Apple’s iPad, which is just an iPad without an Air or Pro attached, is its most attractive tablet due to its affordable starting price of $349, but if you’re thinking of buying one, you should wait.
Apple refreshed the iPad in March 2025, so it’s over a year old. That’s reason enough not to buy when a new model is on the horizon, but this year there’s even more to lose by buying now.
The iPad 2025 has an A16 chip inside that does not support Apple Intelligence. It lacks features like Writing Tools, Image Playground, Cleanup, Live Translation, Notification Summaries, Smart Reply, Priority Messages in Mail, Visual Intelligence, and several other AI-related tools.
Apple Intelligence is still new, so it doesn’t seem like a big deal to miss out on these capabilities, but not having access to them is going to become more and more of an issue as Apple continues to implement new AI features.
The rumors
The iPad A16 will likely feel obsolete in a year or two due to the feature set it won’t have access to.
The next iPad will likely feature the A18 chip, and the A18 supports Apple Intelligence. It will offer faster performance, more RAM, and most importantly, future-proofing and access to the AI features Apple is investing in.
Waiting for the next iPad will require a little patience, because at the moment we don’t know when it will arrive. Updating the iPad alongside the low-cost iPhone 17e would have made sense, but that didn’t happen. A new entry-level iPad won’t arrive in the first half of 2026, so we’ll probably wait until September or October.
BloombergMark Gurman of , said in March that an updated low-cost iPad was “ready to go” and “still coming this year.” Even though the wait may take several months, we think it’s worth waiting for the next iPad instead of buying it now because of the upgrade that comes with Apple Intelligence support.