The iPad Air: A Device Worth Upgrading To?

Of course that's an extra expense that you have to purchase but this iPad is perfectly sized for a full keyboard now this keyboard works with a smart connector on the edge of the iPad so that provides direct electrical connection to the iPad without the need for a battery or bluetooth and it folds up really compactly and is easy to carry around.

Now I mentioned this is both an upgraded and downgraded version of the iPad Pro. Now let me explain what I mean by that. For the most part, the CPU is the only upgrade here. So we go from an 8th gen processor to a 12th gen processor. That's a significant performance improvement. That means this iPad is much more future-proof. So this should support iOS releases far beyond what the iPad Pro 10.5 inch would be able to handle. There are a few other improvements including some of the radios, which gives us Bluetooth 5.0 replacing Bluetooth 4.2 from the old iPad Pro.

Although we get an upgraded CPU, we do downgrade from 4 gigs to 3 gigs of RAM again, not something I think most people are going to know about this, especially without promotion. So I don't think this is a big loss. We also lose the quad speakers which had two speakers on the top and bottom or left and right side depending on how you look at it. And unfortunately that means audio is annoyingly lopsided when you're using this in landscape orientation.

The camera system has also been downgraded so we lose the LED flash, and we also go from a 12 megapixel camera to 8 megapixels with a 5 element instead of 6 element lens, and we lose optical image stabilization. This also means we lose 4K video recording. The best we can do is 1080p HD video. But we do get slow-motion up to 240 frames per second.

The FaceTime HD camera was not downgraded however it's still 7 megapixels with 1080p HD video.

In the interest of full disclosure and because I couldn't resolve this before I made this video, there are some manufacturing defects on my iPad Air. So if you look around the antenna stripes, there are dimples on either side. I didn't do this, this came out of the box like that. I will take it back to Apple, and hopefully get a result, if not, I'll make sure to let you know.

The baseline iPad is a great value at 329. It's hard to ignore the fact that it looks and feels like a much older piece of hardware. It's also running an older chip, and it doesn't have the vibrant DCI-P3 or true tone display technology of the iPad Air. And again, it definitely looks lower grade.

Now in many ways, I think this iPad Air is the first time we finally get a device that is worth upgrading to, especially if you're using any iPad with a 9.7 inch screen when they drop the iPad Air for the current iPad, it really was sort of a retrograde update, nice processor but the hardware kind of took a step back.

So it became a very unappealing update. But with the iPad Air three we finally get an update that makes sense for previous customers. So it's nice to have something that slots between the boring baseline iPad and the overly expensive iPad Pro.

The iPad Pro does use a different 12th gen chip than the iPad Air, 12th Gen TAZ in the X cores instead of six cores on the CPU, and seven cores versus four cores on the GPU. So you're still gonna see very different performance but the thing to keep in mind is that the OS is basically identical on both of them.

The reason I think this is the best iPad value is that you get everything you need and nothing you don't. You don't have to pay for the things you don't really need, but you get all of the right priorities. You get a fantastic large display with the latest processor, and a nice compact bezel with a screen that's just large enough for a full-size keyboard. And at one pound it happens to be the lightest iPad you can buy.

Something and I really like the iPad Air. It's just the right amount of hardware for the OS. I think the iPad Pro is really pushing the OS with that extravagant hardware, and I think the baseline iPad is just overdue for a major update.

Alright guys hope you enjoyed this look at the new iPad Air. If you did please give this video a like to let me know, and I'll see you again in my next video

