Artist Review: iPad 11 (2025)

The 11th gen iPad was launched in March 2025 together with the M3 iPad Air. It has been more than two years since the iPad 10 was released in October 2022.

It was easy not to recommend the iPad 10 because Apple increased the price from USD 329 to 449 for a tablet with obsolete specifications on the launch day.

Thankfully with the iPad 11, Apple has reduced the price from USD 449 to USD 349. So even though the A16 processor is already 2-years old, at least the price is now lower more reasonable.

The upgrades with the 11th gen are incremental:

• A16 Bionic chip from A14. Same chip used in the iPhone 14 Pros (Sep 2022)
• 6GB RAM from 4GB
• 128GB storage from 64GB

The most significant upgrade is the increase in storage capacity. 64GB of storage is miserably small because iPadOS can take up to 20GB. Having 128GB now is much better, but for creating art I would still recommend upgrading to 256GB which cost an extra USD 100.

Price

The LTE cellular models cost USD 150 more.

Specifications

Video review

Bottom line: Consider a refurbished iPad Air too

If you're fine with 128GB storage, then the iPad 11 may actually provide enough value. But if you have to upgrade storage to 256GB, the USD 449 price is quite close to a USD 499 refurbished iPad Air 5 (2022) which can get you

• 8GB RAM
• 256GB storage
• M1 processor
• Apple Pencil 2 support
• Laminated display with better colour support
• Anti-reflective coating
• Ability to use Apple Stage Manager on an external display

It is definitely worth the extra USD 50 to upgrade to the iPad Air which is a substantially better tablet. The M1 processor and 8GB RAM is just gonna give you more mileage in the long run. And having an Apple Pencil that attaches to the side of the tablet for charging is extremely convenient.

The iPad 11 is only worth considering if you cannot find a refurbished iPad Air 5 (2022).

Things included

• Tablet
• 20W USB-C charger (depends on country)
• USB-C to USB-C charging cable
• Quick start guide

Apple Pencil (1st gen) is sold separately.

Design

Design of the iPad 11 is almost a copy of the iPad Pro 2018 except it's thicker. It's a good looking design with the thin bezels, rounded corners for the body and LCD, flat sides, beveled edges.

There's a 12MP landscape camera with auto-brightness that works quite effectively.

The power button has a built-in fingerprint scanner that works fast and effectively. Two sets of speaker grilles are located at the top.

Two more sets of speaker grilles are located at the bottom. This tablet has four sets of speaker grilles but only two speakers. When the tablet is held horizontally with the power button at the top, the sound comes out from the bottom two speaker, and those speakers can be covered by your hands.

Sound quality is good. Audio from the two speakers are loud, clear and has decent amount of surround.

Pogo pin connectors for the Apple keyboard case are located at the bottom. The thickness is 7mm vs the iPad Air's 6.1mm and the iPad Pro's 5.3mm. Sometimes I wonder if the extra thickness is due to the gap from the non-laminated display.

Weight of the tablet is 477g. That's not too heavy for an 11-inch tablet. Overall, this is a reasonably portable tablet. The size makes it easy to handle with one hand.

The USB-C port supports USB 3.1 gen 2 transfer speed (10Gbps), 30W charging and video output.

Design on the matte textured metal back is clean without any labels. The rear camera is also 12MP and there's no flash light.

Colours available are blue, pink, yellow and silver.

Back of the tablet is surprising clean without any labels.

Display

The 11-inch LCD display has 2360 x 1640 resolution with 60Hz refresh rate. Brightness is up to 500 nits.

The display is said to support 100% sRGB instead of the wider P3 colour space supported by the iPad Air and iPad Pro.

The display is very glossy and reflective as it does not have the anti-reflective coating found on the iPad mini, iPad Air and iPad Pro.

The display is not laminated so there's a small gap between the LCD and the surface of the glass. When drawing or writing, there's a gap between the line and the pen tip. So there's parallax but it's not really an issue on an 11-inch display compared to a larger display.

The laminated display would make a hollow sound whenever the pen tip hits the glass surface. That's one thing I don't like. It is possible to buy softer pen tips from other companies.

Performance

Apple A16 chip may be two years old but it's still powerful for general purpose work in 2025. Actually, it's more powerful compared to the Samsung Tab S10 FE which was released in 2025.

If you have the intention to upgrade the storage to 256GB, do consider the refurbished M1 iPad Air with the significantly more powerful processor.

6GB RAM seems sufficient for multi-tasking.

Below are the number of layers you can get for an A4 sized 300 DPI canvas in Procreate.

OS and software

I tested the tablet with iPadOS 18.5, and Apple will be releasing iPadOS 26 soon. The current iPadOS can feel quite limiting at times so hopefully the next version will provide more features and utility. I don't want to waste too much time talking about what it cannot do.

Apple is great at providing many years of OS updates. My iPad Pro 2018 still receives updates in 2025.

If you use a Mac, you can use SideCar which can turn your iPad Air into an external display. Mac users can also AirDrop to share files easily. If you use a Windows computer, you can use LocalSend for sharing files, and third party wireless display apps.

For backup options, you can use either iCloud (monthly subscription), a Mac or Windows computer (requires iTunes software). iCloud is a good backup option because it provides 100% backup automatically. Manual backup to a computer requires discipline.

