Although Apple’s tablet lineup has undergone several shakeups over the last several years, we long considered the ninth-gen iPad to be the best budget iPad you could get. That changed when Apple dropped the price of the 10th-gen iPad to a more sensible $349 and discontinued its entry-level model. But the 2021 iPad remains a perfectly good slate, especially now that the base model with 64GB of storage is down to a new low of around $224 ($105 off) at Amazon, Walmart, and Best Buy.
As far as hardware is concerned, the ninth-gen iPad is very much a remnant of Apple’s former design language. The 10.2-inch tablet has a traditional iPad look with large bezels, a dedicated home button, and a Lightning port — not to mention a 3.5mm audio jack for using a pair of wired headphones.
Inside, you’ll find Apple’s aging A13 processor, which, despite first appearing in the iPhone 11 in 2019, still offers speedy performance when playing games, watching movies, surfing the web, and tackling all the usual things you might use a tablet for. It’s still beholden to the first-gen Apple Pencil and older accessories like the Smart Keyboard, yes, but given its age and price, it’s an understandable tradeoff.
If you’re concerned about support, rest assured that Apple’s last-gen iPad will be compatible with iPadOS 18 when it launches in the fall. It won’t support any of Apple’s forthcoming Apple Intelligence features, though, which require a newer iPad Pro or iPad Air model with an M1 chip or later. I guess the new calculator app will have to do.