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: ena portion of this video is sponsored by LastPass hey guys Mike here the Detroit Borg with what they think is one of the best iPad values you can buy right now this is the new resurrected iPad air this is the third generation of the iPay there after a two-year hiatus essentially this is a repurposed 10.5 inch iPad pro and in some ways this is both an upgraded and downgraded version of the iPad pro we'll talk about that but first let's get to the basics so this retails for $4.99 with 64 gigs of storage but for 649 the old price of the iPad pro you can upgrade to 256 gigs of storage you can also get a cellular version which adds another 129 dollars so this finally fills a pretty big and obvious gap in their iPad line up between the much cheaper $329 iPad and the very expensive almost $800 iPad pro so getting to the unboxing no knives here they give us a little pull temp to rip off the plastic surrounding the box lifting up the lid and getting to the iPad you can see the version I have here is in Space Gray but before we unwrap this let's get to be accessories so first up is the paperwork now in my case because I have a cellular version with LTE I get a sim ejection tool with my paperwork I also get a Quick Start Guide heileen the major features as well as a set of Apple stickers next up is a very familiar 12 watt power adapter so unlike the iPad pro this does not make the transition to USB see it's still using lightning so anybody hoping for a full USB see transition that's not gonna happen this year but regardless this iPad does support the faster charging speeds of USB 3.0 so again to the iPad and unwrapping it the first thing I know is where the way is how much darker this space gray is and that's because this is basically the same space gray as the newest iPad pro now if you compare this to space creme of the old iPad pro or the current iPad 9.7 inch you can see it's quite a bit darker you can see that much lighter color on the old iPad pro basically who looked like silver so I'm actually big fan of this change there's also a gold and silver but those are colors we've seen before this is the first time we're seeing this space gray on this iPad before I go in-depth with the iPad I just want to talk about today's sponsor LastPass now if this is your first iPad or you're replacing an old well the first things you might want to do is install LastPass the first app I install on all of my new devices one of the biggest challenges of using so many different devices is just keeping all those passwords synced together so traditionally every time I set up a new device I had to manually enter the passwords for all of my accounts but with LastPass installed it will automatically remember my password and autofill them into every app or website and because LastPass supports multiple platforms I can use the exact same service on iOS and Android because LastPass remembers everything for you it breaks some bad habits such as raiding your passwords down in an unsecure manner or just using the exact same password on all of your accounts so if one of them is compromised they could potentially take that password to all of your other accounts instead LastPass can generate strong individual passwords for each account and the only thing you have to remember is your master password for last past which you can also secure behind multi-factor authentication so if you guys want to check out LastPass I highly recommend it and you'll find the link in the description below thanks the LastPass for sponsoring this part of the video and let's move on to the iPad taking a closer look at the design a few things you might notice here is that the champers or the machined surfaces are now matte so they have the same anodized finish as the rest of the chassis so presumably that reduces cost but it also makes this darker Space Gray possible so as before we have the volume controls in the sleep/wake power button right around the camera module toward the center we have our dual microphones and because I have the cellular model you'll see these antenna stripes around the top edge so if you had the Wi-Fi model you wouldn't see this small antenna strip at all those dual microphones also work with the m12 motion coprocessor for the Siri wake up come and so you can remotely command Siri hands-free whether the iPad is plugged into power or not of course we also have touch IDs so face ID still remains the iPhone & iPad pro exclusive another quiet update for this iPad is ECM support so if you get a version with cellular you'll see a sim tray but you may not have a sim in that tray at all and that's because we have built-in Isom support so you can sign on with any carrier that supports the electronic sim and that's most of them in the US and although we don't have speakers at the top edge we do have them at the again with darker grilles to match the darker space gray same with the insert for the Lightning connector I think the biggest selling point for the iPad and one of the reasons this is such a good value is the ten point five inch display largely carried over from the iPad pro so we get the same specs here twenty to twenty four by sixteen sixty eight good for 264 pixels per inch or a retina resolution this is a P three display so supports the same wide color gamut as the pros this is also a true tone display so it automatically adapts the color