Apple iPad (9.7-inch, 2017)
It’s not as feature rich as the iPad Pro, nor as thin as the iPad Air 2 it’s replacing, but it’s the perfect mix of functionality and price.
I wouldn’t advise any anyone upgrades from an iPad Air, but if you’re looking to upgrade an older iPad, or a new tablet entirely, this is the one you should buy.
Innovating in the world of tablets is a difficult proposition right now, even for Apple. The iPad Pro brought about a new way of working, and a variety of accessories to complement your 12.9-inch or smaller slate – but what if you don’t want those features?
If that’s you, this new iPad is the device designed for you. It offers a premium spec, a great-looking design and top-of-the-range features, but at a lower price without all the productivity extras tacked on.
It’s much like the iPad Air 2 – the device it replaces in Apple's lineup, which earned a five-star review here at TechRadar, and like that device it sits between the iPad Pro and the iPad 4 mini – but there are a few key upgrades that make this an all-round better tablet.
Ironically, the iPad line's biggest problem was that the older models were so good that there wasn't a huge incentive to replace them. And it didn't help that phone screens have gotten ever larger in the past few years, too: Why lug out a tablet, even a slim one like an iPad, when a 5.5-inch iPhone offers a reasonably close experience? Those newer iPad Pro models, meanwhile, were perfectly lust worthy, but priced at laptop pricing tiers of $600 and up. For watching videos, reading the web and playing Super Mario Run, older iPads -- or those big-screen phones -- remained good enough for a lot of users.
Thanks to its lower starting price($299.00), this is a great first iPad for someone new to the brand, or an opportunity to update from an older model that doesn't support iOS 10, such as the third-gen retina iPad or the original iPad Mini. It's close enough to impulse buy territory for a lot of people, and it's also a near-perfect gift for anyone.
NEW IPAD 9.7-INCH DESIGN
If you’ve seen one iPad from the past five years, you’ve seen them all. The metal and glass design with those curved chamfered sides hasn’t changed a lot since the iPad 2, but that’s because Apple hit upon a formula that clearly works. The design has aged very well, which isn’t something you can say about a lot of tech.
The iPad 9.7-inch is thicker and marginally heavier than both the iPad Air 2 it essentially replaces and the pricier iPad Pro 9.7-inch, but really unless you have all three side-by-side you’re not going to think anything of it. The new iPad 9.7-inch is light enough to hold up while binge-ing on Netflix, and it’s barely noticeable when chucked in a bag.
In fact, this iPad has more in common with the first iPad Air in terms of weight and thickness, and cases for that model fit the 9.7-inch iPad perfectly.
The new iPad is available in gold, silver or space grey – sadly Apple hasn’t seen fit to include a new red version of the iPad to match the new brightly colored iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus.
As on other recent iPads, just below the screen is a home button featuring Apple's Touch ID scanner that allows you to keep all of your data securely stored away behind a fingerprint lock. It’s not particularly easy to reach with your thumb though unless it’s lying down, so we’d usually just use a passcode instead.
While we like the design of the iPad, we can understand it might seem tiresome to many. But, importantly it’s durable and holds up well to being passed around different family members. Apple is aiming this as the iPad for everyone, and I think the design fits well with that mantra.
NEW IPAD 9.7-INCH DISPLAY
The iPad 9.7-inch looks almost the same as the first iPad Air, and it has the same display, too. This is both good and bad news.
The iPad has a 9.7-inch display with a resolution of 2048 x 1536. That gives you 264 pixels per inch, which is the same as either of the iPad Pro models.
It’s a Retina display, which is Apple’s way of saying you won’t be able to notice the pixel quality as it’s so high. We’d agree with Apple on that fact, and during our time using the tablet we found that everything we watched looked beautiful.
It’s an LCD panel, so it doesn’t quite have the saturation and sheer colour pop of the AMOLED on the Samsung Galaxy Tab S3, but colours are bright and it’s virtually impossible to pick out individual pixels. Blacks are deep, too, and it’s just a fantastic screen for watching movies or reading books.
The screen is particularly bright too – especially compared to, for example, the original iPad Air – and this gives it a great advantage over a lot of the tablet competition.Note, however, that competitors are catching up, and the new Samsung Galaxy Tab S3 tablet offers an AMOLED display that's arguably even better for movie viewing, especially once it gets access to promised HDR video content. But that Tab S3 starts at $599 , the same as the iPad Pro, so it's playing in a different ballpark than this iPad.
