The iPad Air: A Compelling Option with Some Minor Upgrades

As I compared the new iPad Air to its Pro counterpart, I couldn't help but notice that the two devices share many similarities. Both have the same size and resolution, making them comparable in terms of display quality. However, it's the difference in refresh rate that really sets them apart. The iPad Pro boasts a 120Hz refresh rate, which makes everything about using the device smoother and snappier. This is largely due to the faster M1 chip, which provides a significant boost in performance compared to the iPad Air's 60Hz refresh rate.

The M1 chip in the iPad Air may theoretically close the gap in performance with the Pro, but it doesn't quite feel as fast. The 60Hz refresh rate can make animations and gestures seem less responsive, particularly when using big gestures like unlocking the device or switching between apps. While some people may not notice a significant difference, for those who value smoothness and responsiveness, the iPad Pro's 120Hz display is a major advantage.

One notable upgrade in the iPad Air is the addition of an ultra-wide camera with Center Stage, which follows you around the room during FaceTime calls. This feature is convenient, but it's worth noting that the Pro's face ID sensors are technically more capable, allowing for features like Animoji and Memoji to work properly.

Another key difference between the two devices is the presence of a 10-megapixel ultra-wide camera with a lidar scanner and flash on the iPad Pro. This gives the Pro an edge in terms of versatility, particularly when it comes to video calls and document scanning. The Pro's quad-speaker audio also provides a fuller and louder sound compared to the dual speakers on the iPad Air.

Storage capacity is another area where the Pro has an advantage, with a maximum storage option of 2 terabytes. This may be a selling point for those who need more storage space, but it's worth noting that 256GB may still be sufficient for most users.

The USB-C port on the iPad Pro also opens up potential peripheral options, such as plugging in drives or other accessories. However, this feature is not present on the iPad Air, which has a faster but non-Thunderbolt USB-C port.

In terms of preferences, face ID may become second nature once you start using it regularly, and the Touch ID fingerprint reader on the iPad Air works just as well as its counterpart. The only difference lies in the location of the selfie camera, which is now centered and follows you around the room during FaceTime calls.

The iPad Pro's higher price point can be attributed to these upgraded features, as well as the presence of a higher-end design with Mini LED display on the 13-inch model. While the extra money may not be necessary for everyone, it's clear that Apple is trying to nudge users towards upgrading to the Pro model by including features from the more expensive device in the iPad Air.

The decision to spend the extra money on the Pro ultimately comes down to personal preference and individual needs. For those who value smoothness and responsiveness above all else, the iPad Pro may be the better choice. However, for those who want a great display, a solid camera, and some minor upgrades without breaking the bank, the iPad Air is an excellent option that won't leave you feeling like you're missing out on too much.