temperature or the white balance of the display to the ambient lighting in the room and more importantly compared to the nine point seven iPad this display is fully laminated to the glass so there is no air gap between the display and the glass the only thing missing from the iPad pro is the pro motion technology so that's a 120 Hertz refresh rate and said we have a conventional 60 Hertz refresh rate I don't think that's a big deal of course you save a lot of the money by going this route and said that going for the iPad pro but you still get most of the benefits of the iPad pro display that used to cost a lot more also carried over from the iPad pro is support for two accessories the first generation Apple pencil and the smart Keyboard so although this isn't the cheapest iPad with Apple pencil support it is the cheapest iPad and the cheapest Apple device with a physical keyboard which i think is another big selling point but of course that's an extra expense that you have to purchase but this iPad is perfectly sized for a full keyboard now this keyboard works with a smart connector on the edge of the iPad so that provides direct electrical connection to the iPad without the need for a battery or bluetooth and it folds up really compactly and is easy to carry around now I mentioned this is both an upgraded and downgraded version of the iPad pro now let me explain what I mean by that for the most part the CPU is the only upgrade here so we go from an eight ten to an eight twelve so that's a significant performance improvement so that means this iPad is much more future-proof so this should support iOS releases far beyond what the iPad pro 10.5 inch would and there's a few other improvements including some of the radios which gives us Bluetooth 5.0 replacing 4.2 from the old iPad pro and although we get an upgraded CPU we do downgrade from four gigs to three gigs of RAM again not something I think most people are going to know this especially without promotion so I don't think this is a big loss we also lose the quad speakers which had two speakers on the top and bottom or left and right side depending on how you look at it and unfortunately that means audio is annoyingly lopsided when you're using this in landscape orientation the camera system has also been downgraded so we lose the LED flash and we also go from a 12 megapixel camera to 8 megapixels with a 5 element instead of 6 element lens and we lose optical image stabilization this also means we lose 4k video recording the best we can do is 1080p HD video but we do get slow-motion up to 240 frames per second the FaceTime HD camera was not downgraded however it's still 7 megapixels with 1080p HD video now I think the camera on the back of an iPad is fairly low priority so I don't think it's a big loss to have a lesser camera on this iPad compared to the iPad pro especially if you're saving some money but even that it's still a pretty decent camera as well especially with a new 812 image signal processor so it's able to deliver pretty solid images anyway now in the interest of full disclosure and because I couldn't resolve this before I made this video there are some manufacturing defects on my iPad air so if you look around the antenna stripes there are dimples on either side I didn't do this this came out of the box like this I will take it back to Apple and hopefully get a result if not I'll make sure to let you know although the baseline iPad is a great value at 3:29 you can often get it much cheaper than that it's hard to ignore the fact that it looks and feels like a much older piece of hardware it's also running an older chip it doesn't have the vibrant DCI p3 or true tone display technology of the iPad air and again it's not Lambie to the glass so it definitely looks lower grade now in many ways I think this iPad air is the first time we finally get a device that is worth upgrading to especially if you're using any iPad with a nine point seven inch screen when they drop the iPad air for the current iPad it really was sort of a retrograde update nice processor but the hardware kind of took a step back so it became a very unappealing update but with the iPad air three we finally get an update that makes a sense for previous customers so it's nice to have something that slots between the boring baseline iPad and the overly expensive iPad pro the iPad pro does use a different 812 chip than the iPad air : 812 X in the Taz 8 cores instead of six cores on the CPU and seven cores versus four cores on the GPU so you're still gonna see very different performance but the thing to keep in mind is that the OS is basically identical on both of them now the reason I think this is the best iPad value is that you get everything you need and nothing you don't so you don't have to pay for the things you don't really need but you get all of the right priorities you get a fantastic large display with the latest processor and a nice compact bezel with a screen that's just large enough for a full-size keyboard and at one pound it happens to be the lightest iPad you can buy something and I really like the iPad air it's just the right amount of hardware for the OS I think the iPad pro is really pushing the OS with that extravagant hardware and I think the baseline iPad is just overdue for a major update alright guys hope you enjoyed this look at the new iPad air if you did please give this video a like to let me know and I'll see