NEW IPAD 9.7-INCH SPEAKERS
The speakers on the new iPad are similar to what we’ve seen before on the iPad Air 2, but this is still a fantastic setup that will suit you when listening to music or watching movies.
The downward facing speakers are on the bottom, and they’re fine if nothing special. They’re loud, with enough detail for movies and YouTube, but they lack the bass needed for music.
The iPad doesn’t offer four speaker drivers like the iPad Pro models do though, so that may be a reason to go for the more expensive iPads if you think you’ll need it to be louder.
There’s also no support for the Apple Pencil or the Smart Keyboard, so keep that in mind.
NEW IPAD 9.7-INCH PERFORMANCE
Their's no problem with the performance of any iPad out of the box, and the iPad 9.7-inch is no different. This is a smooth and fast tablet that can handle any app or game from the App Store with ease.
The 64-bit A9 chip isn’t the latest or greatest CPU in Apple’s arsenal, but it’s still very capable. We can comfortably edit FHD footage in iMovie or edit RAW photos in Pixelmator without any lag, and it consistently opens apps and files quicker than the iPad Air 2 which ran the A8X chip.
While we said the iPad Air 2 has a better screen, the iPad 9.7-inch is marginally faster in certain intensive tasks. It’s far from a reason to upgrade, and the Air 2 is still very fast, but it’s important to note anyway.
Most recent iPad models have included 2GB of RAM, and although we don’t know for certain what’s in the new iPad it’s likely to follow suit.
In benchmarking we found the new iPad returned an average multi-core score of 4351 in Geekbench 4. For comparison, both the iPad Pro 9.7 (5227) or the iPad Pro 12.9 (5472) scored much higher, but they do use the slightly better A9X processors.
For everyday usage though, the new iPad will be able to handle all the apps you want it to. It may struggle a little with multi-tasking or some productivity apps, but apart from that you’ll be happy with how fast everything loads and works.
NEW IPAD 9.7-INCH CAMERA
The iPad 9.7-inch is a universally great tablet, but it certainly ain’t no camera. The camera should never be your main consideration when you’re buying a tablet, but it’s a useful extra feature to have one on the front and another on the back of your device.
The ipad comes with the rear-facing 8-megapixel camera which has a very narrow f/2.4 aperture and I would consider using it for document scanning only. For anything else the results are noisy and blurry, and just plain not very good.
The camera can be useful to shoot things around the home and then upload them directly to the apps on your iPad, though, so it’s good that Apple has included a capable shooter on the back of the new iPad.
As there’s no image stabilisation, 1080p video is shaky and while there is an HDR option and even control over exposure, neither make a whole heap of difference.
The 1.2-megapixel front-camera is equally weak, which is a bit more disappointing. I can see this being a good Facetime tool for families, but video-chats do look very blurry and ghosting is common.
NEW IPAD 9.7-INCH SOFTWARE
The new iPad 9.7-inch runs iOS 10 just like every other iPhone or iPad you can buy right now. It’s the same gridded homescreen layout that’s now become iconic, with access to the best selection of tablet apps from the App Store. If you’ve used an iPhone or iPad before, you’ll feel instantly at home.
iOS is both excellent and slightly awkward for a tablet, but unless you want something that runs of full desktop operating system like the Surface Pro 4 then it’s your best option. It’s infinitely more usable on the big screen than Android, and I am not quite so fussed about the lack of ‘pro’ features on a tablet that is this affordable.
iOS 10 didn’t add too many iPad specific features, most of them came a year earlier with iOS 9. iOS 9 added in split-screen multitasking and a few other tricks that helped the iPad become a more productive device.
You can open two apps side-by-side, and then resize them at will. This is great for watching a YouTube video and knocking out an email at the same time, or taking notes while studying a web-page. It works well, and even though there’s only 2GB RAM in here nothing is too much trouble.
If you’re looking to use the iPad 9.7-inch for more than media watching, then there’s the Office suite – though I actually prefer Apple’s own Pages, Numbers and Keynote apps on an iPad – and again these are built to make the most of the big display.
