alt Hacker NewsI have a 3rd generation iPad from 2012 [1]. The battery is still very decent after 14 years. It has a retina display and a remarkably good speaker, so I use it for e-books / audiobooks, podcasts, music (on device) and sometimes playing around with synth apps (nano studio).
The bad stuff:
- iOS update with the parallax effect (iOS 7, I think) came soon after this iPad was released and made the device feel extremely sluggish (even with effects disabled). I was very pissed (downgrade not possible). It's on iOS 9 now, still as slow. The apps I still use work ok, but switching between them is a terrible experience.
- Can't update iOS any further. Can't install any new apps. Certificates expired, so can't use any webbrowser anymore (no https) and a few months ago even podcasts stopped downloading (books and music I upload via cable).
Notice how the good stuff is all hardware, while the bad stuff is all software.
iPad 3rd gen can be downgraded to iOS 8 (which runs slightly better than iOS 9), and dual-booting to iOS 6 is also doable (and actually can run more apps than later versions thanks to the 3rd party mods).
There's a community around /r/LegacyJailbreak dedicated to running old iOS devices.