Upgrading to the iPad Air 5: A New Era of Performance and Features

As an avid user of technology, I've had the pleasure of upgrading my iPad from the 4th generation to the latest 5th generation. One of the main reasons for this upgrade was the addition of Center Stage and FaceTime capabilities, which have revolutionized the way I experience video conferencing on my device.

The new Center Stage feature is a game-changer when it comes to video calls. It automatically adjusts the front-facing camera to keep everyone in the frame, ensuring that no one is left out of the conversation. This feature works seamlessly with apps like Zoom and Skype, making online meetings feel more like face-to-face interactions. I was excited to try out this new feature and see how it would work in practice.

To test Center Stage, I launched FaceTime and set my front-facing camera to automatically adjust to keep me in the frame. As I moved around, the camera followed me, adjusting its position to ensure that I remained visible at all times. It was amazing to see how well this feature worked, even when I stood up or walked away from the camera.

But Center Stage is not the only new feature on the iPad Air 5. The device also boasts a sleek and modern design, with Touch ID on the power button providing an added layer of security. While Face ID is still available as an option on some models, Touch ID is a welcome return to this popular Apple feature.

One area where I was curious about the iPad Air 5 was its performance compared to the Pro model. Both devices are powered by the M1 chip, but the Pro model boasts a smoother refresh rate at 120Hz versus the 60Hz of the standard model. To test this difference, I launched some apps and watched for any signs of lag or smoothness.

First up was Podcasts, which loaded quickly on both models. However, when I switched to Safari, the iPad Air Pro felt noticeably smoother in its animations. This was especially noticeable when switching between apps, where the Pro model's 120Hz refresh rate seemed to provide a more fluid and responsive experience. Even when opening and closing apps, the Pro model's smooth animations made it feel like I was using a high-end device.

When testing video playback on both models, I found that they performed similarly in terms of speed. However, there was one notable difference: the iPad Air Pro felt faster and more responsive overall, even if the actual speeds were comparable.

Another area where I noticed a difference between the two devices was in their performance when switching between apps. The iPad Air Pro's 120Hz refresh rate provided an unmistakably smoother experience, making it feel like I was using a premium device.

As with any new device, there are always going to be some minor trade-offs and compromises. One of these is the storage capacity on the base model iPad Air, which is limited to 64GB. In contrast, the Pro model offers more storage options, including 256GB and 512GB models. For users who need more storage space for their apps, music, or files, this might be a key differentiator.

Finally, I wanted to test the speed of both devices and see which one felt faster overall. To do this, I launched some apps, including News and Safari, and watched for any signs of lag or smoothness.

In terms of actual speeds, it's hard to say that one device was significantly faster than the other. However, when using both devices in real-world scenarios, such as switching between apps, playing video content, and taking photos, the iPad Pro felt noticeably smoother and more responsive overall.

