The Apple iPad Air: A Comprehensive Review of its Features and Performance

When it comes to tablets, Apple's iPad Pro has long been considered the gold standard. However, with the recent release of the new iPad Air, many are wondering whether this device can give the Pro a run for its money. In this article, we'll take a closer look at the features and performance of the iPad Air, and see if it lives up to its Pro counterpart.

One of the most significant differences between the iPad Air and the iPad Pro is the processor. The iPad Air is powered by Apple's A14 Bionic chip with a 5-nanometer process, which provides a slight boost in performance compared to the A12Z chip used in the current-gen Pro model. While it may not be as fast as the Pro's ProMotion display, the A14 Bionic chip still delivers impressive performance and is more than capable of handling demanding tasks.

In terms of RAM, the iPad Air comes with 4GB of memory, which is a bit less than the 6GB found in the Pro. However, this shouldn't be a major issue for most users, as the iPad Air's performance has been consistently strong across various benchmarks and tests. In fact, I've had no issues running demanding apps and games on my review unit, and I expect most users to have similar experiences.

Another key difference between the two devices is their display. The iPad Pro features Apple's ProMotion display with a 120Hz refresh rate, while the iPad Air sticks with the standard 60Hz display. While the higher refresh rate may be a consideration for some users, especially those who enjoy smooth scrolling and animation, I've found that 60Hz still provides a great viewing experience. Moreover, the iPad Pro's ProMotion display comes at a price, both in terms of cost and battery life.

Battery Life is another area where the iPad Air shines. Since it doesn't have to maintain a high refresh rate like the Pro, it's likely to have better battery life. Apple estimates that the iPad Air will provide up to 10 hours of browsing, while the Pro tops out at around 9 hours. Additionally, the iPad Air comes with a slightly faster 20-watt charger in the box, which should help recharge the device more quickly.

In terms of storage, both devices offer 64GB, 256GB, and 512GB options, although the Pro starts at 128GB. However, if you need more space for your files and apps, the higher-end iPad Pro models may be worth considering.

So, what sets the iPad Air apart from its Pro counterpart? For one, it's significantly cheaper, starting at $329 compared to the Pro's $599 base price. Additionally, the iPad Air is only available in 11-inch or 10.9-inch sizes, although this shouldn't be a major issue for most users.

The other significant difference is the camera system. The iPad Pro features Apple's Ultra Wide Camera with LiDAR technology, while the iPad Air sticks with the standard wide-angle camera and no LiDAR. While the current-gen Pro model still has some of the best cameras on the market, the newer iPad Air should still provide great image quality.

If you're looking for a tablet that offers top-notch performance, display, and camera capabilities without breaking the bank, the new iPad Air is an excellent choice. However, if you want the absolute latest and greatest features, including ProMotion and LiDAR, the iPad Pro is still the better option.

One thing that's certain is that the iPad Air represents Apple's more interesting strategy of attacking a wider range of prices and offering more things at more prices. We saw it with the iPhone, from $399 for the SE to $1,199 for the 12 Pro Max. Now, we're seeing it with the iPad, from $329 for the base model all the way up to $1,499 for the top-of-the-line 13-inch model with cellular.