There are many wonderful and capable drawing apps available from the Apple App Store. There are also graphic design apps that handle layout, typography and vector. For video editing, there's Final Cut Pro, DaVinci Resolve and LumaFusion. The availability of all these creative apps makes this tablet, and all iPad models, a versatile creative tool.

Below are non-exhaustive lists for some of the popular creative apps:

Drawing

• Procreate
• Medibang Paint
• Medibang Pro
• Clip Studio Paint
• Sketchbook Pro
• Tayasui Sketches Pro
• Concepts
• PaintStorm
• Infinite Painter
• Affinity Photo
• Adobe Photoshop
• Adobe Fresco
• ArtStudio Pro

Graphic design

• Affinity Photo
• Affinity Designer
• Vectornator
• Amadine
• Adobe Photoshop
• Adobe Illustrator
• Affinity Publisher

Photo and video editing apps

• Adobe Photoshop
• Adobe Lightroom
• LumaFusion
• DaVinci Resolve

Pen

The Apple Pencil 1st generation is already 10 years old. The Apple Pencil was first launched in Nov 2015 with the original 12.9-inch iPad Pro. Back then, the Apple Pencil already has pretty good pen performance, which is probably why the iPads become so popular with digital artists, and have remained

Apple Pencil is well made. It supports tilt, pressure and palm rejection. For drawing purposes, do not buy Apple Pencil USB-C which supports tilt, palm rejection but not pressure.

The pen body is cylindrical so be careful not to have it roll off the table.

The glossy surface of Apple Pencil is quite slippery so I have use a thumb grip.

Charging and pairing Apple Pencil requires a cable and an adapter.

Apple has provided a USB-C to lightning adapter, and a lightning to lightning adapter.

Charging the Apple Pencil is not elegant since it requires a cable. Apple Pencil (1st gen) does not attach to the side of the tablet for charging. This means if you have to charge the Apple Pencil outdoors, you have to remember to bring the charging cable and adapter.

Line tests

Since all Apple Pencil models have the same pen performance, I'll just duplicate the line tests from the iPad Air (2025) here.

1. Initial activation force is minimal. Drawing thin lines is easy even with a thick brush selected. No noticeable jitter or wobble when drawing slow diagonal lines.

2. Lines taper smoothly and sharply.

3. Line transition from thin to thick and back to thin smoothly.

4. Consistent line width can be created by maintaining consistent pressure.

5. Dots can be drawn easily.

6. There is no cursor misalignment. Joining lines do not have gaps or overshoot.

The Apple Pencil Pro is accurate, and has consistent and predictable performance for drawing.

The amount of latency you can see will depend on the app you use. For example, Medibang Paint shown above has more latency compared to other drawing apps.

Procreate and Concepts (above) have better latency performance.

Drawing experience

This was sketched with Medibang Paint. The workflow is smooth without issues.

Apple Pencil is sensitive and accurate. Initial activation force is low so I could draw thin lines easily even with a thick brush selected. I did not have to adjust brush size that often.

Apple Pencil 1 does not have the double tap or squeeze shortcuts of other Apple Pencils. That's not really an issue as I always activate those shortcuts accidentally and hence I always disable them anyway.

Palm rejection works well. And latency is not an issue while drawing. Even the iPad Air and iPad Pro have latency if you're looking for latency.

11-inch is a comfortable size to work with for drawing. If you use drawing apps that require many UI elements such as Clip Studio Paint, I would recommend getting a larger tablet. But for most drawing apps. 11-inch works fine.

When drawing, I prefer to have the tablet on my Parblo PR100 stand.

I sketch outdoors often and this 11-inch is still light enough (without a heavy case), compact and easy to handle with one hand while sketching outdoors.

Battery life

Battery life is around 6 to 10 hours depending on usage and display brightness. 8 hours of battery life on average is quite decent.

Conclusion

The iPad 11 (2025) is a good tablet. It does what it needs to do without the extra features provided by the more expensive iPad Air and iPad Pro. Drawing performance is good, predictable and consistent, and has been that way for years.

One of the biggest pros for this model is the price drop from USD 449 to USD 349. Sometimes, you may be able to find this at $299 or lower on Amazon -- I saw $279 once.

If you have to upgrade the storage to 256GB, do compare the price with the refurbished M1 iPad Air.

Pros and cons at a glance
+ Beautiful design
+ Solid build quality
+ LCD is bright, vibrant and sharp
+ Colours look good
+ Auto-brightness works well
+ Fingerprint scanner is fast and effective
+ Audio quality is good
+ Good battery life
+ Many drawing, graphic design, creative apps available
+ Noticeably upgrade to processor and RAM
+ Backup options can backup 100% of the tablet
+ Many years of OS updates
+ More reasonable price compared to previous model
- Very reflective display
- Display is not laminated
- Camera does not have flash
- No Stage Manager for external display
- Display refresh rate is only 60Hz
- No water resistance
- Apple Pencil charging requires cable and adapter
- Apple Pencil body is slippery
- Apple Pencil can roll off the table easily
- Storage upgrade is expensive

Availability

Do me a favour. If you're interested to get the iPad 11 (2025) or accessories, consider supporting my blog by buying through the affiliate links listed below at no extra cost.

The iPad 11 can be purchased from Amazon (US | CA | UK | DE | FR | ES | IT | JP)

Here in Singapore they are available from Lazada SG and Shopee SG.