The words ‘Apple’ and ‘affordable’ don’t exactly belong in the same sentence, unless you mean apple the fruit. There is a first time for everything however as the tech giant has announced that their new 9.7-inch iPad model will be priced starting at only $329. This is $70 lower than the now discontinued iPad Air 2’s starting price and significantly more affordable than the $599 starting price of the 9.7-inch iPad Pro line. The 9.7-inch size is the most popular size among tablet buyers so this was an obvious move by Apple to take away some market share from Samsung who has 13% of total tablet sales and reinvigorate enthusiasm for their tablet line.
The $329 USD price tag is for the 32GB with Wi-Fi model available in silver, gold and space gray. The 32GB Wi-Fi plus cellular model however will fetch for $459 USD. In terms of size, the new 9.7-inch iPad matches the iPad Air 2 measuring 240 x 169.5 x 6.1mm although it is slightly heavier (469g vs 437g) and slightly thicker (7.5mm vs 6.1mm).
Aside from having a 9.7-inch Retina display with a resolution of 2048 x 1536 (264 ppi), the new iPad uses a 64-bit A9 chip and has an 8-megapixel FaceTime HD camera with a 1.2-megapixel front facing camera. For security, it has Touch ID fingerprint sensor. It is running on iOS 10.3 out of the box and has a 10-hour battery life per full charge.
The new 9.7-inc iPad will be available to order starting Friday, March 24 through apple.com and will hit Apple stores and Apple Authorized resellers sometime next week in the US and 20 other countries including Australia, Canada, China, France, Germany, Hong Kong, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Netherlands, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and the UK. Denmark, India, Mexico, Norway, Russia, Turkey and other countries and regions will follow in April. Brazil, Taiwan and other countries and regions will follow in May.
