One of the products that we are likely to see at next week’s announcements is an updated base iPad. As you may know, the iPad has been an incredible value for most people, bringing many of the latest iPadOS features at such an affordable price. Other than the rumored chip upgrade, there haven’t been any other rumors for this base iPad. Nevertheless, here are all the specs and details I’d expect for this next iPad.
Design/Display
Starting with the display, the iPad should continue to feature the same 11-inch Liquid Retina display as the current iPad. (It’s technically 10.9 inches, but Apple likes to round this number up.) To further differentiate this iPad from its higher-end models, I expect this display not to be laminated and will continue to support only sRGB color gamut (no P3 wide color here).
We shouldn’t expect any design changes for this iPad, especially if Apple wants to keep costs down. This means the next iPad should have the same design as the current iPad. One thing I would love to see is a new palette of colors. The current iPad comes in silver, blue, yellow, and pink – the same colors as the 10th-generation iPad from 2022. Since we have the same colors for two generations, it would make sense for Apple to update the color options, potentially to match those of the long-rumored entry-level MacBook, which is expected to come in at least light yellow, light green, and blue. This would also give Apple the opportunity to come up with a new marketing wallpaper for those iPads, particularly one that’s more dynamic (e.g., it could have subtle animations when you swipe up to go to the Home Screen).
Chip
The current iPad is powered by the A16 chip, which has 6GB of memory. Initial rumors suggested that the next iPad would feature the A19 chip; however, recent rumors suggested that it would be powered by the previous-generation A18 chip instead. Again, this would make sense in order to keep costs down. Keep in mind that the A16 chip on the current iPad is actually a binned variant, so I wouldn’t be surprised if the next iPad features the A18 chip that’s binned in some way. It’s possible that the next iPad will use the same variant of the A18 chip as that of the iPhone 16e (with a 4-core GPU instead of a 5-core GPU), but we’ll see.
Since the A18 chip has 8GB of memory, which is the minimum requirement to support Apple Intelligence, this will make the first (base) iPad ever to support Apple Intelligence. This would finally standardize Apple Intelligence across all of its iPad, iPhone, and Mac lineups.
Additionally, bringing the A18 chip will enable support for hardware-accelerated ray tracing and mesh shading for the first time ever on a base iPad. So with more memory and better graphics support, this iPad will have such a major improvement in Apple Silicon.
I/O and Connectivity
The current iPad has a USB-C port that’s limited to just USB 2.0 speeds (up to 480 Mb/s), so given that Apple continues to reserve faster USB-C ports on its higher-end iPhones and iPads, I’d expect the next iPad to have the same limitation.
The latest iPad Pro with the M5 chip features two Apple’s own additional silicon for connectivity: the N1 networking chip and the C2 cellular modem, so it’s possible that those two silicons will arrive in the next base iPad. However, since the current iPad has only Wi-Fi 6 (not the faster Wi-Fi 6e speeds), I wouldn’t get my hopes up to see both of them in the upcoming model.
Assessories
Since I expect this iPad to have the same design as the current A16 model, the upcoming model will likely continue to work with just the two-piece Magic Keyboard Folio that’s compatible with the 10th-generation model and the A16 model.
Additionally, I don’t see support for the Apple Pencil Pro coming to the base iPad anytime soon, as that’s reserved for the higher-end iPads. Therefore, the updated iPad will likely still be compatible with both the Apple Pencil (USB-C) and the Apple Pencil (1st generation) (you’d need to use some adapter for pairing/charging). I know it’d sound strange for Apple to keep such an outdated accessory around, but it would make sense in the education market.
Price
Back in May 2024, when Apple introduced the M2 iPad Air and M4 iPad Pro, Apple dropped the starting price of the base iPad (which started at 64GB of storage) from $449 to $349. When Apple updated that iPad with the A16 chip back in March 2025, it doubled the starting storage to 128GB while keeping the same starting price as before.
Therefore, I’d expect this iPad to still start at the same $349 starting price with the same default storage. I believe the next base iPad will continue to have the same storage options as the current model.
Conclusion
The base iPad has been an incredible value, and with the rumored performance improvements in Apple silicon, Apple will clearly market Apple Intelligence as the biggest feature for this base iPad, and it will continue to be the best iPad for the rest of us.
