Deep down, I’m hoping Apple doesn’t become one of those brands that’s always “on sale,” a desperation-red sign hanging in the Apple store window screaming, “Please, we swear we’re not only for well-off people.”

That appears to be the direction Apple has taken over the past year. Mere weeks after the 11th-generation iPad was released in March 2025, many retailers slashed the already slim price by $50, bringing it down to a very reasonable $299.

I’ve been keeping an eye on this deal ever since, and aside from a few brief instances where it briefly rose to $319 before returning to $299, Apple’s latest entry-level iPad has remained on a permanent sale.

While that means you shouldn’t feel pressured to jump on this deal if you’re on the fence over getting a new iPad, it’s still a good deal, as Apple’s cheapest iPad is the one most suitable for almost everybody.

Enough tablet for most users

The 11th-generation iPad is sometimes referred to as the A16 iPad or iPad (A16). That refers to the A16 chip within, an Apple-designed smartphone chip featured in the iPhone 14 Pro and 14 Pro Max, as well as the iPhone 15 and 15 Plus.

It may be Apple’s most inexpensive iPad (not the $469 iPad Mini), but as I wrote in a comparison of it and the iPad Air M3, “(the iPad A16) isn’t cheap.” It’s more than enough tablet for the most common tasks for which people use their tablets.

You don’t need to drop $899 on an iPad Pro unless you’re engaged in tasks that require fairly heavy processing, such as photo editing or creating digital art, for which Apple Pencil Pro support would be beneficial.

Browsing the internet, streaming movies, reading ebooks, checking email, and hopping on FaceTime are all relatively lightweight tasks, and the 11th-gen iPad is more than up to the job.