In conclusion, the iPad Air is a compelling device that offers many of the same features as its Pro counterpart at a lower price point. While it may not have all the bells and whistles of the more expensive model, it's clear that Apple has put a lot of thought into creating a device that will appeal to a wide range of users.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enhey what's up um here okay there's a book called the myth of fair value and in that book it's all about pricing strategies for different products and things like that and in that there's a study that they go over about purchasing patterns so in test number one a company selling a product offers a regular option and a premium option and four out of five people pick the more premium one so then in test number two they added a third cheaper option to see if they could maybe increase revenue by looping in an audience that's looking for a cheaper lowest possible price turned out the cheapest option was kind of just ignored but it completely flipped the ratio of standard to premium purchases because now people would assume that the middle one was the appropriate value so then in test number three they took away the cheap option but then added an ultra premium option over the top and this ended up flipping the ratio right back to the original premium one but also some portion of people just went with the more expensive one just because that's what they want and so this ended up with the highest overall revenue generated pricing ladders are very real and very much designed to get you to spend as much as possible and make those companies as much money as they can this is the new 2022 ipad air with the new m1 chip inside you can tell because it's a nice shiny deeper blue color it's nice but it is one of the stranger apple products that i've seen in a long time because of its price and where it sits in the lineup because it kind of messes with the ladder a little bit so look it's actually very simple to understand what you're getting here with this spec bump which is an even more powerful version of the ipad we already know i already reviewed the 2020 ipad air and i'll link that below the like button so you already know what you're getting on the outside and then i've already reviewed several computers with the m1 chip including the ipad pro with this m1 so you know what you're getting on the inside too this is a thin 11 inch tablet same exact dimensions as the last ipad air so those cases all still work your single camera on the back usb type c at the bottom the touch id fingerprint reader in the power button up in the corner and the 11 inch 60 hertz display up front running the exact same ipad os as every other ipad the reason it's so strange is this is the most i've ever seen one apple product seem to overlap another that other product being the ipad pro so the last ipad air was already very close to the ipad pro right it had basically the same dimensions same exact camera same battery life and the same software features of all the other most expensive ipads it works with the same 2nd gen apple pencil it's just as thin in my review i called it the one true ipad pro killer because it's 80 of the tablet for 200 less dollars and so this year now that the new ipad air also gets the incredible massively overkill new m1 chip inside it's one more thing that they do exactly the same so the ipad air starts at 5.99 and the 11 inch ipad pro starts at 7.99 but let's take a closer look at this pricing see this is a pricing ladder after all so it's designed to have something available at every price and then every time you arrive at one price there's something a little higher to try to nudge you up and try to get you as high in that ladder as they can so the base price ipad air is only a 64 gigabyte ipad for 600 bucks in 2022 that's not really great i mean we got 20 gig games today so of course the only available storage option is straight up to 256 gigs which is 150 extra dollars so now you're playing in the 750 territory which is a lot of money to spend on an air when for just fifty dollars more you can get a pro right so now you might as well just bump up to the ipad pro so you can see what they're doing right they're nudging you up a little bit by a little bit but the thing is the ipad pro is more expensive but it's almost the same tablet in so many ways so they're already practically the same dimensions to the point where the ipad air works in all the same cases and keyboards that the ipad pro works in they're the same primary camera on the back the same usb c port the same battery life and now the same m1 chip so you'd have to think extra hard about spending extra money on an ipad pro when the list of reasons to do so is smaller than ever before now as someone who's used both tablets honestly one of those reasons is pretty huge and then the rest are all pretty minor but let's just go through each of them so the only reason i still pick an ipad pro as a better overall experience a better tablet than the air is the pro motion display so they're about the same size and resolution but the faster 120hz refresh rate is one of those things that just makes everything about using the pro smoother and snappier and more responsive and that's the thing that makes the m1 chip in this ipad air so funny which is it theoretically closes the gap in performance versus the pro with you know rendering and exporting and compiling and things like that but it does not feel as fast because of the 60 hertz so those big animations where your hand moves across the entire screen the unlock animation the multitasking gestures the big stuff like that you could put a 30 90 in here and it wouldn't feel as smooth as the pro motion ipad now sure some people need to see them side by side and even then they barely see a difference in which case yeah that person should just get the ipad air but i'm telling you for me if you're like me that's something i would spend the extra money for but then the ipad pro has one extra camera the 10 megapixel ultra wide plus a lidar scanner and a flash the ipad air just has a single camera no flash so you know for the occasional video call or document scanning that's totally fine for me and like i said it's the same main camera as the ipad pro so there isn't even a quality