Apple has just announced the 11th generation iPad, over two years after its last hardware refresh.

This iPad receives a sizable performance boost by upgrading from the A14 Bionic to the A16 Bionic chip. It had long been assumed this iPad would receive the A17 Pro chip for Apple Intelligence support, but Apple has seemingly prioritized price point over capability. Odd.

The iPad 11 retains the same design and colors as its predecessor, which isn’t surprising given the redesign the iPad 10 received.

Unfortunately, the Apple Pencil situation has not changed from the iPad 10th generation. This model supports the 1st generation Apple Pencil and the Apple Pencil (USB-C), but not the new Apple Pencil Pro.

There’s no mention of the cellular model including Apple new C1 chip, but I guess we’ll need to wait for a teardown to be sure.

The 11th-generation iPad retails for the same $349 as the previous model, but now starts at a very welcome 128 GB of storage instead of the miserly 64 GB from before.The new iPad will be available on March 12.

Link: Apple Newsroom (bottom of the page)

Link: Apple.com