Apple this month introduced the eighth-generation iPad, featuring the powerful A12 Bionic chip that brings the Neural Engine to the entry-level iPad for the first time. Starting at just $329 ($299 at Amazon right now), the upgrade packs even more value into the most popular and affordable iPad, featuring a stunning 10.2-inch Retina display, advanced cameras, and great all-day battery life.
The new iPad 8 is only a “speed bump” version of the seventh-generation model, but it certainly offers a noticeable increase in performance. Benchmarks show this recently released tablet is about twice as fast as its predecessor.
Now that this computer is in customers’ hands, we know that its A12 has six cores. And the maximum speed for these is 2.49 GHz. There’s 3 GB of RAM.
Compare that to the iPad 7, which has only four cores at 2.3 GHz, two for speed and two for power saving. There’s also 3 GB of RAM.
As a result, the iPad 8 pulls in much higher benchmark scores. The multi-core score on Geekbench 5 gets as high as 2945, according to Primate Labs. For comparison, the average score for the iPad 7 on this test 1373.
MacDailyNews Take: As we’ve been saying since the new iPad was unveiled, Apple hit a home run in value with the new iPad, starting at just $329 $299 at Amazon right now.
For a majority of people the older iPads have enough performance to do a quality job. Most people don’t need to most latest and fastest Apple gear
Fair enough, but Cook indicated that more than 50% of iPad buyers are new to iPads. So the main competition for iPad buyers is other products, not their existing iPads. And since not every iPad owner (I’m one of them) has the latest iPad, this new release even more significantly increases the distance between what we have and what’s now available.
There isn’t much you Apple can do with the standard iPad except to boost the processing power and maybe add a 120Hz display. Anyway, the tech-heads won’t be satisfied as they always want more.
Or less with a “why can’t Apple sell a Chromebook type device”.
Brilliant value for the money, just brilliant.