iPadOS 27 Beta Review: The Update the iPad Has Been Waiting For

We may earn compensation from reviewed products. Learn about our editorial policies.

Need-to-knows

• iPadOS 27 itself is a polishing update; Siri AI is what makes it exciting
• Siri AI can see what’s on your screen and search emails, notes, calendar and photos in one go
• New features include a persistent menu bar, a Liquid Glass transparency slider, custom AirPods EQ and major child account controls

---

I’m back from WWDC26, and I’ve been using an M5 iPad Pro running the first developer beta of iPadOS 27 for about a week now. I’ve had access to Siri AI for that time, too.

Here’s my honest take: the combination of the two is profound. iPadOS 27 itself is a polishing update, not a revolution. But pair it with the new Siri AI, and you’ve got something that feels like a genuine leap forward for the iPad. In fact, it’s probably one of the most interesting updates the platform has ever seen.

No, really.

I must note that everything I’m about to cover in this blog post is based on beta software that’s not currently available to the public and which might change come release time later this year.

Let’s get into it.

The iPadOS 27 updates worth knowing about

Persistent menu bar

Buried in the multitasking and gestures settings, there’s a new toggle: “automatically show and hide menu bar”. Turn it off, and the menu bar stays permanently visible at the top of the screen, switching context as you move between apps – just like on a Mac.

It’s a tiny thing. But it’s a very Mac-like quality-of-life improvement, and iPadOS is accumulating enough of these that the line between the two platforms is blurring most satisfyingly.

iPadOS isn’t becoming macOS, but it’s behaving far more like it with each update, and I’m a fan of that.

Liquid glass – with a slider

You either love liquid glass or you don’t, and Apple knows it. So now there’s a slider in the appearance settings that lets you dial it from fully translucent all the way through to solid (almost) old-school iOS-style.

Catch up on the hardware: M5 iPad Pro review

I’ve landed somewhere in the middle because I never had a strong opinion about it either way – but if you do, you’ve now got control. Apple listened.

Speed improvements

Apple’s promising up to 30% faster app launches and AirDrop speeds that are up to 80% quicker. The app-launch claim is hard to verify because iPads have always been fast enough that shaving milliseconds off isn’t something you consciously feel. I’ll take it, though.

Choosing between iPads right now? My M4 iPad Air vs M5 iPad Pro guide can help

I’m more excited about the AirDrop improvement – it’s occasionally been a bit hit-and-miss for me; either slow or just silently giving up halfway through. Any improvement there (although I’m yet to fully test it) is welcome.

Custom EQ for AirPods

You can now set a custom EQ (lows, mids, and highs) for your AirPods, AirPods Pro, and AirPods Max directly in the settings. Finally.

Curious about the earbuds? AirPods Pro 3 review

It’s not the most granular EQ I’ve ever seen, and it doesn’t label specific frequencies, but it’s something we simply couldn’t do before. I hope Apple continue to iterate it with more band control in the future.

Child account controls

My son is four, so I can’t claim firsthand experience here (yet), but we had a demo of the new child account features for all Apple platforms at Apple Park, and they looked superb.

There’s a new “ask to browse” permission system, time allowances across categories (entertainment, games, social), content blurring for gory or adult material, and a redesigned Screen Time dashboard.

Want the full rundown? iPadOS 27 features

I’m going to have to make use of this stuff soon, so I’m glad Apple is working hard in this regard.

The photo AI tools

The current generation of Apple Intelligence photo tools has, let’s be honest, struggled to compete with offerings from Google and Samsung. iPadOS 27 improves them massively.

Extend is the one that surprised me most. You open a photo, tap extend, and the AI fills in the edges – effectively widening the frame beyond what the camera originally captured. I tested it on a photo I took in San Francisco, and it did a genuinely impressive job: the building detail filled in, a purple roller blind carried across naturally, the street scene held together.

Also landed on iPhone: iOS 27 new features

Cleanup (removing objects from photos) has always been the area where Apple’s AI has struggled most compared to Google’s version. On iPadOS 27, it’s vastly better. I circled a group of people in a busy street scene and hit cleanup on high-quality mode. They vanished. The background behind them was filled in convincingly. There was one rogue shoe left over – but honestly, I’m counting that as a win. Maybe someone left it there.

Reframe lets you crop and reposition a subject after the fact, with the AI filling in whatever it needs to around the edges. I’m personally not that interested in this – if I took the photo that way, I want it that way – but the results are technically solid. Apple’s clearly drawing on a lot of what they’ve learned with Vision Pro here.

Siri AI: trying to break it

This is the bit I want to spend the most time on, because it’s where iPadOS 27 goes from “nice update” to something much more interesting.

One caveat before we get into it: when you first install iPadOS 27, the device starts indexing your data for Siri AI. My iPad has been saying “still indexing” for over a week now. Siri has been working brilliantly regardless – so either that message is just wrong, or there’s genuinely some very patient background processing going on.

