iPad Air 4 Review: The Student Experience! By Harris Craycraft

So you're going to have to be patient with me in this video because two things are going to need to be true at the same time. First, the iPad Air 4 is an amazing device and worth a lot of the hype and the kind of cult following that it has right now for a student, it's a perfect option. Secondly, what's also true, it has limitations, and it may not be the best value for 5.99 or even 4.989, and we'll get to that later. But here's what you need to know about the iPad Air 4 coming from a college student at Boston college and this video is presented by flex 2, a great note-taking and document reading app for the iPad. Let's go ahead and get started. Okay, so we're gonna start with what makes this device amazing and worth its hype, and then we'll follow up with the ways that this device is limited and maybe not worth the price.

So starting with number one is obviously the build and the aesthetics of this device. It looks really cool. It's spotless, and it's basically caught up with the times. Although the bezels are slightly bigger than the iPad Pro going around the sides, it's kind of like the iPhone 10r to the iPhone 10. , it's slightly less compact, slightly less screen efficient, but it's still a really good-looking device with great colors and apple loves.

To just make us feel like we're getting a better device by releasing new colors and well it works. This is the sky blue color, and I'm not head over heels this color, it's a little more subtle than I was expecting in most lighting. This looks kind of just like a bluish gray. I mean it's a good color, but it's not exactly what I was expecting, but there are other colors. If this doesn't fancy you, and it's a really sturdy high quality, good, looking and premium device, I think a lot of people are gonna, be big fans of this iPad.

I mean without a doubt, this looks better than the budget iPad. This is a very simple and old aluminum design. This is much more modern with flat edges, great colors, and it feels like a much sleeker and more minimal device, which I think people are going to really appreciate now. Secondly, it's got the brand new a14 processor, which is what the iPhone 12s have, and basically what this means is that this is the fastest iPad that you can get right now at some point, there's going to be the 2021 iPad Pro, which is going to blow this out of the water with the a14x or z or whatever they're going to call it, and that's that's going to be amazing, but for anything that you have to do as a student, this iPad will be able to handle it and more so. For me that means I can edit 4k video using iMovie or suffusion, which probably not a lot of people do, but you can do it certainly there are games that are super well optimized for the iPad and are going to be awesome to play and anything that you want to throw at this iPad you're going to be able to handle.

If you want to use Photoshop for iPad and use a lot of layers or procreate or an animation app or any game that you want to throw at this iPad, it's going to be able to handle, because the a14 processor is amazing on this iPad, and it's just it's more than any student needs. Third, it supports the Apple Pencil too, which means that you can get the best Apple Pencil experience. This magnetically attaches to the top of your iPad and charges, so you never lose it. You never have to worry about connection. It's a real genius solution for charging and storing the Apple Pencil.

So you can get this for 130 a little pricey, especially for an iPad. That's slightly more budget oriented, but you can also get the cheaper Logitech crayon, which is 69 and still a perfect option. It's not going to be as good, doesn't magnetically charge or stay to the iPad and then finally, you can also get something like this, which is 30. It looks just like the Apple Pencil I mean you can see how similar these are. Furthermore, it's not going to be as good doesn't charge magnetically, but it does attach magnetically and has a similar experience to the Logitech crayon, but not as good of a writing experience as the Apple Pencil.

So those are the options with a different style for the iPad. You can ball out and get the Apple Pencil too expensive, but amazing you can get a little cheaper and bulkier with the Logitech crayon, or you can go super cheap and save a hundred dollars and get this inferior, but still totally usable experience with this 30 dollar stylus. I made a video talking about this, which I'll leave linked down below, or you can click the button up in the corner, and this iPad does have a laminated display, which means that the physical LCD units underneath the glass and the glass are fused together, which means that there's no perceivable gap between your pencil, touching the glass and the actual writing or the the know, e-ink, underneath the glass, whereas with an older iPad such as this, there is a visible gap between where the pencil is touching the screen and the ink that's actually showing up underneath it has kind of a hollow effect. You do get used to it, especially if you've never used a laminated display on a tablet. But it's great that this does have a laminated display, although that's basically an industry standard for above 400 500.

