.
Then you have the Honor Pad 9, which is not as quick or well made and lacks the iPadOS ecosystem, but is a lot cheaper at £230, it has a larger 12.1in display, more RAM at 8GB and double the storage at 2565GB. Plus it comes with a keyboard included at that price.
Add the compatible stylus and the lot comes to £275 before discounts. That’s a real bargain, and at the time of writing Honor is selling the lot for the princely sum of £237, or around a third the price of the equivalent Apple bundle.
Apple iPad 11in (A16, 2025) review: Design
Nothing of note has changed on the design front since the last major update – the 10th gen iPad, launched back in 2022. The standard iPad still comes with an 11in screen at the front, surrounded by a bezel that’s a fraction over 11mm thick. It measures exactly the same as the 11in iPad Air at 249 x 7 x 180mm (WDH) and it weighs 477g for the Wi-Fi model or 481g for the cellular model.
The 12-megapixel Centre Stage webcam is embedded in one of the long edges so you don’t look off-centre if you’re holding the tablet in landscape (or you have it mounted in a keyboard case). Opposite it, on the other long edge, is a set of contacts for the Magic Folio case and you have a TouchID sensor on the left edge set into the power button, with the volume buttons just around the corner on the top edge.
It’s a lovely thing – you’d expect that from Apple – but one thing I do find a little weird is the orientation of the Apple logo on the rear. With the webcam on the front indicating you should, more often than not, be holding or using the tablet in landscape orientation, the logo really should match and it doesn’t. That’s something that might not annoy you in the same way it does me, though.
The only other thing that gets (slightly) on my nerves is that there’s only Wi-Fi 6 connectivity, not Wi-Fi 6E or Wi-Fi 7. Again, though, most home networks won’t be Wi-Fi 7 or 6E enabled yet, so it’s not a big miss.
Apple iPad 11in (A16, 2025) review: Display
To look at it initially, you’d think that the display was the same as on the iPad Air 11in. It uses the same panel type, has the same resolution and it’s the same size, too. It also shares the iPad Air’s rather antediluvian 60Hz rate. However, delve into the specifications sheet and you’ll see that it isn’t quite as good: it’s only capable of reproducing the sRGB colour gamut, where the iPad Air can do DCI-P3.
Indeed, this it’s the iPad’s biggest shortcoming. Because while the iPad’s display is bright (in my tests, it peaked at 505cd/m2) and colour accurate, it only managed to reproduce around 88% of the sRGB colour space, which is low for any modern tablet.
What does it mean for you, though? Well, it means movies, TV shows and photos won’t generally look as vibrant and punchy as on the more expensive iPad Air, or even your phone. And you might well be a bit miffed to discover that if you popped this Apple tablet right next to the much cheaper Honor Pad 9 you’d probably not spot much of a difference, if any. In fact, the Honor Pad 9’s display is, technically, superior to the iPad’s; not only is it brighter but it can produce a greater range of colours.
Apple iPad 11in (A16, 2025) review: Performance and battery life
One of the key differences between the iPad and its more expensive siblings is that it doesn’t support Apple Intelligence. You might assume that’s because it isn’t powerful enough, but on the face of it, that’s just not the case.
The A16 has a 16-core Neural Engine just like the iPad Air (which does support Apple Intelligence), and that is capable of delivering 17 TOPS, where the M3 is only marginally more capable, reaching 18 TOPS. Its CPU is only a 6-core unit (2 performance cores, 4 efficiency) clocked at up to 3.46GHz, and its GPU a five-core part, but this is far from underpowered, as you can see from the charts below.
No, it seems that Apple has simply decided not to support Apple Intelligence on the iPad purely because it’s the cheapest device in the range, and it wants to motivate users to spend more. At the moment, Apple Intelligence doesn’t offer enough features to justify the premium although that may change in time, of course.
As for the battery life, that’s good but not great. Apple rates it at up to ten hours of web browsing or watching video (with screen brightness set to 50%); in our tests, we set the screen somewhat dimmer – 170cd/m2 – and it lasted somewhat longer as a result: 11hrs 54mins, around the same as the iPad Air.
Apple iPad 11in (A16, 2025) review: Verdict
If all of this sounds a bit negative, then don’t take it too negatively. Although the iPad doesn’t compare favourably on price terms with its Android rivals, its display disappoints and its battery life is so-so, it’s still the best tablet around in its price range and that’s because of iPadOS and the sheer range of serious, tablet-specific software you can get on the platform. Androids options aren’t nearly as good.
And although not many people use it in this way, with the addition of the Magic Keyboard Folio it does make a cracking little laptop replacement for not that much cash. There aren’t many sub-£600 laptops that are this nicely made with a screen this good.
Ultimately, the iPad is a great tablet but whether it’s good value depends on what you want to do with it. If all you want is a tablet for browsing the web, watching movies on a flight or the odd bit of YouTube in bed, then other tablets like the Honor Pad 9 do that just as well for a lot less cash. If, however, you’d like to do a bit more with your slate, this is the tablet you want, with a far superior selection of apps and software and a fair bit more power. You pay your money, you take your choice.
