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Tablets · Apple iPad

Apple iPad 3

16owners with an opinion
62%of verdicts positive
4/4positive/negative since 2024
0happy after 3+ years

Praised for reliability and display; criticized for software and value.

What owners wrote

Doesn’t like it
I think that's the unfortunate cycle of iOS and iPadOS. Their hardware more or less served it's purpose eons ago and there's little reason why it couldn't still, aside from OS compatibility. Even as a mac user, I've only ever purchased on iOS product, and that was the iPad 3. No subsequent iPad seems to have introduced anything more compelling than what the iPad 3 was capable of (which wasn't much), so as the software compatibility story has degraded over time, it still sits here serving as an occasional epub reader. It would feel bizarre to spend thousands on a new one to effectively be able to do what I did with it in ~2012. My android phones eventually run their course due to excessive physical damage, theft, etc.. but since I've never paid much for them, it's usually not so disruptive to just pay a few hundred and get something used or basic to replace it, or order a new screen and repair it.
Doesn’t like it
So, if you have money, you can throw away as much as you can, right? I have bought loads of Apple tech during 2010s and all of it is trash. Every iPhone (e.g. models from 4 to 7) costs tens of dollars today, down from a thousand. Not only that, they’re basically useless. I have a few iPads 3 (the first one with Retina display), and it’s perfectly fine display, but VLC is the only app that works with it. Also, you can watch YouTube via browser, yet it’s not a pleasant experience. At least my MacBook Pro (pre-retina) works great with Linux, and possibly I’d keep it around as a Linux server, till it breaks. I cannot do anything like that with any of iOS devices that I have. Why? When I purchased them, I had no idea that would be the case. My perfectly good iPhone 12 mini is already at its last legs (I bet a couple of years), thanks to iOS 26 and the liquid ass. Why is it so? Why should I stress about initial purchases? I’m not that poor and young, sorry, I’m worried about the footprint. And I hope you would one day too.
Doesn’t like it
My iPad 3 is only unusable because anything beyond iOS 9 isn't installable, most of the like 5 Apps I did have installed on it didn't survive a "backup", and obvs nobody's going out of their way to support ancient platforms. Otherwise, it still functions as an epub reader as long as iBooks continues functioning, but it's lame that I can't really use it for much else unless I made it a hobby.
Doesn’t like it
The problem is usually SSL support, the problem is that older SSL and TLS versions are being disabled. I actually have an example myself - an iPad 3. Apple didn't allow anyone else than themselves to provide a web browser engine, and at some point they deliberately stopped updates. This site used to work, until some months ago. I currently use it for e-books, if that wasn't the case I think it by now it would essentially be software bricked. I acknowledge that owning older Apple hardware is dumb. I didn't pay for it, though.
Doesn’t like it
Neither have I on all my android phones. Only device that failed me was an iPad 3 (yeah 12 years ago) that I got replaced in the store due to it crashing right in their hands. But hey, anecdotes.
Doesn’t like it
That's a fair point, and the 6s is a great piece of hardware imo. I just find it frustrating that after security updates stop for my mac, I can definitely keep using software that's always worked on it, supposing I have the executable and any third-party backend services are still running. On my old iPad 3, since the App Store is the central software distributor, more and more apps have been pulled off of it at the discretion of the publisher. It was never really that useful of a device to begin with, but to use the same software, I'd need to buy a new piece of hardware, despite new iPads offering practically nothing substantial in terms of added value (for me) since mine came out. They're nice I guess, but not hundreds or thousands of dollars nice when I likely wouldn't use them for anything different.
Doesn’t like it
Technically not in general but practically yes on iOS since it's either just SMS, MMS or iMessage on iOS instead of also RCS. That's a constraint they enforce on the colloquial SMS experience, it's limited to whatever they decide it is, and they decide that it's strictly old tech. Saying they don't control SMS is like saying they don't control HTTPS or access to the web. Sure they don't get dictate the protocol itself, but they do control practically the singular implementation of it on their platform, heavily influence what people can do with it, and also control the entire software stack underneath. My iPad 3 is functionally useless despite being just as capable as it ever was (not very) because although it can still run apps, I'm only allowed to run whatever happens to still be on the app store.
Likes it
Thanks, I thought whether I want ReMarkable or iPad 12.9 for reading PDFs. I had this the biggest iPad back in the days it was introduced, but gave it to a friend as it felt too big for me, and way too expensive for what I wanted from an iPad. (Basically just a YouTube streamer, and my long obsolete iPad 3 from 2012 still does the job, surprisingly.) I checked iPad Pro 12.9 and there are justifiable prices for used ones, so I think I’ll replace my iPad 3 with this big one, which will allow me to read PDFs more comfortably as well. Btw, I tried printing some PDFs and I don’t like it that way. I know to each their own, someone likes the books printed, but I’m the opposite of that. So much that I had donated all the physical library of my dad’s books I had in the house after his passing out, as I realized I would never read them in paper.
Likes it
