I couldn’t end 2023 without another iPad debacle. I already went through how I bought an iPad Pro 12.9 and iPad Pro 11 back in 2022. After the 2022 debacle, I ended up without an iPad, but reasonably satisfied. Then 2023 came around and things went wrong.
As part of my New Years’ resolution, I started reading again. The only problem was, English books are very expensive in Thailand. On top of that, English Indian books are very hard to find. To solve this problem, I bought a Kindle. All was good for a few months, till I felt like I wanted to read comic books & magazines. Of course you cannot do that on a kindle. So what does one do?
iPad Air (5th Gen) 64Gb
One day while walking through the mall, I saw a good deal on an iPad Air (5th Gen) & bought it. Things were OK for a while, I read both books and magazines on it, no problem. However, the poorly storage space (64Gb) and the 60Hz screen started nagging me. Especially when I switched from using my iPhone to the iPad, it felt really bad. I decided that it won’t do. My daughter’s 4 year old iPad was acting up, so I gave her my Air and started looking around.
iPad Pro 11 (4th Gen) 512Gb
The iPad Pro 11 was seemingly perfect. It addressed the storage and display refresh rate limitations of the Air. Weeks went by, with me oblivious to what’s coming next. And then I made a mistake of checking out iPads at the mall. Once I compared the iPad Pro 11 and iPad Pro 12.9 displays, it was game over for this iPad, too.
I hadn’t done my homework before buying this iPad. If I had, I would know that the iPad Pro 11 had a regular LCD screen which goes up to 600 nits. The iPad Pro 12.9 on the other hand, has a Mini LED display and the difference is mind blowing. The contrast and brightness were incomparable. And once I saw this, I couldn’t go back to the iPad Pro 11. It was outside the return window, so I sold it on Facebook Marketplace at a slight loss. I was lucky I got such a good deal.
iPad Pro 12.9 (6th Gen) 512Gb
The next logical step was to buy the iPad Pro 12.9. I chose to forget what happened last time and bought one from the Apple Store. The good news was, I couldn’t find anything wrong with it. I even went a long way towards getting used to its huge size and weight. Then I saw a deal on Studio 7 and I returned the iPad to Apple (The process took less than 10 mins).
iPad Pro 12.9 (5th Gen) 512Gb
The deal I saw was for an iPad Pro 12.9 (5th Gen) for less than what I paid for the last one. The kicker is, this was a 2Tb model. I couldn’t ever use the 2Tb, but the 1Tb/2Tb models do come with 16Gb RAM, too and appealed to me no end. I ended up saving money with the last transition, but didn’t lose much because the 5th Gen to 6th Gen upgrade was minor at best. I had second thoughts after buying this one, too and even contacted customer care to return it, but eventually slapped myself hard twice and stopped it. But after the holidays came and went and it didn’t even ship, I cancelled the order.
iPad Pro 12.9 (6th Gen) 512Gb
Eventually, I gave up and went back to the Apple Store and bought the same iPad I bought before the last one, but this time in Silver colour.
Analysis
After the dust settled, I tried to think about why this happens to me and why specifically only with iPads. Why did I go through 7 iPads in a span of 10 months? My iPhone is more than a year old and I felt no yearning to upgrade when the iPhone 15 Pro came out. My AirPods Pro lasted 4 years before I had to change them because they died. My Apple Watch is 2 generations old and the last one lasted 4 generations. I have never wanted a Mac or a MacBook. This literally doesn’t happen to me for anything except the iPad.
Eventually, I realised it is because I am looking for a single device to do all of the below
- Read books
- Read comics, magazines & newspapers
- Use as a PC for blogging & budgeting on Buxfer
- Making FaceTime calls
- Watching TV shows when the TV is occupied or when I am out
The fact is, there’s no one device which fulfils all the above criteria perfectly.
- The Kindle is good for 1 but not any of the others.
- The iPad Air and Pro 11 are good for 1 & 4 but not for 2, 3 or 5.
- The iPad Pro 12.9 is good for 2, 3, 4 & 5, but too big and heavy for 1.
- A MacBook is good for 3 & 4, but not 1, 2 or 5.
Eventually, I decided to compromise and use a Kindle to read books and an iPad Pro 12.9 to do everything else.
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