you again in my next videoa portion of this video is sponsored by LastPass hey guys Mike here the Detroit Borg with what they think is one of the best iPad values you can buy right now this is the new resurrected iPad air this is the third generation of the iPay there after a two-year hiatus essentially this is a repurposed 10.5 inch iPad pro and in some ways this is both an upgraded and downgraded version of the iPad pro we'll talk about that but first let's get to the basics so this retails for $4.99 with 64 gigs of storage but for 649 the old price of the iPad pro you can upgrade to 256 gigs of storage you can also get a cellular version which adds another 129 dollars so this finally fills a pretty big and obvious gap in their iPad line up between the much cheaper $329 iPad and the very expensive almost $800 iPad pro so getting to the unboxing no knives here they give us a little pull temp to rip off the plastic surrounding the box lifting up the lid and getting to the iPad you can see the version I have here is in Space Gray but before we unwrap this let's get to be accessories so first up is the paperwork now in my case because I have a cellular version with LTE I get a sim ejection tool with my paperwork I also get a Quick Start Guide heileen the major features as well as a set of Apple stickers next up is a very familiar 12 watt power adapter so unlike the iPad pro this does not make the transition to USB see it's still using lightning so anybody hoping for a full USB see transition that's not gonna happen this year but regardless this iPad does support the faster charging speeds of USB 3.0 so again to the iPad and unwrapping it the first thing I know is where the way is how much darker this space gray is and that's because this is basically the same space gray as the newest iPad pro now if you compare this to space creme of the old iPad pro or the current iPad 9.7 inch you can see it's quite a bit darker you can see that much lighter color on the old iPad pro basically who looked like silver so I'm actually big fan of this change there's also a gold and silver but those are colors we've seen before this is the first time we're seeing this space gray on this iPad before I go in-depth with the iPad I just want to talk about today's sponsor LastPass now if this is your first iPad or you're replacing an old well the first things you might want to do is install LastPass the first app I install on all of my new devices one of the biggest challenges of using so many different devices is just keeping all those passwords synced together so traditionally every time I set up a new device I had to manually enter the passwords for all of my accounts but with LastPass installed it will automatically remember my password and autofill them into every app or website and because LastPass supports multiple platforms I can use the exact same service on iOS and Android because LastPass remembers everything for you it breaks some bad habits such as raiding your passwords down in an unsecure manner or just using the exact same password on all of your accounts so if one of them is compromised they could potentially take that password to all of your other accounts instead LastPass can generate strong individual passwords for each account and the only thing you have to remember is your master password for last past which you can also secure behind multi-factor authentication so if you guys want to check out LastPass I highly recommend it and you'll find the link in the description below thanks the LastPass for sponsoring this part of the video and let's move on to the iPad taking a closer look at the design a few things you might notice here is that the champers or the machined surfaces are now matte so they have the same anodized finish as the rest of the chassis so presumably that reduces cost but it also makes this darker Space Gray possible so as before we have the volume controls in the sleep/wake power button right around the camera module toward the center we have our dual microphones and because I have the cellular model you'll see these antenna stripes around the top edge so if you had the Wi-Fi model you wouldn't see this small antenna strip at all those dual microphones also work with the m12 motion coprocessor for the Siri wake up come and so you can remotely command Siri hands-free whether the iPad is plugged into power or not of course we also have touch IDs so face ID still remains the iPhone & iPad pro exclusive another quiet update for this iPad is ECM support so if you get a version with cellular you'll see a sim tray but you may not have a sim in that tray at all and that's because we have built-in Isom support so you can sign on with any carrier that supports the electronic sim and that's most of them in the US and although we don't have speakers at the top edge we do have them at the again with darker grilles to match the darker space gray same with the insert for the Lightning connector I think the biggest selling point for the iPad and one of the reasons this is such a good value is the ten point five inch display largely carried over from the iPad pro so we get the same specs here twenty to twenty four by sixteen sixty eight good for 264 pixels per inch or a retina resolution this is a P three display so supports the same wide color gamut as the pros this is also a true tone display so it automatically adapts the color temperature or the white balance