The iPad 8th generation looks almost identical to the iPad 9, with the same screen and camera. At around $250 in the United States, it hasn’t gone down quite as much as expected for an older tablet. It’s cheaper used or refurbished, but considering the newer iPad 9 is just a little bit more or sometimes the same price, it might be difficult to decide if the iPad 8 is still worth it in 2023.
When it was first released back in 2020, you only had the option of 32 gigabytes or 128 for storage, so it’s not going to be the best out there as far as storage options. On the other hand, it has a 10.2-inch 2160 by 1620 resolution that offers pretty good viewing angles and enough brightness at 500 nits. Though there are big black bars when watching YouTube videos, you can now zoom in where you couldn’t do that when this iPad first came out. The screen quality is going to be just as good on this iPad as the iPad 9.
The iPad 8 also has an 8827 milliamp hour size battery, which lasted about six hours in a battery drain test with 100 screen brightness. You should be able to get a couple of days of normal usage, especially if you turn the screen brightness down. However, this iPad does take a long time to charge back up, about three hours.
Currently on iPad OS 16.4, the iPad 8 is expected to get more updates, probably a couple of years. You can use the first-gen apple pencil, which comes in handy for taking notes, drawing, or just moving around the software. You also get the fingerprint scanner or touch ID right there on the front of the iPad, which is pretty convenient. You can also use swipe gestures similar to newer iPads as well.
Performance-wise, the iPad 8 is actually still pretty good compared to other budget tablets. It has 12.96 on single-core score and 2706 for multi-core scores, which still feels pretty snappy and has good performance, especially for a tablet that came out three years ago. Even when playing games like pubg mobile, it’s hard to tell that this is an older iPad.
However, one area that’s not going to be the best out there is the cameras. The iPad 8 only has an 8-megapixel rear-facing camera and 1.2-megapixel for the front-facing camera, so you can only record up to 1080p resolution for video. It’s not a huge deal, but just keep in mind that you don’t get 4K resolution for video recording on here.
Overall, the iPad 8 is surprisingly still pretty good, with better-than-expected performance and good screen quality. It holds its own when compared to other tablets in this category even in 2023. The only thing that makes it hard to recommend this iPad is the iPad 9, which is going to get longer software support and has slightly better specs for about the same price.