iPad 8 (2020) — Hands-On! By Rene Ritchie

- It's just the best damn deal in tech. Every damn year. Gotta stop saying damn so much. Sponsored by Ting. I'm Rene Ritchie and this is the brand new iPad 8th generation. Let's unbox it.

Shall we? This is the OG smart keyboard. The original one. The one that debuted with the original iPad Pro. And then moved on to the 10.5 inch iPad Pro. And then to the humble but pretty damn impressive iPad adjectiveless.

And inside you have your perfunctory design by Apple in California. No stickers, alas. File them. Man, (inaudible). All protected in... Plastic.

And same coating on the outside that yes, it does get really smudgy. It does get really finger printy. But I found you can wipe it down really well. And I don't know if that's the best trade off. But it's a workable trade off.

Apple Pencil. This also is the OG pencil. The one that debuted with the OG iPad Pro. And what I love about Apple with the iPad lineup is they just keep pushing the more advanced technologies. The technologies that debut with the more powerful, with the more expensive models.

They just keep pushing that down and down. Now all the way down to the entry level iPad. Designed by Apple in California but this time with a spare pencil tip. Don't throw that away. You have the tip that you can change.

And the back that pops off so that you can charge it. And yeah, everybody laughs at this. I laugh at this. When you see an array of them at school, you laugh at this. But I will say it has absolutely saved me in coffee shops, on airplanes, back when those were still a thing.

And I did run out of power on my Apple Pencil. And all I had to do was stick it in my iPad for a minute or so and I can just keep on drawing. Keep on working. This is a 128 gigabyte iPad 8th generation wifi and cellular in space gray. Designed by Apple in California.

And this time you have your full stack. Your tips and tricks. Multilingual, your warranty and other technical information. Your SIM card tool. And yeah, not space gray but stickers.

In the box you have a lightning to USBC cable. Yeah, lightning to USBC cable. That's new. And the reason for it is that you have this new 18 watt charger. The same kind that came with the iPhone Pro last year.

And while Apple has announced that they're removing chargers from some boxes namely, Apple watch boxes. You still get a nice beefy charger right in here. Now this has Touch ID, of course. So that's good news if you wear a mask. Bad news if you wear gloves.

And you just set it up as normal. It's not the top button style... Touch ID of the new iPad Air. This is traditional OG home button, Touch ID. And yeah, looks like an iPad.

Traditional iPad. It's got the traditional bezels along the top and bottom particularly. It's got the home button. It's got the RF transparent wifi and cellular panel across the back. And yeah, this when I'm a broken record and just say I wish the iPad had a better camera.

And I say that fully realizing that this is the lowest cost, lower price that I ever that an iPad would be. Entry level model. But I'm just a camera nerd. I want good, great, evened cameras on everything. But there is one huge, huge difference.

Well, a tiny difference. Apple's A12 processor. That's the processor that was in last year's iPad Air. And the processor that just recently was powering the iPhone XS and iPhone XR. And that means it blows the pants off of not only every tablet in it's price range, but a slew of popular computers, competing tablets and just other devices in general.

It's fabricated on Taiwan's semiconductor manufacturing seven nanometer process. So, not the latest, greatest five nanometer process that the iPad Air debuted just this week. And presumably we'll be going to the iPhone 12 later this year. But seven nanometers is the real deal. It is as good as almost every other device is getting these days.

So yeah, for this year, maybe next year. It's gonna be overpowered. But then for the next few years while it's still getting updates it's gonna be powerful enough to run those updates without slowing down too much. Without stammering or stuttering too much. Maintaining as good as an experience as possible.

So you can use it for as long as possible. And I'll just take this opportunity as we're entering silly season to remind everyone that benchmarks really measure three things. One is the synthetic performance of the salicin. Two is the quality and granularity of the benchmark tool itself. And three is the person using it's ability to distinguish between those two things.

To pair an Apple Pencil with an iPad, plug it in, tap pair. And you're good to go. This is one of Apple's brand new features with iPad OS 14 and that is Scribble. It just gives you the ability to write on your iPad as though it were paper. And just have machine learning figure it out.

Yeah, I type. I barely written more than a check in the last five years. This generation iPad may not have all the fancy technologies in it. It may not have 120 hertz. Adaptive refresh and response rates.

Like the iPad Pro. And it may not have the incredibly small latency of the Apple Pencil 2. Nevermind the inductive charging. But it's always the artist and never the tool. And this still provides a really fantastic... Drawing experience.

At so much less... Cost. That if you're just looking to get in to using the iPad, using the Apple Pencil. Again... It's just the best damn deal in tech.

And if you don't believe me, believe the Batman. And if you're drawing shapes for a diagram and you pause rather than just continuing, it'll even use machine learning to fix your sloppy apps sketches and turn them in to very professional looking objects. Alas you can't store the Apple Pencil on the side like you can the 2nd generation. But, pencil case. If drawing is not your thing, you have the original smart connector and you can just magnetically attach it to the keyboard.

And then instead of drawing up a storm you can type one out. And yeah the magic keyboard is really fancy and has built in track pad. And basically turns your iPad in to a quasi MacBook. But I still have a lot of fondness for just how light, how portable, how nice this original origami style keyboard feels. And if you like the mouse or trackpad with iPad OS, you can just attach one and mouse or trackpad you.

So that's it. An ultra quick look at Apple's ultra low cost entry level iPad. But of course, I'm gonna go deeper in to this. I'm gonna work on a full review. So let me know any questions that you might have in the comments.

And make sure you hit the subscribe button and bell. So you don't miss it when the review goes live. And regardless of which iPad you wanna get. Ting is just a great way to save some money. So you can afford all the one's you really need.

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And since you're watching this video, you can get a 25 dollar service credit to try Ting out. Just bring your own phone. Bring your own number if you want to. Just go to rene. ting.

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ting. com or click the link in the description and start saving with Ting. And clicking on that link really helps out the channel. To learn more about absolutely everything Apples announcing this Fall, just click the playlist above. I'm gonna go through all of it.

Separate what you need to get from what you wanna forget. Just click the playlist above and I'll see you next video.

Source : Rene Ritchie