difference here then the ipad pro has quad speaker audio instead of the dual speakers of the ipad air they're both very solid speakers and it's definitely a bit fuller and louder from the pro but that's not something you're going out and spending extra money on specifically and then the pro has a higher max storage so you can go up to 2 terabytes instead of just 256 gigs and the usb-c port is thunderbolt on the pro instead of just faster usbc on the air so that might open up some potential peripheral options for actual pros plugging in drives etc and then of course you have face id on the ipad pro where you've got the touch id fingerprint reader on the ipad air honestly at this point it's kind of preference like you get used to having face id on the tablet very quickly when you have it but also the good old-fashioned two fingers registered on the ipad air works really well too so in portrait it's the right index finger that unlocks and then in landscape it's the left index finger great you know what's funny though the only other update to the air besides the m1 chip being inside is the selfie camera is now the ultra wide with center stage so it's got the newer selfie camera and it's convenient it follows you around the room it's kind of in an awkward location but it's decently smooth with face time zoom calls etc but because the ipad pro has the face id sensors and stuff technically only that older selfie camera will support animojis and memojis and things like that so there's that but that's basically it right that's the differences so now hearing that list you probably already know if you would be tempted to move up one more rung on that ladder you know maybe 50 extra bucks for promotion does it for you like it does it for me or maybe you just want a larger tablet because you do have the 13 inch ipad pro with mini led if you're tempted to go large but other than that you know the extra camera lidar the face id the speakers all pretty minor things but then the funniest part usually right the ladders are designed to try to nudge you up to try to get you to spend more and more money putting one of the features from the more expensive model in the less expensive model just removes one reason to upgrade and may actually encourage a small number of people to move down because now that theoretical person who would have spent the extra money to get the hugely improved processing power of the m1 now just has one less reason to get the pro they can get it in the air well that is until the m2 version comes out anyway either way it's fascinating it's always interesting to see these new products come out at these different various price ranges i think in that example from the beginning of the video you know apple clearly has a baseline ipad an ipad air and an ipad pro and most people don't need to spend the extra money to get the most premium ipad pro i think the promotion is enough just for me and a lot of people would too but there's also going to be a bunch of people that just spend the extra money just because they want the most premium thing fine but this ipad air is another great spec bump that actually makes me even more frustrated that ipad os is not evolving to fully take advantage of it but that's a another rant for another video either way that's been it thanks for watching catch you guys in the next one peacehey what's up um here okay there's a book called the myth of fair value and in that book it's all about pricing strategies for different products and things like that and in that there's a study that they go over about purchasing patterns so in test number one a company selling a product offers a regular option and a premium option and four out of five people pick the more premium one so then in test number two they added a third cheaper option to see if they could maybe increase revenue by looping in an audience that's looking for a cheaper lowest possible price turned out the cheapest option was kind of just ignored but it completely flipped the ratio of standard to premium purchases because now people would assume that the middle one was the appropriate value so then in test number three they took away the cheap option but then added an ultra premium option over the top and this ended up flipping the ratio right back to the original premium one but also some portion of people just went with the more expensive one just because that's what they want and so this ended up with the highest overall revenue generated pricing ladders are very real and very much designed to get you to spend as much as possible and make those companies as much money as they can this is the new 2022 ipad air with the new m1 chip inside you can tell because it's a nice shiny deeper blue color it's nice but it is one of the stranger apple products that i've seen in a long time because of its price and where it sits in the lineup because it kind of messes with the ladder a little bit so look it's actually very simple to understand what you're getting here with this spec bump which is an even more powerful version of the ipad we already know i already reviewed the 2020 ipad air and i'll link that below the like button so you already know what you're getting on the outside and then i've already reviewed several computers with the m1 chip including the ipad pro with this m1 so you know what you're getting on the inside too this is a thin 11 inch tablet same exact dimensions as the last ipad air so those cases all still work your single camera on the back usb type c at the bottom the touch id fingerprint reader in the power button up in the corner and the 11 inch 60 hertz display up front running the exact same ipad os as every other ipad the reason it's so strange is this is the most i've ever seen one apple product seem to overlap another that other product being the ipad pro so the last ipad air was already very close to the ipad pro right it had basically the same dimensions same exact camera same battery life and the same software features of all the other most expensive ipads it works with the same 2nd gen apple pencil it's just as thin in my review i called it the one true ipad pro killer because it's 80 of the tablet for 200 less dollars and so this year now that the new ipad air also gets the incredible massively overkill new m1 chip inside it's one more