iPad (9th Gen, 2021)

Duh it’s an iPad lol even an iPad 9th gen is fine in 2026

Still runs like shit on my iPad 9th gen. Regret upgrading

I think the A16 iPad 11th Gen is the minimum you want to consider. If you are using medical imaging software I would consider the Pro with 1TB storage. The 9th Gen isn't going to be sufficient.

And I’m still on 9th gen I have two iPad 9th gen as well, which have 3 GB of RAM. Compared to our iPad 9th Gen, the upcoming iPad 12 gen is expected to have 8 GB RAM, 2x performance and 2x storage. I think we'll be upgrading. I use mine for reading, which reading is fine, but I manage so many books

I’ve got an iPad 9th gen wish I stayed on 18 26 does nothing for me excepts slows my iPad down.

They can’t connect an Apple Watch to an iPad, you’ll need an iPhone for that. Besides that, I expect the 9th gen to get support for one maybe two years at most. It’s better to give them an A16 or 10th gen at the latest.

Have you considered doing a factory reset and reinstalling from a backup? I’ve got 2 9th Gens, for my kids, both are working fine on OS26.2. I’d updated them both to 26.3 at the weekend and so far no adverse effects. How did your iPad handle 26.2? Was it better, worse or the same as on 26.3?

I have an iPad 9th gen and it is horribly laggy, almost to the point of it being unusable. Don’t do it

Get a refurbished iPad 9th Gen

I also upgraded from 9th Gen to 11th Gen but the only reason why I upgraded is because my 9th Gen is only 64GB and it was starting to run out of storage otherwise the 9th Gen was perfectly fine even on iPadOS 26.