Overall, the iPad Air 5 is an excellent choice for anyone looking for a powerful and feature-rich tablet at a lower price point than the Pro model. With its sleek design, impressive performance, and innovative features like Center Stage, it's clear that Apple has done something special with this device. Whether you're upgrading from an older iPad or considering the Air 5 as your first tablet purchase, I'd highly recommend giving it a try.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enwhat's up guys my name is brandon and today apple released the brand new 2022 ipad air 5th generation and in this video we're going to be unboxing two of my favorite new color options purple and blue we're also going to be comparing this to the previous generation ipad air and the ipad pro alright so as you can see on the boxes we have the beautiful promotional wallpapers right here and we have the purple and the blue coordinated the purple i decided to get in the 64 gigabyte wi-fi only however the blue i decided to get the new 5g option in 256 gigabytes so the ipad air is positioned right below the ipad pro in apple's lineup and now that it has the m1 chip just like the pro i think a lot of people are going to start just naturally gravitating to that given the price point but it's not perfect and we're going to talk about that briefly in this video and definitely in my full review coming later on so you guys saw i had 64 and 256 those are the only two storage options this year so the 64 gigabyte is 5.99 256 is 7.49 and then add an additional 150 if you want the cellular model which this year it might actually be worth it since we have 5g and the blue one i have here like i mentioned is the 5g model all right so let's start off with the purple one the purple one is the one i'm most excited about even though i've seen a lot of great things said about that new blue color let's go ahead and unbox this purple you can see the purple ipad air on the side we have an easy pull tab right there to take off the plastic very easily the top comes off pretty easy not as easy as the iphones but here is the purple ipad air let's take a look at what's inside before we see the color here is our pamphlet let's see if we have color matching probably not no so we do have two big apple stickers but they are not color matching inside we do have our usbc block along with our usbc to usbc cable for charging so we can set all this off to the side and let's take a look at this purple color here so let's go ahead and undo this and wow that's beautiful that is pretty i really like this purple color i thought it'd be a little bit of a lighter shade because of the sky blue that we got last year but this is actually a really pretty purple and you can see what the borders look like right there this is a really pretty shade of purple i did also get a smart folio case right here to put on the purple eye pass let me go ahead and put that on so here is the purple folio case let's close it up in there and yeah it looks pretty good in here the purple really matches the sides right there really match with this folio case i didn't get the keyboard folio just because i already have the ipad pro but you can see that is what it looks like here on the purple looks pretty good all right so now let's move on to the blue ipad air that i've heard so much about so many people love this color i saw it in the apple store and it looks gorgeous and i think you guys are gonna love it as well so let's go ahead and take this plastic off take that top off inside we're gonna have the same exact accessories you guys already know the usbc block and our usbc cable but we're here for this color so let's go ahead and take this off and oh man yeah that is a really awesome looking blue that looks even better than i saw in the stores i love the shade of blue and just for comparison here is the sierra blue iphone 13 pro max and the sky blue ipad air fourth generation so take a look at the sky blue versus the new blue here for the fifth generation much deeper of a blue much more of a like blue color this look more like gray kind of like an off gray with a blue hint but now it looks a lot more blue more like turquoise here on the fifth generation i love this color you can't really pinpoint exactly what shade of blue it is but it is gorgeous now as far as the design goes i already spotted a minor difference on the back so this is the fourth generation ipad air and down here at the bottom it just says ipad but now for the fifth generation it says ipad air so apple added the air text right there so that's the only thing i've noticed that has changed so far on the body and now that i've looked all the way around the body that is the only change i see in terms of design now the old ipad air is just a few pounds lighter but it's very hard to tell even when holding them side by side i only knew that from looking up these specs online now the one thing we do get with the new ipad air fifth generation is the new ultra wide front facing camera so it's the same 12 megapixel camera but now it's ultra wide and it has support for center stage one of my favorite features on the ipad pro so now that has come to the ipad air and we're going to test that out in this video as well we're just going to run through the setup process very quickly here on the purple ipad air set up manually let's continue on this we're going to set up touch id so we do have it on the top button now the power button is where we have our touch id so i would flip it over into portrait mode to do this it makes it a lot easier so let's cover the button completely here for face id i would also recommend that setting up multiple fingers as well since you will have this in different orientations we have to do it one more time let's cover up the entire button so there we go added our fingerprint and it says to add another fingerprint okay so it tells you to do this so i'm going to do my left index finger