In conclusion, the new iPad Air is an excellent device that offers great performance, a fantastic display, and impressive camera capabilities at an affordable price. While it may not have all the bells and whistles of its Pro counterpart, it's still a solid choice for anyone looking for a top-notch tablet without breaking the bank.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enhey what's up mkbhd here okay finally a month after it was announced at that september event the new ipad air is finally here and it turns out if anything out there is actually an ipad pro killer it's this i mean i've talked at length about how the ipad pro is my favorite tablet by a mile right you've seen the videos and i've also talked about how other tablets might be better at the ipad pro at like one thing like maybe a better overall display or a better speaker setup but overall the whole package for best tablet for me keeps going to ipad pro but the thing is most people don't need an ipad pro and that thing still starts at 800 bucks but now with all the updates to this 4th gen ipad air there's almost no reason for people to go spend that because this thing starts at 5.99 and it gets pretty much everything most people care about from the ipad pro except one thing so the new design of the ipad air matches the ipad pro in basically every way the boxy all aluminum shape feels rock solid it's got these grippable flat sides the buttons are in the same place it's nice it has the smart connector at the back so you can drop it in a smart folio or even a magic keyboard case just like an ipad pro you wanna know why because it is the magic keyboard case for the ipad pro and it just fits in the same case because it has the same dimensions so there's your trackpad there's your usbc passthrough because guess what ipad air also now gets usb type c see apple it's okay to put usb-c in products without the pro in the name it's good for everybody the quad speaker setup that surrounds the display also sounds phenomenal for a tablet and you have basically the exact same bezel thickness all the way around thin enough to not be a problem and still look good but thick enough to actually hold the ipad from any angle and not have accidental screen touches but then one difference about that bezel is inside it you won't find face id there's just a regular seven megapixel front facing camera up there and instead of face id touch id is back and it's built into that power button up top so kind of like pixel 5 they've technically gone backwards as far as biometric authentication methods goes but in this world of masks that we live in uh fingerprint reader is just as convenient as face id sometimes more so although with an ipad you use at home a lot where you're not really out and wearing a mask as much so maybe the the fingerprint reader is just at the same level as face id either way not a problem it's pretty easy and quick to get used to basically the pro tip is register multiple fingerprints actually that's not even a pro tip that's just common sense but a lot of people don't do it but for me both index fingers work great so no matter which orientation the ipad is in the finger i press the power button with also unlocks it for me so that's great and apple's done fingerprint readers well for a while now this one is also fast and accurate the only little bit of friction i had personally was i'm so used to ipad pro that my unlock is typically touch to wake and then swipe up and it reads my face but of course i have to remember on this to touch the power button which is such a minor thing but also most people getting ipad air aren't coming from an ipad pro so this is a total non-issue for on the back ipad air literally gets the same 12 megapixel primary camera as the ipad pro but you'll note it's just a single camera by itself and a mic no flash no ultra wide no lidar but i mean if you think about it how often do you need an ultra wide or a lidar sensor or even a flash for your tablet photography i'd say pretty much never so all of these things missing mean almost nothing to most people i maintain that the most common use of ipad cameras should be document scanning and facetime calls and these cameras here are more than good enough for that and then the ipad air has the new apple pencil support it snaps onto the side of the ipad to charge and pair the same way as the pro so that's pretty sweet and then inside ipad air actually has the even newer five nanometer a14 bionic chip instead of the a12z currently in the pro so you can actually expect very similar sometimes even better benchmark numbers on paper but the point is despite its slightly lower four gigs of ram it's going to perform great i've had no performance issues and i don't expect a typical user will run into any performance limits for a long time so on the surface level everything ipad pro does ipad air basically also does except refresh rate so ipad air is of course at the standard 60 hertz that we're used to on every other apple device except the ones with pro motion like ipad pro which are at 120 hertz now if you've never seen 120 hertz which if we're being honest most apple users never have then 60 hertz is gonna look great but it's like every time i review an ipad i always can't help but have these thoughts on like the state of tablets in general and how the entire android tablet ecosystem rose to such great heights and then fell so far like there used to be so much conjecture and thoughts and interesting videos about what the tablet os should look like and how it should multitask and what it should do but now with like