iPadOS 26 Review: Apple’s iPad Is One Step Closer To Replacing Your Laptop – BGR

After three months of beta testing, iPad users can finally get their hands on iPadOS 26. The most significant update since the platform’s debut, iPadOS 26 goes beyond simply aligning the iPad with the iPhone and Mac. This release finally taps into the iPad’s full potential, unlocking capabilities that Apple’s tablets have long been waiting to deliver.

iPadOS 26 brings a wide range of changes and improvements, as it adds a new Liquid Glass design, improved multitasking and productivity features, and makes the general experience of using an iPad even smoother, whether you have a base model or the most expensive M4 iPad Pro.

In our iPadOS 26 review, we discuss the good, the bad, and the in-between of Apple’s latest iPad software update based on the past three months of beta testing, as well as our thoughts on the Release Candidate that debuted following Apple’s iPhone 17 launch event.

Apple calls Liquid Glass “beautiful, delightful, and instantly familiar.” While the operating system update is indeed all of those things, it’s especially impressive how good it looks on the latest iPad Pro. Since this tablet has the best display of any of the company’s products, users can fully take advantage of the colors, layers, and the attention to detail Apple brought to this release.

It’s not a stretch to say that Liquid Glass looks stunning. Users will find significant refreshes to the Lock Screen, Home Screen, Control Center, app designs, and more. The company is also making sure that when users jump from the iPhone to the iPad to the Mac, they continue to have a consistent experience.

iPadOS 26 also adds several features from macOS, while still maintaining its own unique characteristics. With that, Apple is making the iPad work more like a computer but respecting the touch-based interactions, which is what we’ve been used to doing for the past 15 years now.

After years of offering Split Screen and Slide Over, Apple is phasing out these features in favor of a new windowed app experience. With that, iPadOS 26 users can choose between full screen apps, windowed apps, or the Stage Manager experience (if they have an M1 or newer iPad). While Stage Manager continues to be the most reliable experience for bigger iPad displays, Apple now offers a multitasking experience for all iPad users with windowed apps.

Basically, users can now have as many apps opened simultaneously as they want. They can freely move between them, continue to type out a text while Instagram runs in the background uploading a video, and so on. This wasn’t possible before, and now everybody can take advantage of true multitasking.

Beyond that, Apple has added Mac-like menus, new Mac-like icons for closing, minimizing, and maximizing apps, and an improved Files app, which makes it easier to edit and interact with multiple documents at once. All of that while enhancing the integration between its three biggest platforms.

While iPadOS 18 brought the long-awaited the Calculator app to iPad, iPadOS 26 adds three new first-party apps to Apple’s tablet. The Preview app was designed with the iPad and Apple Pencil in my mind, and it’s the easiest way to sign documents, mark up PDFs, sketch, and more. We went hands on with the new Preview app if you want to learn more about it.

Apple also added a Phone app and the Journal app to the iPad in an effort to make the experience between the iPhone, the iPad, and the Mac even more seamless. Even though the Phone app requires you to be on the same Wi-Fi network and logged into the same Apple Account as your iPhone, it’s encouraging to see a deeper integration between the two devices.

The company is also bringing the Journal app to the bigger display of its tablets and computers, as users can access the app on iPad and on the Mac as well. Apple continues to improve the experience with smart suggestions and support for keyboards and Apple Pencil. These apps greatly improve the iPad experience and are great additions for users.

For iPadOS 26, Apple is tightening its integration with ChatGPT. If you decide to use the third-party AI to power Apple Intelligence, you can take advantage of onscreen awareness, new Image Playground styles, and improved Writing Tools with GPT-5 support. Apple also offers Visual Intelligence search on the iPad, which works similarly to Google’s Circle to Search feature.

In terms of entirely new features, iPadOS 26 gets Live Translation, which works on the Phone app, Messages app, and during FaceTime calls. The interface is fairly reliable on the Messages app and FaceTime. It’s not perfect, but it’s a step into the right direction, especially with so many companies focusing on AI functionality powered by ChatGPT.

Users will also find other changes in iPadOS 26, including better Genmoji functionality and more apps supporting offline Apple Intelligence features. After all, iPadOS 26 lets developers integrate Apple’s AI into their apps. It’s a long road ahead, with the ability for third parties to use Apple Intelligence now available, we’ll soon see many more apps offering new capabilities.

Battery consumption on iPad changes depends on how you’re using it. If you’re using the tablet for streaming content, you’ll get a similar experience to iPadOS 18. However, I think the iPad is draining more battery when connected to a Magic Keyboard and Apple Pencil Pro than it did with the previous software.

I also found some annoying bugs on iPadOS 26 RC, such as videos not playing correctly, the Notes app creating infinite lines of text, and some clunkiness on Apple Music. Video calls on the iPad had become an issue with the Release Candidate version of the software as well: Instead of displaying the video, the iPad is putting the Phone app menu on the screen.

While this has been my experience, these issues might not impact you, and iPadOS 26 is relatively stable overall. However, I hope Apple addresses these problems in the days ahead if they continue to crop up in the public build.

You should install iPadOS 26 on your iPad as soon as you’re able to do so, despite the occasional bugs. Apple has done a great job with the new productivity and multitasking features, and the Liquid Glass design feels like it was custom-built for the M4 iPad Pro.

In fact, iPadOS 26 actually looks like a bigger upgrade than iOS 26 and macOS Tahoe, and it’s great to see the amount of effort Apple keeps putting into its tablet software. The best part is that iPadOS 26 unlocks interesting and useful features for all iPad owners, not just those who paid a bunch of money for the iPad Pro.

iPadOS 26 is worth the upgrade, and it’s all about making Apple software more cohesive between its multitude of products. Here’s hoping that Apple continues to iron out the bugs and bring even more unique features to its tablet lineup in the months ahead.