now since i will have it in landscape mode sometimes we're not going to transfer our apps and data we're going to set this up later in settings let's not use we get a prompt about software updates let's continue we're just going to speed through all of this you don't really need to do this all right now you could do this later in settings just not share appearance light and there we go we are on our ipad air 5th generation so as i mentioned earlier we do get 5g which is nice but just like with the iphone se it's only sub 6. it's not millimeter wave but still it is a nice improvement over lte and this is the first time i've even considered cellular on an ipad so i am looking forward to testing that out i did get it on this blue one right here and you can see we do have the bands up top we have them at the bottom as well you won't see these bands on the wi-fi only model also inside is that super powerful m1 chip it's the same one found in the latest ipad pro and this is going to be a big difference over the previous ipad air which had the a14 bionic but we're still gonna have that 60 hertz screen here on the ipad air fifth generation so we're not gonna have a pro motion 120 hertz display so it's still going to seem slower than the ipad pro because of that and that's going to be the biggest difference between this and the ipad pro so the m1 chip is definitely going to help with camera quality and battery life and all those other things as well apple doesn't claim better battery life on the air 4 but i'm thinking that it's going to have better battery life even if it's just slightly but most importantly because of that m1 chip we're able to have center stage so that is the big reason some people are going to upgrade from an ipad air 4 to the air 5 is because of center stage and facetime or wherever you have video conferences this works in zoom and other places as well so let's go ahead into facetime i want to try this out and we even get this new splash screen right here as well that says center stage center stage automatically adjusts the front-facing camera to keep everyone in the frame during video calls and you could change this in the control center as well so yeah there's a control center toggle there for center stage to turn that on and off and you don't even need to sign in to test this out so i'm just going to go ahead and let you guys watch this follow me around the frame so i'm way over here you can see it's following me i'm going to stand up it follows my face look at that it follows me all around so i wonder if i put it down here if you guys could see better if it's still going to follow me yeah it follows me way back here look how crazy that is doesn't matter which way you're going it follows you just like on the ipad pro now just out of pure curiosity i do want to test out the speed of the ipad pro and the ipad air so we have the m1 chip and both but like i mentioned i'm willing to bet that the ipad pro is faster if not it's going to at least feel faster because we have that smoother refresh rate at 120 hertz versus 60 hertz on the ipad air so let's start off by opening up podcasts so podcast definitely first on the ipad pro not even close let's try out safari so i did go ahead and close all apps before testing this out so looked about the same there let's open up the camera i have it set to open up to the front-facing camera and that looked about even it was very very close let's see if we actually switch to uh video let's see which one is faster doing that yeah about even about the same let's try news news i don't know it looked about the same on both maybe the ipad air was even faster than the ipad pro there but again going in and out of applications just the animations feels so much smoother on the ipad pro i always talk about that it's something you just have to experience if you've not experienced 120 hertz promotion it's a noticeable difference when you're actually using the device so even if it doesn't launch quicker it feels quicker when you go in and out of it because of that animation speed let's try the app store app store is first on the ipad pro but just barely so yeah overall it looks like it's going to be very similar in actual speed like if you just look at it through a screen but if you're actually holding the devices you're going to be able to notice the 120hz promotion just feels faster like when i'm looking at my monitor here it doesn't look like it's faster but in person it feels faster on the m1 ipad pro so that is going to be the one thing that's going to differentiate the ipad air and the ipad pro you're going to have to use both to see if it's a big enough deal to you if you want to upgrade and or pay more for the ipad pro over the ipad air but i will say right now the ipad air is a very compelling value if you're okay with 64 gigabytes on an ipad then the ipad air is going to be the best one to buy in my opinion if you want to take advantage of all of the features and have the best performance and also that modern design with touch id on the power button that's another thing the ipad pro has that the ipad air doesn't is face id i love face id over touch id so that's also another minor difference i'll do a more detailed comparison between these two but overall the ipad air is still a very compelling value and it kind of fits the mold and it kind of fits the in-between of the ipad pro and the base model ipad of course there's always the ipad mini out there as well but that's also a whole different demographic that would go for the mini so there you have it that is the ipad air 5th generation like i mentioned i will have more coverage coming on the ipad air especially comparing it to the ipad pro because i think a lot of people are questioning that so i will have a more in-depth video on that as i start using this more and actually get some real experience with it in the office and studio and out and about as well so anyways hope you guys