We have one of these. It works surprisingly well for a five year old iPad. And it is running the latest iPadOS 26.
Tip for folks running out of storage on the 64GB model. We have 32,000 photos/videos on it, with optimize photo turned on.
There was not enough free space to update to ipadOS 26 due to the huge (9GB?) update file. Did a back up, full erase, and restore, and the free space jumped from 5GB to 22GB!
Those savings appeared to be due to a combination of junk/caches being cleared (the Apple system file space shrank) and full rez photos being cleared out on the iPad .
Initiate the update to iPadOS 26 immediately upon getting control of your iPad back in the restore process, before all the apps restore. Worked like a charm.
Our free storage stayed at 20GB+ for months and eventually came back to the prior 5GB free. New photos/videos added definitely stress that storage even with optimize on.
[Edit: free storage space now sits at 13GB, not 5GB - apparently the iPadOS 26.4.2 update had downloaded but not installed - whatever the reason, the point being, doing a regular Backup/Erase/Restore works magic for storage space.]