iPad 8th Gen (10.2”) Review! : Worth buying in 2021?

If you’re following me on Twitter (And if you’re not, please do, via the connect button above), you’d probably know that I’ve been using the iPad 8th Gen for quite some time now. It’s been more than 4 months since I got this and here’s my experience during the same period: 

For starters, the iPad 8th Gen was launched in September last year, alongside the iPad Air 4 and the Apple Watch Series 6 and SE. If you still got no idea, you’d probably wa check out my article on Apple’s September event. 

Image Courtesy: Shubhang Kulkarni 😉

Performance:

As always, starting off with performance. The iPad 8th Gen, though launched in 2020, has got a 2 year-old chip, the A12 Bionic. Does that mean the performance’s awful? Absolutely not. (You know what I just did there ;)) The A12 Bionic, though being a 2 year-old chipset, cake-walks day-to-day tasks. The gaming experience too, is real good! It handles COD in ‘Very High’ and ‘High’ graphic quality & ‘Very High’ and ‘Max’ Frame rate respectively like a GEM! In my short periods of gaming, I’ve never faced any signs of heating. When the iPad actually heats up quite a bit is while using the Apple Pencil. I, personally use the Apple Pencil extensively for hours, slightly heating the top part of the display. But that’s not a deal-breaker, for sure! 

Battery: 

Apple doesn’t specify the battery capacity, but the battery life, in my experience’s been AMAZING! It easily lasts a day and a half or two, even if used for tasks like Gaming and extensive note taking. The charging time though, via the 20W charger (provided in the box) is slightly on the higher side. I haven’t really noted, but it’d probably take 3 and a half to 4 hours to completely charge the iPad from 0 to 100%. 

Design, build and more:

The 8th Gen iPad’s got the same old design, thick bezels on the top and bottom, the latter comprising the TouchID sensor. The back though’s plastic, doesn’t really take up many fingerprints, except for the Apple logo. The left side of the iPad’s got the Smart Connector, through which the Smart Keyboard can be connected (that of course is sold separately). The iPad retaining the Lightening port though is disappointing, it’s also got a headphone jack! 🙂 

Display: 

As the name suggests, the 8th Gen iPad’s got a 10.2 inch 2160×1620-pixel resolution Retina display with a 60Hz refresh rate. Though the refresh rate’s low, iPadOS’ smoothness doesn’t make you feel it’s slow or laggy. If you’re into content consumption, this surely isn’t something that’d disappoint you. 

Camera: 

The iPad’s surely not the device you’d be capturing photos or videos on. I primarily used the front cameras for video calls and the rear camera for scanning documents, which it does pretty well. It’s got a 1.2 Megapixel (yeah, the decimal point exists) front camera, which for video call is surely not bad at all. 

Accessories:

There are 2 significant accessories that I’ve been using with the iPad, namely the Apple Pencil and Logitech’s K480 wireless keyboard. It’s the first-gen Apple Pencil, which though functions superbly, has got one flaw, it charges via the Lightening port on the iPad. You don’t usually have to plug it in for a long time, but having a pencil sticking out of your iPad’s kinda weird and uncomfortable if you’re taking it around. 

As far as the keyboard’s concerned, it too works pretty well, with designated iPadOS keys. 

Final thoughts: 

So, is buying the 8th Gen iPad in 2021 worth it? 

Well, if you don’t mind the bezels and have a tight budget of 30,000 (Exclusive of the styli and keyboard), this’d be a really good buy! But if you’re okay waiting a little more, you can get a way better deal. With a slight hike in price, the 9th Gen iPad’ll probably provide so much more than this one. 

And as far as styli go, I’ve had an amazing experience with the Apple Pencil. The Logitech keyboard too, though doesn’t attach to the iPad, works flawlessly. It’s got iPadOS specific keys, enhancing the experience. 

That was it for the blog. 

Thanks for reading till the end! 🙂

#Apple #iPad