enjoyed this video if you did i would appreciate if you gave it a thumbs up and of course make sure to subscribe for more ipad air coverage and stay tuned for that comparison video but anyways guys thanks again for watching and i'll see you soon youwhat's up guys my name is brandon and today apple released the brand new 2022 ipad air 5th generation and in this video we're going to be unboxing two of my favorite new color options purple and blue we're also going to be comparing this to the previous generation ipad air and the ipad pro alright so as you can see on the boxes we have the beautiful promotional wallpapers right here and we have the purple and the blue coordinated the purple i decided to get in the 64 gigabyte wi-fi only however the blue i decided to get the new 5g option in 256 gigabytes so the ipad air is positioned right below the ipad pro in apple's lineup and now that it has the m1 chip just like the pro i think a lot of people are going to start just naturally gravitating to that given the price point but it's not perfect and we're going to talk about that briefly in this video and definitely in my full review coming later on so you guys saw i had 64 and 256 those are the only two storage options this year so the 64 gigabyte is 5.99 256 is 7.49 and then add an additional 150 if you want the cellular model which this year it might actually be worth it since we have 5g and the blue one i have here like i mentioned is the 5g model all right so let's start off with the purple one the purple one is the one i'm most excited about even though i've seen a lot of great things said about that new blue color let's go ahead and unbox this purple you can see the purple ipad air on the side we have an easy pull tab right there to take off the plastic very easily the top comes off pretty easy not as easy as the iphones but here is the purple ipad air let's take a look at what's inside before we see the color here is our pamphlet let's see if we have color matching probably not no so we do have two big apple stickers but they are not color matching inside we do have our usbc block along with our usbc to usbc cable for charging so we can set all this off to the side and let's take a look at this purple color here so let's go ahead and undo this and wow that's beautiful that is pretty i really like this purple color i thought it'd be a little bit of a lighter shade because of the sky blue that we got last year but this is actually a really pretty purple and you can see what the borders look like right there this is a really pretty shade of purple i did also get a smart folio case right here to put on the purple eye pass let me go ahead and put that on so here is the purple folio case let's close it up in there and yeah it looks pretty good in here the purple really matches the sides right there really match with this folio case i didn't get the keyboard folio just because i already have the ipad pro but you can see that is what it looks like here on the purple looks pretty good all right so now let's move on to the blue ipad air that i've heard so much about so many people love this color i saw it in the apple store and it looks gorgeous and i think you guys are gonna love it as well so let's go ahead and take this plastic off take that top off inside we're gonna have the same exact accessories you guys already know the usbc block and our usbc cable but we're here for this color so let's go ahead and take this off and oh man yeah that is a really awesome looking blue that looks even better than i saw in the stores i love the shade of blue and just for comparison here is the sierra blue iphone 13 pro max and the sky blue ipad air fourth generation so take a look at the sky blue versus the new blue here for the fifth generation much deeper of a blue much more of a like blue color this look more like gray kind of like an off gray with a blue hint but now it looks a lot more blue more like turquoise here on the fifth generation i love this color you can't really pinpoint exactly what shade of blue it is but it is gorgeous now as far as the design goes i already spotted a minor difference on the back so this is the fourth generation ipad air and down here at the bottom it just says ipad but now for the fifth generation it says ipad air so apple added the air text right there so that's the only thing i've noticed that has changed so far on the body and now that i've looked all the way around the body that is the only change i see in terms of design now the old ipad air is just a few pounds lighter but it's very hard to tell even when holding them side by side i only knew that from looking up these specs online now the one thing we do get with the new ipad air fifth generation is the new ultra wide front facing camera so it's the same 12 megapixel camera but now it's ultra wide and it has support for center stage one of my favorite features on the ipad pro so now that has come to the ipad air and we're going to test that out in this video as well we're just going to run through the setup process very quickly here on the purple ipad air set up manually let's continue on this we're going to set up touch id so we do have it on the top button now the power button is where we have our touch id so i would flip it over into portrait mode to do this it makes it a lot easier so let's cover the button completely here for face id i would also recommend that setting up multiple fingers as well since you will have this in different orientations we have to do it one more time let's cover up the entire button so there we go added our fingerprint and it says to add another fingerprint okay so it tells you to do this so i'm going to do my left index finger now since i will have it in landscape mode sometimes we're not going to transfer our apps and data we're going to set this up later in settings let's not use we get a prompt about software updates let's continue we're just going to speed through all