Another bonus of an iPad is that you’ll be first in line for the next version of iOS, which will will likely be released in September just before the iPhone 8.
.Even though the iPad 9.7-inch has a bigger 32.9w battery, Apple still states it’ll last the same 10 hours of video watching per charge as both iPad Air 2 and iPad Pro 9.7-inch. Apple’s claims seem to match my own results, as I was able to kill the battery in just shy of 11 hours by playing a downloaded film.
Gaming will likely mean it drains a little bit quicker, but it’s still impressive stamina considering how slim the new iPad is, which necessarily limits the size of the battery.
If you buy the cellular version of the iPad it’s worth noting that maintaining that connection will mean the tablet chews through the battery a little bit faster than the Wi-Fi version. You can easily turn off that connection when you’re not using it though by using the Airplane mode, which is easy to access in the Settings.
There's no fast-charging tech inside the iPad though and filling up such a big battery will take quite a bit of time. We found the new iPad would take just over four hours to charge from zero to 100%.Like previous iPads, the standby time is particularly impressive, which is important for a device you only use intermittently. I found it only dropped 1-2% a day, meaning you won't come back to it after a few days to find it dead.
should you get one?
The new iPad is far better than the iPad Air 2 which was itself a fantastic tablet and will offer you everything you need from a media device that you can use anywhere.The iPad 9.7-inch is the perfect mix of features and price. It doesn’t offer up anything new, and I think the iPad Air 2 is still the better tablet, but for everyone else looking for a reliable device then this ticks all the boxes.
It’s perfect for movies and games, and of course you’ve got so much choice in the App Store. I would have liked a laminated display to eliminate glare and more storage options, but Apple clearly had to make some sacrifices to reach the fairly ‘affordable’ £339/$329 price.
If you have an iPad Air 2, iPad Pro or a recent iPad Mini, it’s not worth upgrading to the new iPad. It doesn’t offer anything radically different to those devices, so it’s probably worth waiting for a more significant upgrade.
It’s a great choice if you want to spend less and don’t need some of the fancier features like Apple Pencil support you get with the iPad Pro, or can’t find the iPad Air 2.
Apple's cheapest iPad is a flat-out great value
Apple’s new iPad isn’t revolutionary, inventive or, well, new. But for most people it’s the tablet you should buy.
It’s not as feature rich as the iPad Pro, nor as thin as the iPad Air 2 it’s replacing, but it’s the perfect mix of functionality and price.
I wouldn’t advise any anyone upgrades from an iPad Air, but if you’re looking to upgrade an older iPad, or a new tablet entirely, this is the one you should buy.
Innovating in the world of tablets is a difficult proposition right now, even for Apple. The iPad Pro brought about a new way of working, and a variety of accessories to complement your 12.9-inch or smaller slate – but what if you don’t want those features?
If that’s you, this new iPad is the device designed for you. It offers a premium spec, a great-looking design and top-of-the-range features, but at a lower price without all the productivity extras tacked on.
It’s much like the iPad Air 2 – the device it replaces in Apple's lineup, which earned a five-star review here at TechRadar, and like that device it sits between the iPad Pro and the iPad 4 mini – but there are a few key upgrades that make this an all-round better tablet.
Ironically, the iPad line's biggest problem was that the older models were so good that there wasn't a huge incentive to replace them. And it didn't help that phone screens have gotten ever larger in the past few years, too: Why lug out a tablet, even a slim one like an iPad, when a 5.5-inch iPhone offers a reasonably close experience? Those newer iPad Pro models, meanwhile, were perfectly lust worthy, but priced at laptop pricing tiers of $600 and up. For watching videos, reading the web and playing Super Mario Run, older iPads -- or those big-screen phones -- remained good enough for a lot of users.
Thanks to its lower starting price($299.00), this is a great first iPad for someone new to the brand, or an opportunity to update from an older model that doesn't support iOS 10, such as the third-gen retina iPad or the original iPad Mini. It's close enough to impulse buy territory for a lot of people, and it's also a near-perfect gift for anyone.
If you’ve seen one iPad from the past five years, you’ve seen them all. The metal and glass design with those curved chamfered sides hasn’t changed a lot since the iPad 2, but that’s because Apple hit upon a formula that clearly works. The design has aged very well, which isn’t something you can say about a lot of tech.
