Apple iPad Air Review! By Marques Brownlee

Hey, what is up guys I'm, Kay PhD here- and this is the iPad Air- pretty simple, not a lot of surprises here, but let's go over what exactly that means. Basically, this is a bigger version of the retina iPad Mini no I mean actually it is the exact same hardware as the iPad Mini, with Retina display same proportions same internals, just stretched out into a 10-inch form factor instead of 8 inches. It's almost like someone huge stomped on the new iPad Mini and flattened it out and boom. You got the iPad Air. So what you're? Getting with this is a few new things you get the thin bezels from the iPad Mini you get the flat aluminum unibody back panel in the design you get the beautiful construction from the iPad Mini and you get the extremely reflective Apple logo from the iPad Mini as well. In fact, it's probably easier to just talk about the ways this is different from the iPad Mini and those would be the size and the battery so in the size department.

Obviously this is the biggest change from all the other iPads, which is why they named it. The air when I could have easily named it the iPad 5, but it's the air, because it's just 7.5 millimeters thin and only weighs one pound so for perspective. That's the same thinness as the iPhone 5s, and it weighs way less than any other full-size tablet out there 30% less than the all plastic Nexus 10, that's really impressive, so that plus the overall new flatter shape of the tablet makes a massive difference in how easy it is to hold now. I still prefer. The soft touch feel of tablets like the Nexus 10, for watching a movie or holding a device up for a long period of time.

But this new shape of the air is a huge improvement from the sharp corners of the previous generation iPads, and that's welcome I. Just for the record. I am NOT the norm. I don't have a normal hand size, but this is actually the first full size iPad that I've been able to hold in one hand, but the truth is that something the iPad keeps doing really. Well.

Is the build quality and this iPad Air is no exception? It's beautifully crafted with attention to detail everywhere, and it just screams quality at every corner, BASIS, if you're still working on the new Nexus 10 take notes. So you know what I do have to say it, because this is a thing that a surprising number of people are actually concerned about, but the iPad Air does have the best camera I have ever used in a tablet like by a lot. It's a perfect front and back facing camera, and that's all I'm going to say not going to tell you to use it not going to tell you why it's good or how it forms well, in any situation, I'm just going to say it takes better quality photos and videos. I might need to tell you how I figured that out. But look.

There are some flaws here like there is no touch ID and no fingerprint scanner where I think it could have been most useful on a tablet. I mean how cool would it be for a whole family to share an iPad, and they'd all log in with their fingerprints, and they never have to worry about messy user switching. That would be awesome. Oh, well. The next iPads will have it most likely, not a big deal.

I think my only real gripe with the hardware- that's not actually nitpicking, and I feel like I say this about every iPad. Is the speakers they're plenty big, loud crisp and clear, but they're all on the same side of the device, the bottom, which means they fire sideways in landscape mode and sideways audio in landscape mode? It drives me insane, especially because I've gotten so used to the Nexus 10s front-facing speakers, but other than that the hardware is great, and the software is iOS 7. It feels so conservative I mean after using an iPhone for a bit and now using an iPad. Furthermore, it almost feels really inefficient to use iOS on this larger display. In fact, iPads have the exact opposite problem that Android tablets have right now on an iPad.

Everyone's home screen is basically the same icons and folders. Just like the phone home screen, no widgets, no glanceable information, just a blown up phone interface, the Notification Center, is just the iPhones Notification Center blown up. The quick controls at the bottom are just the phone's quick toggles blown up. The interface is exactly like the phone, but just spread out more. It seems inefficient.

It seems super wasteful, but when you dive into the applications, one of the many hundreds of thousands of optimized applications for the iPad you'll get some of the most impressive functionality. There's an insane wealth of apps to choose from that are designed specifically for the iPad and the Retina display, and when you open them, you get that entire display size. They take up the whole screen and use multiple columns and gives you tons of information at your fingertips in an entirely different way than they ever would on your phone. This is the opposite for Android tablets on Android tablets. The Play Store is what's lacking, the tablet apps and a surprising amount of apps.