I'm in a similar position and I can answer for my situation. I bought iPad 3 back in 2012 I think. I liked it a lot and I bought iPhone 4S which I liked even more (until they released iOS 7 but that's theme for another rant). After that I understood that I love Apple approach and decided to buy a Macbook as I wanted to write some apps and also needed new laptop at that time. I bought Retina Macbook Pro 15" mid 2012. Well, it was worst laptop I ever saw. Software was good, I still love it. SSD broke in the second month, so I took it to repair and it was in repair for another month until replacement SSD arrived. Thankfully it was covered by warranty and that's the only good thing about this situation. I used it for 2 years and then it just started to tear apart. Charger cable failed. I bought new at aliexpress, tried to replace it and almost caused a fire, so I had to buy a new charger which costs like a cheap laptop LoL. Keyboard failed. Right now half of keys just do not work, another half of keys work if pressed hard enough. And I did not spill anything there, they just don't register presses. I'm using USB keyboard to work on it. Audio port failed. There's some switch there to detect optical cable or something like that. That switch is stuck, so red laser always lighting out of there and macOS thinks that I inserted a headphones, so speakers do not work. And headphones do not work either. I'm using USB headphones if I need sound. It sometimes panics. I think that something'
Neutral
My old iPads become single purpose devices around the house. I have an iPad 3 with a powered speaker case. I think the case was originally $300, but I got it for $25 because of the obsolete tech. That's a dedicated GarageBand machine for when my nephews come over. Another old iPad is the dedicated darts scoring tablet.
Neutral
This post is very interesting in a number of things besides the Google Maps. I still have an old iPod touch, the iPad 1, and dayly use my iPad 3 (iPad with Retina). I also own the new iPhone X. But especialy on the iPad I have no use case on updating it besides it is running this old iOS, for which no update is available anymore. Because there is no update all the apps for it are also not anymore updated, because Apple requires in Xcode a minimum iOS version for compiling. So I am more and more cut off from many services just because a newer iPad does not provide more except to stay up to date with the services I use. Comming from an industrial background where systems are running for 20 years, 30 years, and more that is really frustrating, when even 5 year old technology doesn't run for other use cases.
Doesn’t like it
Key difference is you don't get the mostly similar 3 iPhones - you get 4 vastly different phones with meaningfully different feature sets - and they are even made by different companies. Way more variety and choice. I bet all of the Google Play sold devices would see at least 2 major updates. (My Gnex got 4.1/4.2/4.3 - and unlike my iPad 3 ios 7 update, it actually got better at every update.) That's good enough for me considering that Android updates are really not the same as iOS updates - most apps including the Keyboard get updated independent of the OS.
Likes it
In my 3D iOS and Mac OS work I'm working on now, I am essentially entirely fragment shader bound (per screen pixel work). Quadruple the pixels and I need quadruple the energy per frame to do the fragment shading. The vertex shading and main CPU work stays the same, and the backlight obviously stays the same, so the total energy required doesn't quadruple, and 30% sounds like a reasonable ballpark estimate for that. I don't think Apple would accept reducing the battery life from 10 hours to 7 hours in exchange for a retina display on the inaugural iPad mini. That gets the wrong story in the media. Not having a premium feature that most people haven't seen is very different from "can't get through a day without charging and you have to buy all new chargers". FWIW I have one on order, and I expect to be disappointed in the non-retina display. I moved my iPad 3 to my daughter and went back to my iPad 2 a while ago and it just looks like a bunch of fuzzy mosaic tiles to me now when I try to read on it.
Likes it
>>play with [Xpads] once or twice a week, but otherwise they gather dust at the expense of smartphones and laptops. For the first time in my life, I happily read books on a screen -- on my iPad 3. I literally read from it for at least one hour a day. I love Instapaper. This needs the big screen for e.g. pdf formatting. I have utility apps like e.g. sketching UIs (Adobe Proto), organisation and note taking, but those aren't game changers for me. (When the iPad ssh applications get a bit better, there might be another game changer.)
Likes it
TL;DR: Nothing will ever be as good as paper and pen but if you are absolutely adamant about going digital as I was, Noteshelf + my tools is the best solution I've found after spending a lot of time testing things out. Obviously I only tested what was listed below so take that with a grain of salt but I researched and went over others not mentioned. THE TOOLS: iPad 3, Adonit Jot Flip Stylus THE APPS: Noteshelf, Ghostwriter Notes, Paper (by Fifty Three), Note+ THE BREAKDOWN: After spending weeks researching, reading, watching youtube videos, etc... I narrowed down my decision on the best note taking apps to Ghostwriter Notes and Noteshelf of over a dozen other apps. Since Paper and Note+ were both free, I downloaded them to try them out as well. Here are the results... Note+ - Total garbage. Not even worth rating as this app would receive negative points if I could issue such a thing. Paper - Probably great for other purposes but totally not designed for note taking in mind and thus would be rated incredibly low. Ghostwriter Notes (paid app) - Sounded sooooo good in theory and in videos but in practice, there were so many things wrong with this app. Regular note taking was completely unresponsive unless you plan on writing in font size 80. The only way around this problem was to use the zoom in writing feature but that left very little writing space at a time and the text in the box were often pixelated and there is still some lag time. The writing guard sucks as it required c