Amazon slashes $140 off the 5g ipad 11—blink and it's gone
The best iPad deal of 2025 just crashed Amazon’s Big Spring Sale, and the clock is already bleeding seconds. A 128 GB, LTE-and-5G-ready iPad 11—Apple silicon inside, $499 list—has been gutted to $359 in an unlisted lightning drop that could vanish before April Fools’ Day even wakes up.
Why this discount bends the price curve
Look at the numbers: the Wi-Fi-only model lingers at $299 after a polite $50 trim. Paying just sixty bucks more for a cellular modem turns the economics of the entry iPad upside-down. Apple’s own store still asks full freight; carriers won’t subsidize this unit. Amazon is, for once, eating the margin instead of passing the bill to third-party sellers.
The tablet itself is no flagship, but it doesn’t need to be. The A16 Bionic—last year’s iPhone 14 Pro brain—delivers single-core scores that crush every Android tablet under $600. Pair that with the 2360 × 1640 Liquid Retina panel and the promise of six years of iPadOS updates, and Samsung’s Galaxy Tab S10 FE suddenly looks overpriced at $419, stylus or no stylus.
What you’re not getting
Face ID? Gone. You get the old-school Touch ID ring up top. ProMotion 120 Hz? Not here—this panel tops out at 60 Hz, fine for textbooks, a smidge choppy for frantic gaming. The USB-C port is Gen 2, not Thunderbolt, so external monitors cap at 4K 30 Hz. And the 12 MP cameras are adequate, not exceptional—think classroom scanning, not cinematic zoom.
Still, for couch surfers, students, or field reps who need reliable 5G without a $1,000 outlay, the spec sheet is a quiet triumph. Ten-hour battery, 464 g chassis, eSIM support baked in. AppleCare+ stays the same $79 if you add it before checkout, another clue Amazon hasn’t touched the SKU.
Inventory smoke signals
Stock trackers show 93% of the blue 128 GB cellular variant sold in the last four hours. CamelCamelCamel price history registers the deepest cut ever recorded for this model, beating December’s $110 dip. When the units hit zero, Amazon’s automated repricer will snap the tag back to $499—no rainchecks, no back-order.
So if you’ve been waiting for the mythical $350 iPad that actually connects anywhere, stop waiting. The cart button is still live, but the warehouse gates are closing. Grab it, finish checkout, and let the next sucker refresh the page at midnight only to see “Currently unavailable.”