Apple iPad (2022) review: A long-overdue design upgrade

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Apple iPad 10th Gen Intro

After years and years of getting left behind from all the fun features and seemingly always getting the short stick, the standard iPad finally received some love in late 2022. Without much fanfare, Apple gave its essential slate a pretty big design makeover and erased years and years of reusing the same general design language that is, frankly said, quite outdated these days.

Instead, the new iPad 10th Gen scores slimmer bezels all around, larger display, a much faster chipset and better performance, a USB Type-C port at the bottom (finally!), a new landscape FaceTime camera, 5G support, Wi-Fi 6, and more. Quite the extensive list of novel features in comparison with the iPad 9th Gen, but how do these compare to the most important aspect of the affordable iPad—its price?

Well, in hindsight we should have probably put "affordable" in inverted commas as the price of the iPad 10th Gen has increased a lot. With a starting price of $449 for the base 64GB Wi-Fi model and topping up at an incredible $749 for the 256GB cellular model, which delves into iPad Air and iPad Pro territory, the standard iPad is now harder to recommend as an affordable slate. Apple still selling the previous generation isn't helping the case of the new iPad 10th Gen either.


What’s new about the device

  • Refreshed design
  • Larger display
  • Touch ID embedded in the power button
  • USB Type-C
  • Apple A14 Bionic
  • Landscape FaceTime camera
  • 5G and Wi-Fi 6 support

Apple iPad 10th Gen Unboxing


Inside the iPad 10th Gen box, you'll find the tablet itself, your usual booklets and Apple stickers (two of them here), a 20W USB-C wall charger, and a braided USB-C-to-USB-C cable that's mostly similar to the one you'd find in the Apple Watch Ultra box. It's great to see that Apple hasn't decided to spare its tablets from the essential charging accessory.


Okay, it's been a while, but the vanilla iPad has been kept on the backburner for 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 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).