Prime Day deals have just given me the perfect excuse to upgrade my aging iPad, and bring me one step closer to the Lightning-free future I’ve been dreaming about since the early days of USB-C. All because Amazon has knocked a crazy amount of money off the cheapest iPad you can buy.
Right now you can pick up the iPad (10th generation) for as little as $275 at Amazon with the help of a coupon. Not only is that $75 off the usual retail price, it’s also $50 less than the lowest price we’ve seen so far. You just have to make sure you get the right color, because each model has a different discount — and the best savings can only be had if you’re happy with either yellow or silver.
If you’re more a fan of blue or pink, then you’ll need to resign yourself to not being able to save quite as much money. Amazon is currently selling the pink iPad 10th gen for $277, $3 more than yellow or silver, while the blue model is $5 more expensive at $279. Which isn’t a lot of money, but it may be enough to make you reconsider your priorities.
For me, I was quite happy picking up the boring silver version of the iPad 10th gen — and it is the perfect replacement for the 7th gen iPad I first purchased back in 2019. I’m not the kind of person that uses their iPad all that often — only using it for streaming, handwritten notes and occasionally as an e-reader. Despite its age, upgrading was never a priority.
But recently I’ve been having storage issues, which is bound to happen when you have 32GB of space and over a third of that is taken up by iPadOS and other system settings. Thankfully the new model has 64GB by default, and while that still isn’t a whole lot of space it’s going to be pretty liberating.
The hefty discount was just the push I needed to finally make the switch. Sure there may be an iPad 11th generation coming later this year, and the 10th gen model may get a price cut, but this discount was too good to pass up. Especially since the iPad 9 from 2021 isn’t that much cheaper — just $25 less. I’m willing to sacrifice $25 to upgrade my iPad a few months early. Especially since the newer model has a USB-C port.
As an Android user, finally having an iPad with USB-C is something I’m very much looking forward to. Not that USB-C really offers any tangible benefits to the iPad itself, considering there’s no upgraded charging or data transfer speeds, but mainly because it’s one less thing that needs a Lightning cable to recharge. And considering the state of my Lightning cable, the day I get to completely ditch the connector can’t come soon enough.
But that would require spending another $69 to replace my stylus — an original model LG crayon. So I’m still mulling over whether I want to take advantage of the fact Prime Day has knocked $10 off the price of the Apple Pencil with USB-C. Who knows, maybe Black Friday will offer a more enticing discount.
If you’re not interested in an entry-level iPad, be sure to check out our list of the best Prime Day iPad deals. Or, if you’d rather a tablet made by someone other than Apple, we’ve rounded up the best Prime Day tablet deals as well. Of course there are plenty of other non-tablet deals out there, and we’ve rounded up the best in our main Prime Day deals page.
