In this article, I give you my Apple iPad 6th Gen (2018) review with specs included. As the name suggests, this is the 2018 iPad, the 6th generation model,l and it’s a lot like the 2017 model- no surprise about this.
Two big changes here; first is the CPU moves up to the Apple A10 C, PU which is about 33% faster than the previous 2017 model.
For those who play games and want to use art tools like Procreate, particularly with bigger canvases, that does make a difference.
Also, it works with the Apple Pencil. This is just a slick wrap skin that I happen to have on this. This is an abnormal Apple Pencil here. So you don’t have to go into the Pro models; that’s kind of nice.
I know a lot of people wanted something that they can sketch on with a really good pencil or drawing experience, but the Pros were just too expensive,e and a lot of convertible laptops with Windows and pens are expensive too. So, now for $329 or $299 if you’re a kid, or you can get any kind of education on this kind,d you can get into the drawing experience. The only drawback is that the pencil is still $99; the educational discount on this one is $10, so it’s $89.

Now Logitech is gonna have the crayon, they call it, which is a more kid-friendly form factor; it’s a squat little pencil, and it’s gonna be 50 bucks,s so that’s nice, but that Logitech one doesn’t support pressure sensitivity. So for those of you who are using it for art, that’s probably not gonna be an option. I’m also not sure if it’s gonna be widely available or if they’re just gonna sell that directly in the schools.
The base iPad for 2018 starts at 329, like I said, $30 cheaper if you’re getting an educational discount. That’s 32 gigs of storage, and that’s the Wi-Fi only model.
It’s available in silver, space gray,y and gold. Nothing new or surprising there. Still weighs around a pound, and it’s pretty slim, though not as slim as the Pro model. It’s not a surprise. You can go up to 128 gigs of storage as the highest capacity. There are only two capacities available. That raises the price by $10,0, so then you’re looking at four hundred and twenty-nine dollars if you want to get it with Wi-Fi plus LTE; then you’re looking at the usual around 130 dollars up charger. So it’s 329 base, and then you go up to 459, so that’s a little bit of an expensive option,ption but that one is still available as well.
Again, if you want something higher than the base retina display resolution, you’re looking at the pro model, so this is 2048 by 1536 resolution, which is perfectly respectful of a resolution. It matches the Samsung Galaxy Tab S 3, for example, which also supports a pen but costs more money.
You gotta get that Apple A10 CPU, which is the same thing you would have in the iPhone 7. The previous 2017 model had the Apple A9 CP; we’re moving up to the A10. The Pro is at the 8th 10,x, which is a bit faster, and the latest generation iPhone 10 + 8 + 8 uses the A11.
What that means, eans as you can see in the benchmark comparison here for Geekbench 4 on screen, is that it’s faster, actually, than the iPhone 7 despite having pretty much the same CPU there, but not as fast as, say, the iPhone 10 or the Pro models.
Given the pricing and where that fits, that’s fine. Given the performance levels here, it’s fast enough to handle doing Procreate with large canvases. Yt’s fine for playing games, as you can see Punjiji mobile on screen; they’re playing awesome and sweet.
A lot of people use an iPad for a multimedia device and for a game-playing device, and that’s a nice CPU jump from last year’s model. I don’t think a lot of people with the 2017 model are gonna jump on this upgrade, unless you want the pencil; then there’s certainly a compelling difference there. If you really coveted the Pros but you couldn’t afford them, then this might be an option. Especially, you can do some kind of trade-in or sell your old thing on Craigslist, or whatever it is that’s sort of thing.
Typically, with iPads, the cameras you’re getting here are a couple of generations ago from whatever the top iPhone was. You have an 8-megapixel rear camera that shoots 1080p video. It has an F 2.4 lens that can do 120 frames per second slow motion as well.
You’ve got a 720p front 1.2 megapixel FaceTime HD camera on your front camera.
So, they’re decent enough cameras; they’re not show-stopping, the good camera, as but then again, ain how many of you do use your tablets for your main photo device anyway? way.
So obviously, the big selling point of this model for the previous models is the fact that it works with the Apple Pencil, as I said. It’s a perfectly wonderful note-taking experience. The Apple Pencil is one of my favorite solutions, and it’s great that it’s more affordable now,w other than the fact that the pencil itself is expensive.
So, if you need a note-taking device, this is fine. In fact,t this is better than Fi, Ne, and the only sorta drawback here is that this is not a laminator bondic last display, so there’s an air gap that means that it’s sort of like the glass looks like it’s a little bit above the actual display, so there’s a slight disconnect.
