iPad and Pencil for arty daughter’s Christmas but which one...

[Aponcetasticchristmastoall]

I have decided to buy my 13 (nearly 14) year old an iPad for Christmas and her grandparents are going to buy her the Apple Pencil.

She is doing quite well in her GCSE art as well as spending all her spare time at home doing it and I know a big part of her curriculum will be digital art but not really sure where to start.

I’m looking at the most basic models of iPads but there is £100 difference in the 32/64 Gp models and firstly wondering if that is a enough storage for her and also that spec of IPad will support the Apple Pencil?

I’m also trying to work out if there is any difference between the 1st and 2nd generation pencil other than just aesthetics and if so will both work with the basic model iPads (though still 2020 made)

Hope you’re all still with me...

Unfortunately I’m a bit of a tech phobe and the one person that would be good for advice is the person I’m buying it for so would really appreciate any help you all could give. 🙂

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You could look at second hand ipads, somewhere like CEX?

The second generation pencil only works with the new iPad Air and iPad Pro models.
The first generation pencil is compatible with older models so that might be better for you.
My 16 year old has an iPad pencil and uses it for art. It uses a lot of memory to save her detailed art so I would get the most memory that you could afford.

The 32gb will be too small really. I've just upgraded from a 32gb ipad to a 256gb one as I'd run out of space on the ipad. I don't have anything stored apart from a few apps. Half the 32gb seems to be taken up with the operating system and then Spotify uses about 6gb. Plus a few more apps and I was up to 32gb.

So I'd go for the 64gb one.

If you look on the Apple website it tells you exactly which iPad goes with each pencil so you don’t get something incompatible

I have a feeling that the Pencil is now magnetic, but what I would say is make sure there is some method of keeping the pencil in a safe place (I have an IPad case with an integrated Apple Pencil slot), as otherwise they're VERY easy to lose.

And maybe preload with Procreate? That's what my daughter uses to draw.

I have a new iPad Air 2020, one which is compatible with the 2nd generation pencil. But I have a fake £25 pencil. Which is another option, I know even with it being magnet I’m probably going to lose it. But I’m no artist so only using it for writing. Not sure how much difference there would be for drawing.

The 1st pencil isn’t magnetic and as PP says very losable, I bought a case off Amazon for mine so I didn’t lose any parts of it, there is a cap and a charging piece which are quite small and could be easily lost