thing that they do exactly the same so the ipad air starts at 5.99 and the 11 inch ipad pro starts at 7.99 but let's take a closer look at this pricing see this is a pricing ladder after all so it's designed to have something available at every price and then every time you arrive at one price there's something a little higher to try to nudge you up and try to get you as high in that ladder as they can so the base price ipad air is only a 64 gigabyte ipad for 600 bucks in 2022 that's not really great i mean we got 20 gig games today so of course the only available storage option is straight up to 256 gigs which is 150 extra dollars so now you're playing in the 750 territory which is a lot of money to spend on an air when for just fifty dollars more you can get a pro right so now you might as well just bump up to the ipad pro so you can see what they're doing right they're nudging you up a little bit by a little bit but the thing is the ipad pro is more expensive but it's almost the same tablet in so many ways so they're already practically the same dimensions to the point where the ipad air works in all the same cases and keyboards that the ipad pro works in they're the same primary camera on the back the same usb c port the same battery life and now the same m1 chip so you'd have to think extra hard about spending extra money on an ipad pro when the list of reasons to do so is smaller than ever before now as someone who's used both tablets honestly one of those reasons is pretty huge and then the rest are all pretty minor but let's just go through each of them so the only reason i still pick an ipad pro as a better overall experience a better tablet than the air is the pro motion display so they're about the same size and resolution but the faster 120hz refresh rate is one of those things that just makes everything about using the pro smoother and snappier and more responsive and that's the thing that makes the m1 chip in this ipad air so funny which is it theoretically closes the gap in performance versus the pro with you know rendering and exporting and compiling and things like that but it does not feel as fast because of the 60 hertz so those big animations where your hand moves across the entire screen the unlock animation the multitasking gestures the big stuff like that you could put a 30 90 in here and it wouldn't feel as smooth as the pro motion ipad now sure some people need to see them side by side and even then they barely see a difference in which case yeah that person should just get the ipad air but i'm telling you for me if you're like me that's something i would spend the extra money for but then the ipad pro has one extra camera the 10 megapixel ultra wide plus a lidar scanner and a flash the ipad air just has a single camera no flash so you know for the occasional video call or document scanning that's totally fine for me and like i said it's the same main camera as the ipad pro so there isn't even a quality difference here then the ipad pro has quad speaker audio instead of the dual speakers of the ipad air they're both very solid speakers and it's definitely a bit fuller and louder from the pro but that's not something you're going out and spending extra money on specifically and then the pro has a higher max storage so you can go up to 2 terabytes instead of just 256 gigs and the usb-c port is thunderbolt on the pro instead of just faster usbc on the air so that might open up some potential peripheral options for actual pros plugging in drives etc and then of course you have face id on the ipad pro where you've got the touch id fingerprint reader on the ipad air honestly at this point it's kind of preference like you get used to having face id on the tablet very quickly when you have it but also the good old-fashioned two fingers registered on the ipad air works really well too so in portrait it's the right index finger that unlocks and then in landscape it's the left index finger great you know what's funny though the only other update to the air besides the m1 chip being inside is the selfie camera is now the ultra wide with center stage so it's got the newer selfie camera and it's convenient it follows you around the room it's kind of in an awkward location but it's decently smooth with face time zoom calls etc but because the ipad pro has the face id sensors and stuff technically only that older selfie camera will support animojis and memojis and things like that so there's that but that's basically it right that's the differences so now hearing that list you probably already know if you would be tempted to move up one more rung on that ladder you know maybe 50 extra bucks for promotion does it for you like it does it for me or maybe you just want a larger tablet because you do have the 13 inch ipad pro with mini led if you're tempted to go large but other than that you know the extra camera lidar the face id the speakers all pretty minor things but then the funniest part usually right the ladders are designed to try to nudge you up to try to get you to spend more and more money putting one of the features from the more expensive model in the less expensive model just removes one reason to upgrade and may actually encourage a small number of people to move down because now that theoretical person who would have spent the extra money to get the hugely improved processing power of the m1 now just has one less reason to get the pro they can get it in the air well that is until the m2 version comes out anyway either way it's fascinating it's always interesting to see these new products come out at these different various price ranges i think in that example from the beginning of the video you know apple clearly has a baseline ipad an ipad air and an ipad pro and most people don't need to spend the extra money to get the most premium ipad pro i think the promotion is enough just for me and a lot of people would too but there's also going to be a bunch of people that just spend the extra money just because they want the most premium thing fine but this ipad air is another great spec bump that actually makes me even more frustrated that ipad os is not evolving to fully take advantage of it but that's a another rant for another video either way that's been it thanks for watching catch you guys in the next one peace\n"