of this you don't really need to do this all right now you could do this later in settings just not share appearance light and there we go we are on our ipad air 5th generation so as i mentioned earlier we do get 5g which is nice but just like with the iphone se it's only sub 6. it's not millimeter wave but still it is a nice improvement over lte and this is the first time i've even considered cellular on an ipad so i am looking forward to testing that out i did get it on this blue one right here and you can see we do have the bands up top we have them at the bottom as well you won't see these bands on the wi-fi only model also inside is that super powerful m1 chip it's the same one found in the latest ipad pro and this is going to be a big difference over the previous ipad air which had the a14 bionic but we're still gonna have that 60 hertz screen here on the ipad air fifth generation so we're not gonna have a pro motion 120 hertz display so it's still going to seem slower than the ipad pro because of that and that's going to be the biggest difference between this and the ipad pro so the m1 chip is definitely going to help with camera quality and battery life and all those other things as well apple doesn't claim better battery life on the air 4 but i'm thinking that it's going to have better battery life even if it's just slightly but most importantly because of that m1 chip we're able to have center stage so that is the big reason some people are going to upgrade from an ipad air 4 to the air 5 is because of center stage and facetime or wherever you have video conferences this works in zoom and other places as well so let's go ahead into facetime i want to try this out and we even get this new splash screen right here as well that says center stage center stage automatically adjusts the front-facing camera to keep everyone in the frame during video calls and you could change this in the control center as well so yeah there's a control center toggle there for center stage to turn that on and off and you don't even need to sign in to test this out so i'm just going to go ahead and let you guys watch this follow me around the frame so i'm way over here you can see it's following me i'm going to stand up it follows my face look at that it follows me all around so i wonder if i put it down here if you guys could see better if it's still going to follow me yeah it follows me way back here look how crazy that is doesn't matter which way you're going it follows you just like on the ipad pro now just out of pure curiosity i do want to test out the speed of the ipad pro and the ipad air so we have the m1 chip and both but like i mentioned i'm willing to bet that the ipad pro is faster if not it's going to at least feel faster because we have that smoother refresh rate at 120 hertz versus 60 hertz on the ipad air so let's start off by opening up podcasts so podcast definitely first on the ipad pro not even close let's try out safari so i did go ahead and close all apps before testing this out so looked about the same there let's open up the camera i have it set to open up to the front-facing camera and that looked about even it was very very close let's see if we actually switch to uh video let's see which one is faster doing that yeah about even about the same let's try news news i don't know it looked about the same on both maybe the ipad air was even faster than the ipad pro there but again going in and out of applications just the animations feels so much smoother on the ipad pro i always talk about that it's something you just have to experience if you've not experienced 120 hertz promotion it's a noticeable difference when you're actually using the device so even if it doesn't launch quicker it feels quicker when you go in and out of it because of that animation speed let's try the app store app store is first on the ipad pro but just barely so yeah overall it looks like it's going to be very similar in actual speed like if you just look at it through a screen but if you're actually holding the devices you're going to be able to notice the 120hz promotion just feels faster like when i'm looking at my monitor here it doesn't look like it's faster but in person it feels faster on the m1 ipad pro so that is going to be the one thing that's going to differentiate the ipad air and the ipad pro you're going to have to use both to see if it's a big enough deal to you if you want to upgrade and or pay more for the ipad pro over the ipad air but i will say right now the ipad air is a very compelling value if you're okay with 64 gigabytes on an ipad then the ipad air is going to be the best one to buy in my opinion if you want to take advantage of all of the features and have the best performance and also that modern design with touch id on the power button that's another thing the ipad pro has that the ipad air doesn't is face id i love face id over touch id so that's also another minor difference i'll do a more detailed comparison between these two but overall the ipad air is still a very compelling value and it kind of fits the mold and it kind of fits the in-between of the ipad pro and the base model ipad of course there's always the ipad mini out there as well but that's also a whole different demographic that would go for the mini so there you have it that is the ipad air 5th generation like i mentioned i will have more coverage coming on the ipad air especially comparing it to the ipad pro because i think a lot of people are questioning that so i will have a more in-depth video on that as i start using this more and actually get some real experience with it in the office and studio and out and about as well so anyways hope you guys enjoyed this video if you did i would appreciate if you gave it a thumbs up and of course make sure to subscribe for more ipad air coverage and stay tuned for that comparison video but anyways guys thanks again for watching and i'll see you soon you\n"