Which One Should I Buy?

While it’s going to depend on your needs, we generally still think the iPad Air offers better value, since it has a current generation A12 CPU, a better display, and more storage, plus there’s already a wealth of existing accessories on the market to choose from. Of course, if you’re on a budget, or just don’t want to spend that much on an iPad for your kids, Apple’s entry-level model comes in at a very appealing price.

If you’re shopping for an iPad in this class, however, the bigger question is whether the seventh-generation iPad is actually worth it. This is an incremental upgrade at best over last year’s sixth-generation model, adding only three major benefits — a display that’s 0.5 inches larger, Apple’s Smart Connector, and gigabit LTE — but a lot more has remained unchanged: it still contains the same A10 CPU, the same quality screen, the exact same cameras, the same Apple Pencil support, and it comes in the same capacities.

While the slightly larger screen is nice, that’s probably the only real practical benefit. Since few other manufacturers ever supported the Smart Connector, this addition is really useful only for connecting Apple’s own Smart Keyboard, which sells for almost half the price of the iPad itself — and considerably more than the much wider selection of Bluetooth keyboards that are available and still compatible with all recent iPad models.

We think that for a lot of people, the release of the seventh-generation iPad will be most useful in driving down the price of last year’s sixth-generation model, making it even more affordable for all of those users who are considering Apple’s entry-level iPad primarily for its price tag.