four out of the top five tablets available being ipads they're all kind of just the same performance is fine as expected through ipad os 14 there's plenty of ipad optimized apps and games which is great and it's just kind of the status quo now the ipad pro is 120 hertz of course speaks to people like me because i'm personally a fan of high refresh rate the more pixels the better but i've always said in the past and it's still true here apple also makes some of the smoothest 60hz devices and smoothness of course is not a problem at all here it's standard and actually battery life is also potentially even better on this ipad air because it never has to hit 120 hertz it's just chilling at 60 and it's using the more efficient 5 nanometer a14 chip also it happens to come with a slightly faster 20 watt fast charger in the box instead of the old 18 that comes with the ipad pro so okay i've done a lot of comparing in this video so i'm just gonna go ahead and name every single significant thing that you could notice as a difference between ipad pro and ipad air and i'm not going to get into like the extra 2 gigs of ram on the pro or the slightly higher peak brightness i'm going to stick to the main real bullet points of why you'd pick one or the other so you should pick the ipad pro over the air if you want the ultra wide camera or lidar if you want high refresh rate 120 hertz promotion or a bigger ipad because the the bigger 13 inch ipad pro is available the ipad air only comes in the 11 inch size or 10.9 inch but that's it for everyone else you should get the ipad air it's it's all the tablet you need for way less money that almost seems too simple are there any downsides yes but they're small obviously no bigger size is a bit of a downside for some people like i mentioned there's only 10.9 uh but also i'm not a fan of these colors at all they're all super pale pastel-ish kind of colors but i mean this green only shows up on camera as green because i've made a conscious effort through this video to put it up against things that don't overwhelm the green it really isn't green most of the time so i'd just get space gray this new ipad to me more represents apple's more interesting strategy of attacking a wider range of prices and offering more things at more prices we saw it with the iphone anywhere from 399 at the se all the way up to 12.99 at the 12 pro max and now we see it with the ipad with the 329 dollar ipad straight all the way up to 14.99 for the one terabyte 13-inch ipad pro with cellular so this new ipad takes a lot of great stuff from the pro brings it down in price and that's why you could call it an ipad pro killer but really it's just living alongside it for a lot of people so that's pretty much it let me know which one you would pick are you a pro motion type of person like me would you go for the ipad pro or are you one of those ipad air people because there's about to be a lot of them either way thanks for watching catch you guys in the next one peacehey what's up mkbhd here okay finally a month after it was announced at that september event the new ipad air is finally here and it turns out if anything out there is actually an ipad pro killer it's this i mean i've talked at length about how the ipad pro is my favorite tablet by a mile right you've seen the videos and i've also talked about how other tablets might be better at the ipad pro at like one thing like maybe a better overall display or a better speaker setup but overall the whole package for best tablet for me keeps going to ipad pro but the thing is most people don't need an ipad pro and that thing still starts at 800 bucks but now with all the updates to this 4th gen ipad air there's almost no reason for people to go spend that because this thing starts at 5.99 and it gets pretty much everything most people care about from the ipad pro except one thing so the new design of the ipad air matches the ipad pro in basically every way the boxy all aluminum shape feels rock solid it's got these grippable flat sides the buttons are in the same place it's nice it has the smart connector at the back so you can drop it in a smart folio or even a magic keyboard case just like an ipad pro you wanna know why because it is the magic keyboard case for the ipad pro and it just fits in the same case because it has the same dimensions so there's your trackpad there's your usbc passthrough because guess what ipad air also now gets usb type c see apple it's okay to put usb-c in products without the pro in the name it's good for everybody the quad speaker setup that surrounds the display also sounds phenomenal for a tablet and you have basically the exact same bezel thickness all the way around thin enough to not be a problem and still look good but thick enough to actually hold the ipad from any angle and not have accidental screen touches but then one difference about that bezel is inside it you won't find face id there's just a regular seven megapixel front facing camera up there and instead of face id touch id is back and it's built into that power button up top so kind of like pixel 5 they've technically gone backwards as far as biometric authentication methods goes but in this world of masks that we live in uh fingerprint reader is just as convenient as face id sometimes more so although with an ipad you use at home a lot where you're not really out and wearing a mask as much so maybe the the fingerprint reader is just at the same level as face id either way not a problem it's pretty easy and quick to get used to basically the pro tip is register multiple fingerprints actually that's