Unboxing Apple's Newest iPad (8th Generation) | Mashable By Mashable

Hey everyone, it's Brenda, stroller, washables tech reporter, and today we are going to unbox apple's, 8th generation iPad. We are going to unwrap it see what's inside and go through. Some specs' apple also sent me the Apple Pencil and the smart keyboard, since this iPad is compatible with both. So let's check it out, let's unwrap this bad boy, so I have a 12.9-inch iPad Pro. That was the last one I used. So this is gonna, be nice and small.

Let's see what else is inside um we got. You know the standard apple stuff. Okay, we have a charging brick and a charging cable, USB c to lightning. So actually it's the iPad Air that got switched to USB instead of lightning, so the 8th gen still keeps that lightning port um complete with the charging, brick and cable. So, let's get into this ooh.

This is probably going going to look super satisfying. If I do it correctly, that was the least aesthetically pleasing way to do that. So here we go. This is the eighth gen iPad camera on the back FaceTime camera on the front, some pretty thick bezels, let's power it on. While this is getting set up, let's go through the specs.

We have a 10.2 inch retina display here with some pretty thick bezels um compared to the iPad Air that was recently announced alongside this one. That's literally all screen it's a little distracting, but you know it does come with touch ID which I personally really like over face ID, because your fingerprint is just always there. It doesn't need special lighting. I'm going to set that up later. Okay, all right, we're in okay, cool, perfect, wonderful, touch, I'd button at the bottom right here, which feels so weird again.

I liked the touch ID on the iPhone SE. I like it on the 8th, gen iPad. It's not something that I find is like. I mean it's outdated, but it works. Of course, it certainly is a trade-off as far as you know, having the all screen display, but that's fine, especially because this eighth gen iPad isn't for everyone um which we'll get to in a second.

This is the gray. The space gray model, it also comes in silver and gold. I mean the space gray is fine, probably would have gone for the gold myself, but we can look past it. You have the headphone jack up top, which is nice that they kept the headphone jack in a rarity, and we have the speakers at the bottom and the lightning porch um on the side. You have your volume rocker, and that is about it for what you'll find as far as those buttons go.

Okay. Next, let's talk about the changes from the last generation model um that is particularly in the chip set, the 7th generation iPad featured in a 10 bionic processor. This one comes with an a12 which is a fairly significant upgrade, given that that's the same chip, that's powering the iPhone 10s, so a bit of a jump um as far as processing power goes in comparison to last year's model. It also means that, with this a12 chip, this is going to last. You are a lot longer because it'll be included in iPadOS updates to come as far as other specs go, there's really nothing different from its predecessor.

It still has the eight megapixel rear camera on the back and then a 1.2 megapixel front facing face time, HD camera as they call it um, so really no changes there. The outside in general, is just not different at all, so it's really on the inside. It's that chipset that you'd essentially be upgrading for um. That is, if you have either the last gen model or prior to that, and you know you're obviously feeling like it's on its last legs, then it would be a good idea to upgrade. Otherwise, if your iPad is running just fine, there's really no reason why um, you should opt for this one.

Just like the 7th gen version. It is compatible with Apple Pencil and the smart keyboard, but I do want to get into some things that you can do with it using iPadOS 14 specifically note-taking. So let me unbox this, let's unbox the Apple Pencil take that out. So I would say that if you are in the market for an iPad, whether that is an upgrade or you are just looking for an affordable, uh tablet, then you really can't go wrong with this one. It's not the most flashy, especially in comparison to the iPad Air and then also the iPad Pro, but this one just brings it back to the basics.

With more power is really what it comes down to. Let's go into notes so with the new iPadOS there is. This feature called scribble. I don't even know if the Apple Pencil is connected. I don't think it is there we go okay.

So this is that scribble feature that I was talking about. So you can handwrite anything you want, and then it'll convert it into text. So here I am in the notes: app um. Let's write a sentence, I'm using the eighth gen iPad, okay, clearly, okay, maybe numbers are a little difficult. Oh, there we go.

Maybe it's just my handwriting that sucks. Let's try that one again, I'm using the eighth gen iPad. Well, all right! I mean this isn't a review, but you're, seeing this in real time, regardless it's still nice to use. Maybe if you're I don't know just taking notes, really superfast, because I know that even when I type I misspell some words. So even if you are the type that likes to handwrite your notes, obviously it's not that spot on at the moment.

I will continue to look into that to see if that's a real thing, but as far as most of the words go, oh yep see that wasn't yeah. Well, it's clearly got some work to do, but you get the gist of it. So you can also delete words. My name is Brenda okay. So if you want to take a word out, you can just scribble it out, and it's gone.

So that's pretty cool okay, so another thing you can do is cross it out and then either copy and paste. Look it up if you want to know the definition of it. Another thing that you can do is when you go into safari. If you want to access a specific website, you no longer have to type it out. You can just type it, and then you end up on Mashable.

My Wi-Fi is a little slow right now, but you can tell that it managed to pick up on that. Let's also open up the smart keyboard- oh logical, so again, um to increase the productivity on this. It is also compatible with apple's smart keyboard. So it's essentially as close to a laptop as you'll get with this basic iPad. So now we're going to attach it here, close it and then, when we want to open it like, so we essentially clip it in and there you go now that we have the keyboard set up.

I can really use it like any laptop. So again, um, let's go into mashable. com, and here we are so yeah. There aren't any like flashy things about this: 8th gen, iPad, um apple, just literally added a new processor- and you know some new features with iPadOS and called it a day. But I would say that, essentially, this is for the new iPad user or somebody that just wants something basic within the Apple ecosystem and as far as price and availability goes, the 8th, gen iPad is currently on pre-order, starting at 329 for the 32 gigabyte version.

Then, obviously, if you want the 128 gigabytes, that's going to be an increase in price, and it will go officially on sale. This Friday be sure to continue to check back on mashable. com for all things. Tech related, including full reviews of some of the new products that apple recently announced.

Source : Mashable