There are just not optimized for the 10-inch display and the high resolutions and using those apps feels almost wasteful. It seems like you're wasting space, but your home screen is where you can really go to town on the customization. You can add new icon packs and folders and launchers, and there's an insane wealth of widgets and widget customization that you can do to get glanceable information and scrollable power at your fingertips, so I'm waiting for a middle ground, and I'll talk more about that in another video, but overall, when you're actually using these applications, the iPad Air is a boss performer, it's rocking that Apple A7 chip and that's clocked at 1.4 gigahertz, and it only has one gigabyte of RAM, but with that iOS style multitasking gets about all you need, and I got to say. This makes just about the perfect handheld gaming device. It has a huge battery, so you can gain forever.

It has built strong and very, very lightweight, so it's not going to fatigue you to hold it, and it has Apple's newest gigantic chip in there, which makes it a great performer, and it keeps frame rates high, and it has a huge 9.7 inch 2048 by 1536 Retina display 300 pixels per inch. That creates essentially the most immersive gaming experience of any tablet out there. Next to the Nexus 10, when I mentioned the iPad Air battery life is notable, that's because it's great so in a device 7.5 millimeters thin. They managed to cram in 8820 William hour battery, and it goes four days on a charge with regular use, I've charged mine exactly three times since I got it more than a week ago, and that's what normal really heavy use that I put into devices when I'm testing them and when I use a device. I really push it.

So I've had this big, beautiful, Retina display cranked all the way up in brightness and I played games and I browse the web, and I played more games and I browsed. More and I played even more games and browse even more, and this thing is just it does doesn't quit it does not quit. I actually had to try really hard to burn through the whole thing in a whole day, and I was unsuccessful. I think if I maybe watched a movie on a plane all day, I could do it, but standby time is also incredible on this thing, you don't have to worry about charging it at night, put it to sleep with 60% wake up the next morning, 60%. So, basically, the strengths of the iPad Air are the performance and the build, and the weaknesses are basically really all in the software department.

For me also fun fact: if you want to crash an iPad running, iOS 7 go into the settings and tap brightness and wallpapers twice it crashes, every time, I, don't know why, but every time without fail, it just happens. So overall, this is a very familiar iPad experience. If you know iPad- and you know you like iPad, you know you're going to like the iPad Air um. If you had the iPad 1, this is going to make a great upgrade. If you have your iPad 2 you're, going to love this iPad Air, iPad, 3 or iPad, 4 you're still going to love this as an upgrade, because it's that much thinner and more importantly, lighter than all the rest of the full-size iPads, and that's why people are going to buy they're, not going to see any sort of crazy interface differences.

You're not going to see any huge noticeable performance boosts. Everything performs exactly as you would expect, because it's an iPad and that's good and people like that. Overall, though, I really like the iPad Air and I love the hardware of the iPad Air, the display is beautiful. The backing is very light I. Just like it.

It's not it's nice, it's nice to hold, and it's nice to use. It makes me want to use it because of its size, but at the end of the day, I'm not really much of a large tablet person, meaning I, don't use large tablets that much I kind of love, my 2013 Nexus 7 and if I had to buy an iPad I, would want a smaller version of the iPad Air, which is why the retina iPad Mini is in the mail and if you want to see a comparison between this and that be sure to leave a thumbs up below. But I do have more content coming for you of the retina iPad Mini. But what that means is that this one, this exact one right here, is going to go up for grabs, so be sure to follow me on Twitter at MHD. If you want to see details for that, I'll, have the link right below that, like button, and it'll be a basically Twitter exclusive giveaway you'll have to watch out there for all the full details and read that very carefully so either way.

This is when it is the iPad Air, thanks for watching more videos like this to come. If you hit that subscribe button, you'll be first to see them, and I'll talk to you guys and Alien.

Source : Marques Brownlee