not even a pro tip that's just common sense but a lot of people don't do it but for me both index fingers work great so no matter which orientation the ipad is in the finger i press the power button with also unlocks it for me so that's great and apple's done fingerprint readers well for a while now this one is also fast and accurate the only little bit of friction i had personally was i'm so used to ipad pro that my unlock is typically touch to wake and then swipe up and it reads my face but of course i have to remember on this to touch the power button which is such a minor thing but also most people getting ipad air aren't coming from an ipad pro so this is a total non-issue for on the back ipad air literally gets the same 12 megapixel primary camera as the ipad pro but you'll note it's just a single camera by itself and a mic no flash no ultra wide no lidar but i mean if you think about it how often do you need an ultra wide or a lidar sensor or even a flash for your tablet photography i'd say pretty much never so all of these things missing mean almost nothing to most people i maintain that the most common use of ipad cameras should be document scanning and facetime calls and these cameras here are more than good enough for that and then the ipad air has the new apple pencil support it snaps onto the side of the ipad to charge and pair the same way as the pro so that's pretty sweet and then inside ipad air actually has the even newer five nanometer a14 bionic chip instead of the a12z currently in the pro so you can actually expect very similar sometimes even better benchmark numbers on paper but the point is despite its slightly lower four gigs of ram it's going to perform great i've had no performance issues and i don't expect a typical user will run into any performance limits for a long time so on the surface level everything ipad pro does ipad air basically also does except refresh rate so ipad air is of course at the standard 60 hertz that we're used to on every other apple device except the ones with pro motion like ipad pro which are at 120 hertz now if you've never seen 120 hertz which if we're being honest most apple users never have then 60 hertz is gonna look great but it's like every time i review an ipad i always can't help but have these thoughts on like the state of tablets in general and how the entire android tablet ecosystem rose to such great heights and then fell so far like there used to be so much conjecture and thoughts and interesting videos about what the tablet os should look like and how it should multitask and what it should do but now with like four out of the top five tablets available being ipads they're all kind of just the same performance is fine as expected through ipad os 14 there's plenty of ipad optimized apps and games which is great and it's just kind of the status quo now the ipad pro is 120 hertz of course speaks to people like me because i'm personally a fan of high refresh rate the more pixels the better but i've always said in the past and it's still true here apple also makes some of the smoothest 60hz devices and smoothness of course is not a problem at all here it's standard and actually battery life is also potentially even better on this ipad air because it never has to hit 120 hertz it's just chilling at 60 and it's using the more efficient 5 nanometer a14 chip also it happens to come with a slightly faster 20 watt fast charger in the box instead of the old 18 that comes with the ipad pro so okay i've done a lot of comparing in this video so i'm just gonna go ahead and name every single significant thing that you could notice as a difference between ipad pro and ipad air and i'm not going to get into like the extra 2 gigs of ram on the pro or the slightly higher peak brightness i'm going to stick to the main real bullet points of why you'd pick one or the other so you should pick the ipad pro over the air if you want the ultra wide camera or lidar if you want high refresh rate 120 hertz promotion or a bigger ipad because the the bigger 13 inch ipad pro is available the ipad air only comes in the 11 inch size or 10.9 inch but that's it for everyone else you should get the ipad air it's it's all the tablet you need for way less money that almost seems too simple are there any downsides yes but they're small obviously no bigger size is a bit of a downside for some people like i mentioned there's only 10.9 uh but also i'm not a fan of these colors at all they're all super pale pastel-ish kind of colors but i mean this green only shows up on camera as green because i've made a conscious effort through this video to put it up against things that don't overwhelm the green it really isn't green most of the time so i'd just get space gray this new ipad to me more represents apple's more interesting strategy of attacking a wider range of prices and offering more things at more prices we saw it with the iphone anywhere from 399 at the se all the way up to 12.99 at the 12 pro max and now we see it with the ipad with the 329 dollar ipad straight all the way up to 14.99 for the one terabyte 13-inch ipad pro with cellular so this new ipad takes a lot of great stuff from the pro brings it down in price and that's why you could call it an ipad pro killer but really it's just living alongside it for a lot of people so that's pretty much it let me know which one you would pick are you a pro motion type of person like me would you go for the ipad pro or are you one of those ipad air people because there's about to be a lot of them either way thanks for watching catch you guys in the next one peace\n"