Apple iPad 10th Gen review: A long-overdue design refresh!

Okay, it's been a while, but the vanilla iPad has been kept on the backburner for far, far too long as far as design changes come and go. No longer is this true with the iPad 10th Gen, which employs a design language that's much in line with the iPad Pro and iPad Air lineups. 

We're talking about uniform bezels all around that make the tablet look much more contemporary and modern, despite the fact that they still have a palpable thickness. The new FaceTime camera is tucked on one of the long bezels, so at least Apple has made the most out of the situation (and not resorted to a notch as on the latest MacBooks). 

Gone are the slightly curved lines at the back which greatly improved the ergonomics as the base iPad now features the same chamfered design that has been used on the more upscale iPads for years now. The non-laminated screen up front is encased in a premium-feeling aluminum unibody, which has all the essential Apple bells and whistles: volume buttons in the upper right side, dual loud speakers, and a power button at the top frame that also houses the Touch ID fingerprint scanner. Sadly, this redesign has marked the death of the 3.5mm audio jack from yet another Apple device.

And thanks to the new design, the iPad 10th Gen has a larger display fitted in a slightly more compact body, which is a definite win. Surely, you don't gain that much, but the combination between the larger new screen and the slimmer size of the new iPad is a great thing to have. However, as mentioned above, the screen is nor laminated, which means that there's some space between the screen itself and the glass on top. Pressing harder on the glass produces those iridescent ripples we've all seen. Not such a large issue, but still, far from the premium experience expected to have in late 2022. 

In terms of colors, Apple puts an end to the relatively bland color selection of the iPad 9the Gen, which was only available in only Silver and Space Gray. The new tablet is available in four colors, Silver, Blue, Pink, and Yellow, three of which are new for the lineup. 

The iPad 10th Gen comes with a 10.9-inch display (0.7 inches larger than last year) with a 2360 x 1640-pixel resolution and a 264ppi sharpness, which sadly isn't enough to label it as Retina, but Apple went ahead and named it Liquid Retina instead.

Let's get one thing out of the way—this iPad doesn't have a particularly exciting display. It's a non-laminated, not very bright LCD screen with mediocre contrast that runs at 60Hz and it's not excessively sharp, so it's a far cry from Apple's mini-LED displays on its more premium tablets, and light years away from OLED displays which are superior in almost any way.

And yet, True Tone is supported, colors look natural and the viewing angles are good, and while multimedia consumption probably won't give you much enjoyment, it's an okay display considering the price point. 

The iPad comes with a single wide-angle camera, a 12MP PDAF F1.8 shooter that's quite the improvement over the 8MP F2.4 camera found on its predecessor. The new iPad can also shoot 4K@60fps videos now, so it finally joins the Big Boys' Club. The rear camera offers a maximum of 5X digital zoom, while the camera app itself provides a shortcut to a 2X digital zoom option. How's the image quality? Well, it's okay, and there's nothing inherently wrong with it, but let's be honest, you'll only reach out for the camera app on the iPad 10th Gen if all your other gadgets are low on battery.

What's more interesting here is the new FaceTime camera, which despite the lack of hardware improvements, still supports the awesome Center Stage feature. That one comes in pretty handy for video calls as it keeps you in the center of the frame at all times. The selfie camera is positioned on the long landscape edge of the tablet, making FaceTime and other video calls look way, way more natural as the front camera is no longer askew to the side. 

While the new iPad Air 5 enjoys the M1 chip and the latest iPad Pro models get the mind-boggling M2 chipset, the regular iPad comes with neither. In fact, it doesn't even get last year's Apple A15 Bionic, but has to make do with a humbler chip, the Apple A14 Bionic. That's the same one  that powered the iPhone 12-series, including the iPhone 12 Pro and iPhone 12 Pro Max, so rest assured the new iPad is definitely not lacking in terms of performance. 

The iPad 10th Gen has also scored 5G support for the cellular model, which is definitely a big improvement over the humble LTE support of the previous iPad. The jump to Wi-Fi 6 is also a good thing to have, especially considering that you're much more likely to use the device at home, where a Wi-Fi network is usually the main connectivity method of choice. 

Equipped with a 28.6Wh battery, which should be similar in terms of capacity to the 28.65Wh batter in the iPad Pro 11" (2021) that has a capacity of 7,538mAh, the iPad 10th Gen is a pretty durable slate. You can easily expect it to last you two days of regular usage, like some web browsing, half an hour FaceTime call, and a few episodes of your favorite show. 

On the PhoneArena browsing battery test, which involves automated web surfing and scrolling over a Wi-Fi network at 200 nits of pre-set screen brightness, the iPad 10th Gen endured for 10 hours and 30 minutes, a rather respectable result. In our dedicated 3D gaming test, it lasted for six hours and forty minutes and actually outlasted the M1-powered iPad Pro 11-inch. Finally, in the video streaming test, the battery was good for less than seven hours, which is an acceptable albeit not ideal result.

With the included 20W USB-C charging brick, it takes the iPad 10th Gen two hours and twenty two minutes to get fully charged. That's enough time to watch Goodfellas, The Shining, or Forrest Gump, which should put things in perspective nicely. And yet, charging the tablet for an hour brings it up to around 50%, which is fast enough and should get you covered for a while. 

Yet another huge upgrade over the previous budget iPads is here – actual dual stereo speakers that are positioned on the correct opposite sides of the tablet. The old budget iPads did have dual "stereo" speakers too, but both were on the same side of the device, which kind of defeats the purpose.

Now that this iPad has gotten the iPad Air redesign, both speakers are finally on opposite sides, and thus can deliver a true stereo experience. And based on the iPad Air, or even the previous budget iPads, we can expect some of the best sound on any tablet on the market – loud, punchy, full, with even a good hint of bass. So, for audio consumption in particular, this iPad is hard to beat.

Now, the downside of this redesign is – there's no longer a 3.5mm headphone jack, which was still around on the previous budget iPads. But, let's be honest, most of you have likely moved on to wireless headphones a long time ago. It's hard not to, seeing as how a lot of mid-rangers, and nearly all flagship phones no longer have plugs for wired ones.