Apple’s 7th-generation iPad has arrived on the scene with some new bells and whistles! Along with the new 10.2” display, there’s … hmm. As the most basic tablet in Apple’s lineup, this iPad mostly inherits hand-me-down features from its more prestigious kin…
No bezel-shrinking magic here—this 10.2″ iPad is just flat-out bigger than last year’s 9.7″ iPad. With great size comes big responsibility: the new iPad finally gets Apple’s Smart Connector for keyboard compatibility. Yay for productivity!
The battery is labeled A1484 and rated for 32.9 Wh—the exact same battery as last year and the year before, despite the extra space in this year’s larger case… Still, Apple seems to squeeze some extra life out of the battery this time, with the same claimed 10 hours of charge as the iPad 6, despite the bigger screen.
MacDailyNews Take: Inside, iFixit found 3GB LPDDR4 SDRAM (that’s 50% more RAM than last year’s entry-level iPad)!
The RAM increase is a big deal, as well as the larger screen if you want a larger screen which comes with a larger chassis. But many don’t or don’t care.
IMO the larger screen should have been saved for the Air 3. This iPad is just a lazy hack effort to combine the BOM components between Air 3 and iPad 7 (same exact chassis just thinner/thicker screens). It leaves the impression of being designed by the ops and sourcing teams rather than the creative team.