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Tablets · Apple iPad

Apple iPad 4

12owners with an opinion
100%of verdicts positive
2/0positive/negative since 2024
0happy after 3+ years

Praised for ease of use and reliability; criticized for software and support.

What people wrote

Likes it
The iPad 2 can be downgraded to iOS 6.1.3 or 8.4.1. Both offer better performance than iOS 9 and have untethered jailbreaks. Once downgraded and jailbroken you can sideload hours and hours worth of games. A lot from that era are IAP-free. I use an iPhone 5 downgraded to iOS 6 (tethered) as an iPod. I love how I can unplug my headphones from my work Mac, plug directly into the phone (no adapter required!) and it effectively mutes Slack without actually muting it. Syncing with the latest version of iTunes still works, albeit slowly. I also use an iPad 4 (tethered to iOS 6) as an ebook. iBooks works great and I love the pseudomorphic design. See also: https://github.com/LukeZGD/Legacy-iOS-Kit
Neutral
I still use my iPad 4 every day. The YouTube iOS app stopped working a while ago, I suppose the backend API changed. But YouTube still works via Safari on the iPad 4. I generally keep JavaScript turned off in Safari on that old tablet; I think it's a RAM limitation but it could simply be that the JavaScript version is too old. Many sites just don't work. But with JavaScript enabled, YouTube still does fine.
Likes it
Holy shit this is so bad now, even Macbooks and iPads are not immune. I have an older Macbook Air and Pro and the batteries both go to 0% in under a month, when they were shut down, don't know what they are doing. I also have 2 iPad Pro 11" that just drain sitting there, under a week it would be almost dead, i didn't even look at them. I thought it was something wrong with my iPad at first, but a second one does the exact same thing. It wasn't always like this. We still use an iPad 2 and 4 for CC processing and they don't need to be charged for 2-3 months at a time!!! It is definitely on newer devices. I have a Yoga 1 that i can have in sleep for almost a month and I can still have it turn on with some percentage of battery i can do a few things. What Microsoft and everyone else it seems, is doing is maddening, the batteries are getting worst, and you simply cannot just rely on a device to be usable anymore without being next to a power outlet and probably even waiting 15minutes before they can even power up.
Neutral
I have an iPad 4 that's mostly used for email and reading HN/blogs in bed. My daily Linux machine is a Thinkpad T430 from 2012. I daily drive a 1993 Saab 9000 -- Can it run custom software? The electronics (HVAC, lights, wipers, etc.) are controlled by a Raspberry Pi, so kind of? And some old phones lying around, including a working Razr and a Palm Treo that can still sync with Windows 10(!)
Neutral
I use an iPad 4 with iOS 7 on it. Just for browsing websites, so apps and web apps are out of the question. For blocking ads, I run an Alpine Linux VM with dnsmasq and a massive block list. This VM masquerades as a DNS server. Last fall I had to install a Letsencrypt certificate to have more websites working. Lately I've been experimenting with Squid (caching proxy) to enable SSL bumping to get Wikipedia to work (they use TLS 1.3 and Safari 7 doesn't understand it). The experiment was successful, but I don't like how Squid behaves in other respects. So it is possible to squeeze some more life out of these devices, but they remain limited because of Apple tying the browser to the operating system.
Likes it
Why not use iCloud and structure schema to let old versions survive? Solves both issues. I don’t know what Figma or Notion is. But I dropped beloved Tower git client when they went subscription-only. I still sometimes use their last purchasable version though. Regarding iOS, It’s possible to refuse updates. I also used iPhone 6 for a looong time and went several years without upgrading OS. I also still use old iPad 4 that receives no updates for years. What can I say… it was a good stable ride! I don’t care about novelty for the sake of novelty. Once I find a tool I like, I’ll use it as long as possible. And I’m happy to pay through the nose for quality tools. Be it kitchen utensils or gardening tools or electronics.
Neutral
We own two tablets for businesss use - an iPad and a Google Nexus 7. The iPad 4 is quite heavy, so I mostly use the Nexus 7 for private stuff. - Quickly checking information on the web if all computers are turned off. - Adding listings to our local Craigslist equivalent. This is so much faster if you don't need to transfer pictures from the camera to the computer and then upload the stuff. - Playing games that are made for tablets. - Reading websites for fun while lying in bed. - Showing pictures and funny videos to friends. I prefer the tablet over the smartphone for this because of the screen size.
Likes itDoesn’t say they own it
Exactly. A computer is a general computing device that can be made to do thousands of things through software. When a computer hardware manufacturer wants to limit what software I can run on my computing device, it is not a good thing. It's odd that people will defend Apple for this, or laugh when you say that you want to use a 10 year old device, when on the same forum people applaud when someone blogs about getting their old Commodore / Sinclair / Toshiba 8bit to connect to the Internet. Wait, is the iPad too old to be useful, but simultaneously not old enough to be worth repurposing? The iPad 4 has wifi, bluetooth, a retina screen and several days of idle battery life. If I could install a terminal and a VNC client, I could save this thing from e-waste for another 5 years. The way some people talk on here, it'll like they think that there's something wrong with that.