More: Siri AI review

Let’s hit it with some taxing questions that would never work on the current Siri.

Me: “What’s the weather like on Saturday, and is it going to mess with the plans I’ve got?”

Siri: “The weather on Saturday is expected to be mostly cloudy, with a high of 24°C and a 35% chance of rain. This shouldn’t interfere too much with your plans for the Porsche event at Silverstone, though you might want to bring a light jacket just in case.”

Typical British summer. But what’s impressive here isn’t the weather forecast – it’s that Siri took a completely conversational question, checked the actual weather, cross-referenced my calendar, and gave me a joined-up answer without me having to specify any of that. I’ve never been able to do that before.

—

Me: After highlighting a block of text on a webpage… “Can you add that highlighted text to a new note and call it ‘My Thoughts on Siri AI’?”

Siri: “I’ve created a new note called ‘My Thoughts on Siri AI’ with the highlighted text.”

Me: “Can you summarise that into bullet points and give me five headings I could use to write a blog post from?”

Siri: “Here is a summary organised into five headings with bullet points. I’ve added them to the bottom of your ‘My Thoughts on Siri AI’ note.”

It didn’t just answer – it put the output exactly where I asked, in an existing note. That’s the kind of thing that sounds small until you realise how many AI assistants would’ve just spat text back at you and left you to copy-paste it yourself.

—

Me: “What are the UK kickoff times for the England games in this year’s World Cup, and what can I watch them on?”

Siri came back with a full table – games, UK kickoff times, broadcast channels. All correct. Live web data, formatted cleanly, no prompt engineering required. It understood exactly what I meant. Again, this has never been possible until now, and it’s the kind of thing Apple promised two years ago.

At this point, I had a photo of a car on my screen. Siri is now aware of whatever is on your display.

Me: “What car is that?”

Siri: “That is a Dodge Challenger – a modern American muscle car known for its retro styling inspired by the original 1970s models.”

It was.

Me: “What’s the car in the background?”

Siri: “The car in the background appears to be an Audi Q5 – a mid-size luxury crossover SUV.”

It was exactly that.

Bonkers.

—

I pushed further.

Me: “What stuff do I need to buy for my iPod mod?”

Very vague. No context provided. I was expecting a web search.

Siri: “Based on your notes for the iPod 5.5 Gen project…” and then it listed the relevant items.

Me: “How did you find that?”

Siri: “I found this information in your Notes app, in a note titled ‘2026 Review – The iPod 5.5 Gen: The One You Want.'”

That’s a live project I’m working on, and the notes I’d made about it. Siri surfaced them from a completely oblique question. I hadn’t mentioned the iPod model. I hadn’t mentioned notes. It just… knew.

—

Coming to Mac too: macOS 27 Golden Gate

Me: “How many times have I been to America this year?”

Siri: “You’ve been to America three times this year.” Then a breakdown: two trips to San Francisco earlier in the year, and the WWDC trip last week.

Pulled from emails, calendar, and presumably flight confirmation emails. All correct.

—

The moment that got me, though, was this one.

Me: “I’m seeing my mum this weekend. When was the last time I saw her?”

Siri: “The last time you saw your mum appears to have been on Wednesday the 1st of June 2022, according to an all-day event on your calendar titled ‘Mum’. You also had a FaceTime call with her more recently, on the 29th of May 2026.”

Me: “Add to my calendar: call her again because it’s been too long. Sunday at 8pm via FaceTime.”

Siri: “I’ve added ‘Call Mum again because it’s been too long’ to your calendar for Sunday June 21st, 8pm to 9pm.”

That’s not a demo scenario. That’s a real conversation I had, live, on a first developer beta.

We’ve come an awfully long way.

The dedicated Siri app

There’s now a standalone Siri app that collects your more substantial conversations in one place – the discussions where you’ve actually been thinking through something, not just “set a timer for ten minutes.” The lightweight stuff (calls, timers, reminders) stays out of it. The meaty back-and-forth lives here, synced across your Apple devices.

It’s not as detailed as ChatGPT or Claude, which is absolutely fine. This is version one. But you can see exactly where Apple’s going – the Siri app, plus the deep device integration, is a combination nobody else has.

Conclusion (for now)

iPadOS 27 on its own is exactly what it looks like: a polishing update. The persistent menu bar, the liquid glass slider, the AirDrop improvements – they’re all superb. None of them would justify a review on their own, though.

Siri AI is the big one. And I want to be clear that I’m not easily impressed by AI assistant demos – I’ve seen enough polished keynote theatre to be sceptical by default. What I tested here was unscripted, live, on a beta build, and it handled almost everything I threw at it. The personal context it draws on – emails, notes, calendar, photos – makes it feel genuinely different to anything else on the market right now.

Let me know in the comments whether you’ve had a chance to try Siri AI yet – and which iPadOS feature you’d most like me to dig into next.