During an early Black Friday sale, Amazon is offering Apple’s iPad (9th Generation with the Home button): with A13 Bionic chip, 10.2-inch Retina Display, 64GB, Wi-Fi, 12MP front/8MP Back Camera, Touch ID, All-Day Battery Life in Silver for a rather crazy $229.99 – that’s 30% off.
iPad comes equipped with the powerful A13 Bionic chip, delivering a 20 percent performance boost over the previous generation. The Neural Engine in A13 Bionic also powers next-level machine learning capabilities, including Live Text, which uses on-device intelligence to recognize text in a photo upon which users can take action.
An upgraded ambient light sensor enables True Tone, which adjusts screen content to the color temperature of a room. True Tone on the iPad (9th gen.) makes images appear more natural and provides users with a more comfortable viewing experience in all lighting environments.
MacDailyNews Take: $229.99 is a very low price for a new, still very-capable iPad.
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Fast becoming a true stocking stuffer.
Apple needs this low-cost iPad in the lineup to block Android tablets from succeeding. Apple controls the tablet market much more than iPhone and Mac in their respective markets. Who would buy a cheap Android tablet for $199 when street price for a new iPad is $230? The next higher iPad (10th gen) is slicker, but it costs significantly more, high enough to make a $199-299 Android tablet more viable. Apple should give current iPad 9th gen (with Home Button and Touch ID) the “SE” treatment. Mostly same design, with A15 and USB-C, call it iPad SE.
With prices that close I totally agree that users in the market for a tablet not already invested in Android would lean towards the iPad. However, as the iPad is selling on Amazon, the user will probably also come across Amazon’s Fire OS tablets which start in the $100 +/- $30 range and are much more integrated with Amazon’s own services which include parental controls in the user’s Amazon account. As a total HW/service offering there is a good chance that those Amazon account holders not invested in iOS will still opt for the Fire OS devices as first or upgrade units.
I bought a cheap Android tablet for $190. I can sideload apps that give me virtually every movie and TV show for free. And there is an app to download virtually any music file or album for free. And I can download youtube videos.
These are all things you can’t do for free on an iPad.
I love my Android tablet.
I have an iPad Pro and almost never use it.