Apple’s Best iPad (for Most People) Is Still 20% Off Before Prime Day Ends Tonight

Amazon Big Deal Days end tonight, Oct. 8, and until then, Lifehacker is sharing the best sales based on product reviews, comparisons, and price-tracking tools before it’s over.

If you’re in the market for an iPad, you have no shortage of options to choose from. Apple now sells some powerful iPads, with the same components you’d find in a Mac. But while all of Apple’s iPads are excellent in their own right, when it comes down to it, most of us don’t need the extra power, hardware, or features that come with these more expensive tablets. In fact, most of us would probably be perfectly suited to Apple’s entry iPad—appropriate called, iPad.

If that’s true for you, you’re in luck. For just a few more hours, you’re able to save 20% off Apple’s most recent iPad. Apple sells this tablet for $349, but during the final hours of October Prime Day, you can pick one up for $279.

Apple’s entry-level iPad doesn’t feel entry-level. The tablet comes with an 11-inch display with minimal edges. It fits right in alongside Apple’s other, more premium iPads, without the added price. You get a single 12MP camera on the back of the tablet, and a 12MP selfie camera on the front. In fact, the camera is placed on the landscape side of the iPad, rather than the portrait side as you might be used to. This makes it easier to frame yourself during video calls when the iPad is held in the same position you’d keep a laptop display.

Powering this iPad is the A16 chip, which is why some call this the iPad A16. That’s the same chip powering the iPhone 14 Pro and iPhone 15, and while it isn’t the most powerful hardware Apple includes in its iPads, it’s perfectly capable of running the apps you likely use on your tablet. Unless you’re looking to do some graphically-intensive work, or play some extremely demanding games, the A16 chip should handle iPadOS without issue.

While this iPad works great as-is, you can also add on some additional accessories. An Apple Pencil is a must for anyone who wants to use their iPad for art or for taking hand-written notes, while the Apple Magic Keyboard Folio turns the iPad into more of a laptop.

Really the only hitch I see with this iPad for most people is the storage size. This tablet only comes with 128GB of internal storage, which might fill up fast if you store a lot of photos, videos, and files on your device. If you need more storage, you can bump up to the 256GB, which is currently 16% off for Prime Day. ($379, down from $449.) If you know most of your data is in the cloud or accessible via streaming, you can probably get away with 128GB. But $379 isn’t a bad price to future-proof your iPad.

Looking for something else? Retailers like Walmart and Best Buy have Prime Day competition sales that are especially useful if you don’t have Amazon Prime.