iPad 11th Generation: £429 at Apple, £355 If You Look

Search for the iPad 11th generation in the UK and you get two prices, both of them £429. Apple's own store quotes it, Currys quotes it, and the natural conclusion is that £429 is simply what the thing costs. It is not. The same 128GB Wi-Fi model, sealed and new, is £355 today at the cheapest UK seller listed on PriceSpy, and the same listing has been as low as £265 inside the past three months.

That is a £74 gap on the price almost everybody sees first, which by my arithmetic is 17.25 per cent. It is worth understanding where that gap comes from before you decide whether to close it, because there are two or three decent reasons to hand Apple the extra money and a great many bad ones.

What the iPad 11th generation costs at Apple right now

Apple sells the iPad 11-inch (A16) at £429 for 128GB Wi-Fi, £529 for 256GB and £729 for 512GB. Add cellular and every tier rises by exactly £150, giving £579, £679 and £879.

This is the current entry iPad rather than an outgoing one. Apple's comparison page still lists it next to the M4 iPad Air, the M5 iPad Pro and the A17 Pro iPad mini, so nothing on the shelf is about to replace it.

The prices matter because they moved recently. Back Market's iPad 11th generation review, still sitting on page one of Google, was written in December 2025 and quotes Apple's price as from £329. That was accurate when it published. The jump from £329 to £429 is £100, or 30.4 per cent by my arithmetic, and it fits the wider round of increases I went through in my breakdown of iPad prices in the UK.

Currys charges Apple's exact price, to the penny

Currys is the second organic result for the iPad 11th generation here, and its 128GB model is £429.00. Not £428.99, not a fiver off for signing up to the newsletter. The same number Apple charges.

That surprises people who assume a big-box retailer has to be undercutting Apple somewhere. On iPads it usually is not. What Currys adds instead is finance, and the finance is the expensive part: the listing offers £17.38 a month over 36 months, which the page itself totals at £625.68 at 29.9 per cent.

Set against Apple's £429 in cash, that is £196.68 more, or 45.85 per cent, by my maths. Set against the £355 you can pay elsewhere today it is £270.68 more, which is 76.25 per cent. Three years of payments on a tablet that will still be taking iPadOS updates but will be worth nothing like the total.

Where the iPad 11th generation actually gets cheaper

PriceSpy's live offers for the 128GB Wi-Fi model today run like this: OnBuy at £355.00, A1 Tech Deals at £367.49, Mobile Direct at £379.99, then Amazon and Gadcet both at £399.00, and eBay at £399.99.

Two things stand out. The first is that Amazon, which most of us check reflexively, is £399.00 on that listing. That is a genuine £30 off Apple, 6.99 per cent, but it is roughly a third of what is available. The instinct to check Amazon and stop is doing about a third of the job.

The second is the three-month price history attached to that listing: a low of £265.00 and a high of £356.99. The cheapest offer has not come near Apple's number at any point in that window. If you are not in a hurry, the £265 end is the one worth waiting for, and it sits 38.23 per cent under Apple by my arithmetic.

The trade-off is the usual one. UK consumer rights still apply to marketplace sellers, but Apple's own 14-day returns window, in-store setup and same-day AppleCare enrolment do not travel with a third-party box.

The storage ladder never gets cheaper, and that is unusual

Apple charges £100 to move from 128GB to 256GB, and £200 to move from 256GB to 512GB. Run the division and both steps come to 78.1p per gigabyte. Identical. There is no volume discount anywhere on the base iPad.

That is worth saying out loud because Apple's ladders normally soften at the top. On the iPad Air the 128GB to 256GB and 256GB to 512GB steps are also 78.1p per gigabyte, but the 512GB to 1TB step is £300 for 512GB, which works out at 58.6p. The only iPad Air tier that breaks the 78.1p rate is one the base iPad does not sell.

So storage on the iPad 11th generation is priced at Apple's worst rate from bottom to top, with no way to climb out of it.

Spec it up and you have almost bought an iPad Air

Here is the number that should settle it for a lot of people. A 512GB iPad 11th generation is £729. An 11-inch iPad Air with 128GB is £749. Twenty pounds apart, or 2.74 per cent.

For that £20 you are swapping 384GB of storage for the M4 chip, a laminated display and better accessory support. Which way you jump depends entirely on whether you keep things on the device or in iCloud. The point is that the decision exists at all, and nothing on the first page of results tells you so.

If you were heading for the 256GB at £529, you are in the sensible middle and should stay there. If you were heading for 512GB, stop and price an Air first.

Cellular is a flat £150, so it stings most at the bottom

Apple adds £150 for cellular on every configuration of the iPad 11th generation, whatever the storage. On the £429 model that is a 34.97 per cent uplift. On the £729 model it is 20.58 per cent for the identical radio.

I am not telling you to skip cellular. I am saying that if you want it, buying it on the cheapest iPad is where it costs proportionally most, and that a 256GB cellular iPad at £679 lands within £70 of an 11-inch iPad Air with no cellular at all.

When Apple's £429 is still the right price to pay

Three cases, honestly.

• You want the 14-day returns window and the option to walk into a store with the thing. Marketplace sellers do not offer that in the same shape.
• You are buying on education pricing, which changes the arithmetic completely and is not reflected in any figure above. I went through what the Apple student discount actually comes to separately.
• You want AppleCare running from day one on a device Apple already has a record of, rather than arguing about proof of purchase months later.

Outside those three, £74 is £74.

One more route is worth a look. Apple's refurbished store is a flat discount rather than the up to figure it advertises, which I priced out on its own. Refurbished base iPads come and go, so treat it as a stock check rather than a plan.

iPad 11th generation FAQ

Is the iPad 11th generation still the current model?

Yes. Apple's comparison page lists the iPad 11-inch (A16) as the current entry iPad, alongside the M4 iPad Air, the M5 iPad Pro and the A17 Pro iPad mini. It was announced in March 2025 and has not been replaced.

How much is the iPad 11th generation in the UK?

It is £429 at Apple and at Currys for the 128GB Wi-Fi model, and £355 at the cheapest UK seller listed on PriceSpy as of 24 September 2026. Cellular adds £150 at every storage tier.

Is the 256GB iPad worth the extra £100?

Usually, yes. Apple charges the same 78.1p per gigabyte at every step on this model, so you are not penalised for upgrading, and 128GB fills quickly once offline video is on it. The 512GB step is where I would stop and price an iPad Air instead.

My take

The iPad 11th generation is a good tablet carrying a price Apple lifted by about 30 per cent and then left alone. Currys matched it. Amazon shaved £30 off it. The rest of the UK market has been sitting roughly £74 below it for three months.

If you need one this week and you want Apple's returns policy behind it, pay the £429 and do not feel bad about it. If you are flexible on timing, set a price alert and buy nearer the £265 that listing has already reached once. What you should not do is take Apple's number, add Currys' finance on top, and pay £625.68 for a tablet the open market prices at £355.

Source: Buy iPad 11-inch (A16), Apple UK