I have an iPad from 2017 sitting in my nightstand drawer. It was too slow for modern apps, too old for the latest iOS updates, and too functional to throw away. For two years it just sat there, a monument to Apple’s planned obsolescence. Then I turned it into the most useful device in my house.

Here are four things an old iPad does better than a new one—because it does not need to be fast to be useful.

Dedicated Kitchen Recipe Display

Mount it under a cabinet with a ten-dollar tablet mount. No more touching your phone with flour-covered hands. Load it with your recipe app of choice, keep it plugged in, and set the screen to never auto-lock. The battery is probably shot anyway, so keeping it on the charger solves two problems at once. I use mine daily for dinner recipes and have not wiped flour off my phone screen in months.

Digital Photo Frame

Set it to slideshow mode, load up a shared photo album, and prop it on a stand in the living room. Grandparents love this as a gift. Set up a shared iCloud album that family members can add photos to—the iPad cycles through them automatically. My parents have my old iPad Mini running exactly this setup, and they tell me about new photos they saw every time I call.

Smart Home Control Panel

Wall-mount it near your entryway. Load it with your smart home apps—lights, thermostat, security camera feeds. Having a dedicated panel means you do not have to pull out your phone every time you want to adjust the thermostat or check who is at the front door. Guests figure it out intuitively.

White Noise Machine for Babies

Download a white noise app, plug it in near the crib, and leave it running. An old iPad running one app uses almost no processing power and will run indefinitely on wall power. Way cheaper than a dedicated white noise machine with the same speaker quality.

That 2017 iPad now lives in my kitchen. It runs one app. It has not received a software update in three years. And I use it more often than the iPad Pro I bought to replace it.