We’re finally into August, which means that stores everywhere are starting to throw back the curtains on their yearly back-to-school sales. Very few of these sales are actually limited to students, so even if you’re not heading to class this fall, now is a great time to start hunting around for laptop deals, iPad deals, and other bargains on high-ticket items you need but obviously don’t want to pay full price for.
If you’re in the market for a new tablet, then the iPad is still the one to buy and ongoing back-to-school iPad sales are your chance to score one on the cheap. We’ve already done the work to sort through online retailers and bring you a list of all the best back-to-school iPad deals below, with discounts to be had on the new 10.2-inch iPad, iPad Air, iPad Mini, and premium iPad Pro. Read on:
Choosing a new iPad is fairly straightforward, and if you’ve made it this far, there’s a good chance you already have a particular model in mind. For most people, the standard seventh-generation 10.2-inch iPad is still the best choice, and it’s also the most affordable (back-to-school iPad deals are also a great opportunity to score one for even cheaper). Note that we don’t recommend going for the sixth-gen 9.7-inch model in 2020 — the new one is cheap enough, especially when on sale, that the savings aren’t worth it.
In the midrange price bracket lie the new 10.5-inch iPad Air and the 7.9-inch iPad Mini. If you’re willing to pay more for some upgrades over the standard iPad, the iPad Air offers a lot of bang for the buck — so much so that you might find yourself asking if the iPad Pro is worth the extra money at all. The aptly named iPad Mini is superb, too, but whether or not you spring for that will obviously come down to whether or not you value that smaller 7.9-inch display for its portability.
Lastly, the iPad Pro — now in its third generation — is the one to buy if you’re after the best and most powerful Apple tablet on the market. It’s gorgeous (in both its 11- and 12.9-inch iterations), it’s beefy, and it works great as a 2-in-1 laptop when paired with an Apple Smart Keyboard folio. The iPad Pro is also the only instance where we still recommend the last-gen 2018 model, as these are still great devices by today’s standards and can often be found for much less than the updated 2020 Pro. As the iPad Pro is by far the most expensive member of Apple’s tablet family, this is where you’ll want to look for the biggest discounts when shopping these back-to-school iPad sales.
Affinity’s new all-in-one creative app is finally coming to the iPad, nearly a year after Canva launched the redesigned desktop version for Mac and Windows. Creatives have been asking for the iPad release ever since, especially because files created in the new Affinity app cannot be opened in the older V2 iPad apps.
Affinity already has Photo, Designer, and Publisher apps on iPad, but the new release combines those tools into the same unified app that Canva launched on desktop last year.
Touchscreen laptops have been around for years. You can get them in all sizes and shapes. Just not from Apple. For years, the Cupertino giant has treated the idea of a touchscreen MacBook the way I treat a meeting that could have been an email: with open contempt. However, Wednesday looks like the day the company could finally change its mind.
The latest Apple invite puts the “Pro and Tell” showcase in Los Angeles at 10 a.m. PT (1 p.m. ET) on October 28, 2026. Instead of a regular live-streamed keynote, it is an invitation-only, hands-on event for a handful of press and creators (similar to what the company did for the MacBook Neo earlier this year).
Apple has just launched its latest iPad mini with a notable set of upgrades, including an OLED screen, improved speakers, and a more resilient build. It also gets a new chip, and the whole package costs $200 more than its predecessor. But if you look closely at Apple’s online store, you’ll realize that $699 isn’t enough to get you the most powerful version of the A20 Pro chip inside this tablet. In fact, even if you pay $800 for the 256GB model, you still won’t get the beefiest variant. Only when you jump to the 512GB trim, which costs an absurd $999, do you get the most powerful flavor of the A20 Pro.
The $999 model gets more than extra storage