The iPad 9.7-inch is thicker and marginally heavier than both the iPad Air 2 it essentially replaces and the pricier iPad Pro 9.7-inch, but really unless you have all three side-by-side you’re not going to think anything of it. The new iPad 9.7-inch is light enough to hold up while binge-ing on Netflix, and it’s barely noticeable when chucked in a bag.
In fact, this iPad has more in common with the first iPad Air in terms of weight and thickness, and cases for that model fit the 9.7-inch iPad perfectly.
The new iPad is available in gold, silver or space grey – sadly Apple hasn’t seen fit to include a new red version of the iPad to match the new brightly colored iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus.
As on other recent iPads, just below the screen is a home button featuring Apple's Touch ID scanner that allows you to keep all of your data securely stored away behind a fingerprint lock. It’s not particularly easy to reach with your thumb though unless it’s lying down, so we’d usually just use a passcode instead.
While we like the design of the iPad, we can understand it might seem tiresome to many. But, importantly it’s durable and holds up well to being passed around different family members. Apple is aiming this as the iPad for everyone, and I think the design fits well with that mantra.
NEW IPAD 9.7-INCH DISPLAY
The iPad 9.7-inch looks almost the same as the first iPad Air, and it has the same display, too. This is both good and bad news.
The iPad has a 9.7-inch display with a resolution of 2048 x 1536. That gives you 264 pixels per inch, which is the same as either of the iPad Pro models.
It’s a Retina display, which is Apple’s way of saying you won’t be able to notice the pixel quality as it’s so high. We’d agree with Apple on that fact, and during our time using the tablet we found that everything we watched looked beautiful.
It’s an LCD panel, so it doesn’t quite have the saturation and sheer colour pop of the AMOLED on the Samsung Galaxy Tab S3, but colours are bright and it’s virtually impossible to pick out individual pixels. Blacks are deep, too, and it’s just a fantastic screen for watching movies or reading books.
The screen is particularly bright too – especially compared to, for example, the original iPad Air – and this gives it a great advantage over a lot of the tablet competition.Note, however, that competitors are catching up, and the new Samsung Galaxy Tab S3 tablet offers an AMOLED display that's arguably even better for movie viewing, especially once it gets access to promised HDR video content. But that Tab S3 starts at $599 , the same as the iPad Pro, so it's playing in a different ballpark than this iPad.
The speakers on the new iPad are similar to what we’ve seen before on the iPad Air 2, but this is still a fantastic setup that will suit you when listening to music or watching movies.
The downward facing speakers are on the bottom, and they’re fine if nothing special. They’re loud, with enough detail for movies and YouTube, but they lack the bass needed for music.
The iPad doesn’t offer four speaker drivers like the iPad Pro models do though, so that may be a reason to go for the more expensive iPads if you think you’ll need it to be louder.
There’s also no support for the Apple Pencil or the Smart Keyboard, so keep that in mind.
NEW IPAD 9.7-INCH PERFORMANCE
Their's no problem with the performance of any iPad out of the box, and the iPad 9.7-inch is no different. This is a smooth and fast tablet that can handle any app or game from the App Store with ease.
The 64-bit A9 chip isn’t the latest or greatest CPU in Apple’s arsenal, but it’s still very capable. We can comfortably edit FHD footage in iMovie or edit RAW photos in Pixelmator without any lag, and it consistently opens apps and files quicker than the iPad Air 2 which ran the A8X chip.
While we said the iPad Air 2 has a better screen, the iPad 9.7-inch is marginally faster in certain intensive tasks. It’s far from a reason to upgrade, and the Air 2 is still very fast, but it’s important to note anyway.
Most recent iPad models have included 2GB of RAM, and although we don’t know for certain what’s in the new iPad it’s likely to follow suit.
In benchmarking we found the new iPad returned an average multi-core score of 4351 in Geekbench 4. For comparison, both the iPad Pro 9.7 (5227) or the iPad Pro 12.9 (5472) scored much higher, but they do use the slightly better A9X processors.
For everyday usage though, the new iPad will be able to handle all the apps you want it to. It may struggle a little with multi-tasking or some productivity apps, but apart from that you’ll be happy with how fast everything loads and works.
