The new-generation base iPad will certainly be much smarter

Rumors coming out are becoming increasingly insistent and point in one direction: the spring of 2026 could mark a pivotal moment for Cupertino’s most affordable line of tablets.

According to recent reports from reliable Japanese sources, Apple is about to update its entry-level iPad, bringing with it a computing power that until recently was reserved exclusively for high-end devices.

The update will therefore not concern aesthetics, but the substance, narrowing the technological gap needed to welcome the more advanced software capabilities of the company.

The base iPad will also support Apple Intelligence

The current iPad model, equipped with the A16 Bionic chip, represents a solid solution for content consumption and light productivity, supporting tools like Apple Creator Studio.

However, the evolution of the operating system and the massive introduction of generative artificial intelligence have made evident the need for a more substantial hardware update.

Rumors suggest that the new device will abandon the previous architecture in favor of the A18, the same processor that debuted with the iPhone 16.

This transition is not merely incremental in terms of pure speed, but it is fundamental for the management of machine learning processes.

The most relevant technical data, in fact, concerns memory: the new iPad should move from the previous 6GB to 8GB of RAM, i.e., the minimum threshold required to run locally the complex language models powering Apple Intelligence.

Without this specific combination of processor and memory, the new features of writing assistance, image generation and understanding of context would remain inaccessible to users of the base model.

Continuity in design, innovation in software

While under the hood there will be a significant transformation, externally everything will remain familiar. The leaked information indicates that Apple has decided to keep the device design unchanged, preserving the lines, the dimensions and the display features that users already know.

There will be, therefore, no drastic aesthetic upheavals or the introduction of new display technologies for this iteration. This conservative design choice allows the company to contain costs of production, focusing the budget on internal components.

The strategy aims to make Apple’s artificial intelligence accessible to a much wider audience, including students and educational institutions that represent the primary user base of this tablet.

If until today the complete AI ecosystem experience was a privilege of Pro or Air models, the spring of 2026 could herald the democratization of these technologies.