One of the most difficult urges I struggle to let go of is my desire for stuff. To buy things just because I can, and upgrade to the latest and greatest simply because it was released. Thankful this pang is getting less and less, but there is an over arching trend of commercialism to push the latest update onto people and cause many of them to over extended their budgets to make this purchase.

So when Apple semi-secretly updated their product ranges with new iPads, they gave a much better line up. Now you can get 75% of an iPad Pro experience for a fraction of the price. A base model iPad Air, with keyboard and pencil will now set you back £727 which is cheaper than just purchasing an iPad Pro on its own. If you wanted a compatible set up for an 11” iPad Pro it grows to a wallet busting £1067.

Does the iPad Pro provide a more than 30% better experience? Unfortunately there is no answer to this question, that would be unique to your use case, but its now worth thinking about. Sure there are differences, but how much of a difference to stop users from over paying to achieve a similar result? Apple will consider this in terms of limiting sales of the iPad Pro, but will users see this as a worthy purchase?

This question is more obvious when you consider the upgrade cycle of mobile phones. Information suggests that people are holding off upgrading as often, that is perhaps due to the increase in prices, and some argue it is lack of innovation. However there are still a huge amount of people overstretching to upgrade to the newest handset. Top tier handsets are now hovering around £1000, meaning that the norm in the UK has become 3 year payment plans to make upgrades more cost effective – yet still more than double the average contract cost from 2014.

As shown above when Apple launched the iPhone XS, the iPhone 7 is available for less than half the price. Many users would be hard pressed to find the iPhone XS to be 100% better than the iPhone 7, I say this is a person with an iPhone XS sat on my desk, from a place of privilege. I am also a person that now questions why I even bothered to upgrade. My, as well as many other peoples, urge to upgrade was one to keep up with the times. There are a few things I really desired (such as dual sim) but for the most part my desire to purchase came from my ego. I get very little extra benefit over the iPhone X that was sat here only a few months ago, and given the chance again I would not splash out.

When brands make a range of products available at every price point, it is considered a grab for money. A play to make sure everyone can afford to buy something new. This may be the case, but it also opens up a much better reason not to over extend the budget, providing they are marketed in the correct way. The iPad Air may not be 30% worse, but it saves people 30% of their money, there is less and less reason to upgrade outside your budget now – and that’s a great thing.