NEW IPAD 9.7-INCH CAMERA
The iPad 9.7-inch is a universally great tablet, but it certainly ain’t no camera. The camera should never be your main consideration when you’re buying a tablet, but it’s a useful extra feature to have one on the front and another on the back of your device.
The ipad comes with the rear-facing 8-megapixel camera which has a very narrow f/2.4 aperture and I would consider using it for document scanning only. For anything else the results are noisy and blurry, and just plain not very good.
The camera can be useful to shoot things around the home and then upload them directly to the apps on your iPad, though, so it’s good that Apple has included a capable shooter on the back of the new iPad.
As there’s no image stabilisation, 1080p video is shaky and while there is an HDR option and even control over exposure, neither make a whole heap of difference.
The 1.2-megapixel front-camera is equally weak, which is a bit more disappointing. I can see this being a good Facetime tool for families, but video-chats do look very blurry and ghosting is common.
NEW IPAD 9.7-INCH SOFTWARE
The new iPad 9.7-inch runs iOS 10 just like every other iPhone or iPad you can buy right now. It’s the same gridded homescreen layout that’s now become iconic, with access to the best selection of tablet apps from the App Store. If you’ve used an iPhone or iPad before, you’ll feel instantly at home.
iOS is both excellent and slightly awkward for a tablet, but unless you want something that runs of full desktop operating system like the Surface Pro 4 then it’s your best option. It’s infinitely more usable on the big screen than Android, and I am not quite so fussed about the lack of ‘pro’ features on a tablet that is this affordable.
iOS 10 didn’t add too many iPad specific features, most of them came a year earlier with iOS 9. iOS 9 added in split-screen multitasking and a few other tricks that helped the iPad become a more productive device.
You can open two apps side-by-side, and then resize them at will. This is great for watching a YouTube video and knocking out an email at the same time, or taking notes while studying a web-page. It works well, and even though there’s only 2GB RAM in here nothing is too much trouble.
If you’re looking to use the iPad 9.7-inch for more than media watching, then there’s the Office suite – though I actually prefer Apple’s own Pages, Numbers and Keynote apps on an iPad – and again these are built to make the most of the big display.
Another bonus of an iPad is that you’ll be first in line for the next version of iOS, which will will likely be released in September just before the iPhone 8.
NEW IPAD 9.7-INCH Battery life
.Even though the iPad 9.7-inch has a bigger 32.9w battery, Apple still states it’ll last the same 10 hours of video watching per charge as both iPad Air 2 and iPad Pro 9.7-inch. Apple’s claims seem to match my own results, as I was able to kill the battery in just shy of 11 hours by playing a downloaded film.
Gaming will likely mean it drains a little bit quicker, but it’s still impressive stamina considering how slim the new iPad is, which necessarily limits the size of the battery.
If you buy the cellular version of the iPad it’s worth noting that maintaining that connection will mean the tablet chews through the battery a little bit faster than the Wi-Fi version. You can easily turn off that connection when you’re not using it though by using the Airplane mode, which is easy to access in the Settings.
There's no fast-charging tech inside the iPad though and filling up such a big battery will take quite a bit of time. We found the new iPad would take just over four hours to charge from zero to 100%.Like previous iPads, the standby time is particularly impressive, which is important for a device you only use intermittently. I found it only dropped 1-2% a day, meaning you won't come back to it after a few days to find it dead.
should you get one?
The new iPad is far better than the iPad Air 2 which was itself a fantastic tablet and will offer you everything you need from a media device that you can use anywhere.The iPad 9.7-inch is the perfect mix of features and price. It doesn’t offer up anything new, and I think the iPad Air 2 is still the better tablet, but for everyone else looking for a reliable device then this ticks all the boxes.
It’s perfect for movies and games, and of course you’ve got so much choice in the App Store. I would have liked a laminated display to eliminate glare and more storage options, but Apple clearly had to make some sacrifices to reach the fairly ‘affordable’ £339/$329 price.
If you have an iPad Air 2, iPad Pro or a recent iPad Mini, it’s not worth upgrading to the new iPad. It doesn’t offer anything radically different to those devices, so it’s probably worth waiting for a more significant upgrade.
It’s a great choice if you want to spend less and don’t need some of the fancier features like Apple Pencil support you get with the iPad Pro, or can’t find the iPad Air 2.
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