of the display to the ambient lighting in the room and more importantly compared to the nine point seven iPad this display is fully laminated to the glass so there is no air gap between the display and the glass the only thing missing from the iPad pro is the pro motion technology so that's a 120 Hertz refresh rate and said we have a conventional 60 Hertz refresh rate I don't think that's a big deal of course you save a lot of the money by going this route and said that going for the iPad pro but you still get most of the benefits of the iPad pro display that used to cost a lot more also carried over from the iPad pro is support for two accessories the first generation Apple pencil and the smart Keyboard so although this isn't the cheapest iPad with Apple pencil support it is the cheapest iPad and the cheapest Apple device with a physical keyboard which i think is another big selling point but of course that's an extra expense that you have to purchase but this iPad is perfectly sized for a full keyboard now this keyboard works with a smart connector on the edge of the iPad so that provides direct electrical connection to the iPad without the need for a battery or bluetooth and it folds up really compactly and is easy to carry around now I mentioned this is both an upgraded and downgraded version of the iPad pro now let me explain what I mean by that for the most part the CPU is the only upgrade here so we go from an eight ten to an eight twelve so that's a significant performance improvement so that means this iPad is much more future-proof so this should support iOS releases far beyond what the iPad pro 10.5 inch would and there's a few other improvements including some of the radios which gives us Bluetooth 5.0 replacing 4.2 from the old iPad pro and although we get an upgraded CPU we do downgrade from four gigs to three gigs of RAM again not something I think most people are going to know this especially without promotion so I don't think this is a big loss we also lose the quad speakers which had two speakers on the top and bottom or left and right side depending on how you look at it and unfortunately that means audio is annoyingly lopsided when you're using this in landscape orientation the camera system has also been downgraded so we lose the LED flash and we also go from a 12 megapixel camera to 8 megapixels with a 5 element instead of 6 element lens and we lose optical image stabilization this also means we lose 4k video recording the best we can do is 1080p HD video but we do get slow-motion up to 240 frames per second the FaceTime HD camera was not downgraded however it's still 7 megapixels with 1080p HD video now I think the camera on the back of an iPad is fairly low priority so I don't think it's a big loss to have a lesser camera on this iPad compared to the iPad pro especially if you're saving some money but even that it's still a pretty decent camera as well especially with a new 812 image signal processor so it's able to deliver pretty solid images anyway now in the interest of full disclosure and because I couldn't resolve this before I made this video there are some manufacturing defects on my iPad air so if you look around the antenna stripes there are dimples on either side I didn't do this this came out of the box like this I will take it back to Apple and hopefully get a result if not I'll make sure to let you know although the baseline iPad is a great value at 3:29 you can often get it much cheaper than that it's hard to ignore the fact that it looks and feels like a much older piece of hardware it's also running an older chip it doesn't have the vibrant DCI p3 or true tone display technology of the iPad air and again it's not Lambie to the glass so it definitely looks lower grade now in many ways I think this iPad air is the first time we finally get a device that is worth upgrading to especially if you're using any iPad with a nine point seven inch screen when they drop the iPad air for the current iPad it really was sort of a retrograde update nice processor but the hardware kind of took a step back so it became a very unappealing update but with the iPad air three we finally get an update that makes a sense for previous customers so it's nice to have something that slots between the boring baseline iPad and the overly expensive iPad pro the iPad pro does use a different 812 chip than the iPad air : 812 X in the Taz 8 cores instead of six cores on the CPU and seven cores versus four cores on the GPU so you're still gonna see very different performance but the thing to keep in mind is that the OS is basically identical on both of them now the reason I think this is the best iPad value is that you get everything you need and nothing you don't so you don't have to pay for the things you don't really need but you get all of the right priorities you get a fantastic large display with the latest processor and a nice compact bezel with a screen that's just large enough for a full-size keyboard and at one pound it happens to be the lightest iPad you can buy something and I really like the iPad air it's just the right amount of hardware for the OS I think the iPad pro is really pushing the OS with that extravagant hardware and I think the baseline iPad is just overdue for a major update alright guys hope you enjoyed this look at the new iPad air if you did please give this video a like to let me know and I'll see you again in my next video\n"