When you’re taking notes, it’s honest-to-goodness; it really doesn’t matter that much. When you’re doing art, it’s only ever so slightly distracting;g it makes for a less pretty display, but then again, this is not that more expensive model. I don’t find it that bad. Sure, you don’t know the ProMotion display,y which is Apple’s fancy word for the hundred twenty Hertz refresh rate, so the pencil looks like it’s even more immediate with less lag when you’re writing on,n but you know the first-generation iPad Pro has had 60 Hertz refresh displays like this too, and people were not complaining. Everybody thought it was pretty fast and pretty fluent.
So, for note-taking, this is fantastic,c and I can rest my hand on the screen. Palm rejection on the iPad iPad pro are actually better than on entering and Wacom 80s digitizers, which are the ones that are used in most Windows convertibles and tablets.
Now, one thing to note,e though, is that because this isn’t laminated glass, there is an air gap in there, so that means more noise. You can hear it even when you tap on the screen, but that’s not so much because your finger is a nice cushioning thing. When you do the pencil on the screen,n you can just listen to this. That’s pretty loud. Now imagine this in the classroom with 30 kids going clack clack clack clack. It’s gonna be like it’s gonna be noisy in that class, oom so well, that there is the drawback of having a lower-end display on the device.
Now this is Procreate, and this is a screen-resolution-sized canvas here, and it’s a really enjoyable and still very fluid experience here. Procreate is just a fantastic application if you want to do a drawing.
So here I’m using a 6b pencil and I’m gonna put in some shading on my mountains to be here so I’m using the tip of the pencil now to make my dark lines and if I turn it sideways there’s my shadows right there so you see you’ve got the same tilt capabilities that you would with an iPad pro which is pretty darn nice the same levels of pressure sensitivity it’s a fantastic thing.
And, in terms of multitasking in iOS 11, you want to say I want to have a picture of some mountains to help me look at. So we’ve got the multitasking thing going on here, and it works very well,l as I mentioned, and you’ve got an A10 CPU in here. The speed is good; it’s really, it’s quite nice,e honestly.
What they’ve done with iOS 11, 4 the iPads in particular, lar in terms of multitasking, king is just really. So there we’ve got all my programs, and I can switch between them. I’ve been playing PUBG mobile; you can see that it’s all good stuff.
So, yeah, you could say this isn’t the most exciting iPad release ever, but look at it, it still looks like the same old iPad from last year, and all that sort of thing, ng but I would say the pencil and the speed improvements are pretty reasonable.
For 329 bucks, you’re getting a lot of nice tablet here with the whole iOS ecosystem and experience,e and all the accessories that are available too.
I’m pretty positive about it. I can’t really say that I’ve got complaints about it, because if you want higher-end stuff, there is the more expensive iPad Pro model. I think it’s very fair what you’re getting for the money here.
Battery life so far seems to be about the same as the last generation, and it meets Apple’s claims. So what they say on their website actually is the truth, which is pretty nice and refreshing compared to a lot of other manufacturers.
As a laptop replacement,t you know this has been done and talked about again and again, and I’d leave it up to you as to whether you think this is a viable laptop replacement. I personally find that a little bit sm; all I still need my desktop programs and RAM,s but other people don’t. I mean, you’ve got Safari here,e you’ve got your full web browser, you’ve got an email client, and you’ve got mobile versions of Photoshop, op which are much pared down but still pretty decent.
Obviously, all the apples are sweet. I work sweet. They’re adding pencil-friendly features to this all the time as well, so if you want to do annotations or markup on your keynote presentations or in your pages, you can do that as well. You’ve got GarageBand, nd you can make your music.
There’s a lot of stuff you can do in this, even good iMovie to edit your movie footage with the A10 CPU; it’s perfectly capable, especially with 1080p video,o though this itself shoots.
So, that’s the 2018 iPad. Again, it’s the 6th generation for those of you who are counting, n,g, and for 329, it’s a really nice, right, just like the 2017 was, but this is even better because it’s faster, and since a lot of you out there, I think, are using these to play games, fast does make a difference.
Also, because Apple has done a very good job with multitasking in i, OS 11, making it easy to juggle applications back and forth, it’s nice if you can actually take advantage of that without it slowing down.
The two gigs are RAM, as said. Would it be nice to have more? I mean, it’s not a showstopper, but I know a lot of people like that, and that’s what the models are, obviously: if you want a better display, if you want higher performance, still more RAM, all that stuff, there are the iPad Pro models.
The most exciting thing about it and the whole reason why Apple attended this is an education product they could have touted as an art product or a note-taking product, but whatever the Pencil is. So you’ve got an awesome note-taking device, an awesome art device, and something that’s fun for education, too. As long as you can stand a classroom of people going,g you know, hold that long.
Apple iPad 6th Gen (2018)
-
Performance - 96%96%
-
Price - 95%95%
-
Value - 96%96%