So I shouldn't give apple too much credit for including it, but it does mean that the Apple Pencil experience with this iPad is going to be solid. And, of course, note taking is one of the most important things and my favorite things to do with the iPad to be able to digitize your notes and bring over documents and PDFs, and just save paper in general is something that I really appreciate doing with my iPad. The sponsor of this video is actually a new note, taking application that was just updated today called flexed, and it's a really cool note-taking app. That's designed really for reading documents and PDFs and stuff like that, but also has an amazing note-taking functionality, that's built into it. So, for instance, if you are reading a PDF or document, you can quickly pull up an on-screen note.

Take your note, drag over text and then slide away that note. It's a really great note-taking application for your iPad and I definitely recommend checking out for free in the description. Four. It supports all the same cases that the iPad Pro does. So, if you want to get an option like the Logitech folio touch, you can.

I just reviewed this, and I'll leave a link down in the description. It's an amazing keyboard case with a trackpad built in a lot of protection and a ton of stand angles, which is a really great case for your iPad. You can get Apple's keyboard, folio case, super slim and an ok keyboard, or you can even get apple's magic keyboard and use it with the iPad, which is very expensive and apple's definitely trying to upsell you on that. But it's a super premium and really high quality accessory for your iPad, and the fifth thing that I really like about this iPad is USB. So there's a bunch of reasons why USB is awesome.

For me, it means that I can use the same charger that I use with my Mac with my iPad. So I can use a high power fast charger from my Mac and charge my iPad with it, but also means that I can connect USB hubs to it, so I can get HDMI and USB and add a headphone jack back and all these other types of connectors with a nice dongle or accessory, such as the hyperdrive USB hub that I use all the time. It also means that you can charge devices with an USB cable, so you can charge your iPhone or your Apple Watch or your android phone using the USB-C powered connection at the bottom, which is great USB-C, is really handy. Just allows you to connect more things and more efficiently. If you're someone who's, not super tech-savvy, you might not really reap the benefits of this, but I think a lot of students can learn to appreciate USB if you kind of invest in that technology.

So those are all the ways in which the iPad Air 4 is an awesome device, especially for students. However, it's not all cupcakes and rainbows and stuff there's there are things that I find are a bit limiting about this device, it's so scary to seize now, because everyone thinks you've coveted so starting out the first thing that I'm concerned about with this iPad. So it starts at 5.99, which is nice compared to the 799 2020 iPad, pro starting price, but I mean iPads used to start at 4.99 back in the day. So I'm not going to say it's an amazing price, but 5.99 is okay, but 64. Gigabytes of storage is a bad place to start.

If the only other option is a hundred fifty dollars more for 256. Apple really needs to include a 128 gigabyte model for like 50, more 75 dollars more to pay an extra 150 for 256 gigabytes of storage. It's just it's not a good deal and Apple shouldn't be charging that much the tab. S7, although you can argue it's not as good as an overall experience, because the iPadOS is really excellent, but that has a SD card slot, so you can spend ten dollars and get 128 gigabytes extra storage on top of the 128 gigs that they give you out of the box. So the 64 gigabyte iPad actually gives you about 52 gigabytes of usable storage, and I ran out of that pretty quickly with you know, a few photos and videos saved on the device, but mostly just in iCloud.

I have a decent amount of messages downloaded to the iPad. A little of music downloaded some couple videos I have suffusion, which I used to edit video and stuff like that, for the average student you'd, probably be okay. If you use Google photos, and you just stream all your music, assuming you have Wi-Fi or cellular connection to do that, but I think for someone who uses a ton of applications, or they have a lot of videos, or maybe they're editing, videos on the iPad. You will probably want to get 256 gigabytes you can get through with 64 gigs. You might just have to micro, manage your storage a little.

So I think apple's pricing here isn't great. That's why I think that you could go for something like the 2018 iPad Pro with higher storage and potentially, a cheaper price tag with some added features that this iPad doesn't something to keep in mind. Secondly, the 60 hertz display on this iPad Air is technically a downgrade from well. Let's just say the 10.5-inch iPad Pro that had the 120 hertz promotion display, as well as the 2018 and 2020 iPad Pro those all have the 120 hertz promotion refresh display. Now, if you've never used those tablets, this probably won't be a huge issue for you, because you won't be noticing what you're missing and for general usage and for most people that are upgrading from an older iPad, such as the iPad Mini or the budget iPad.

You won't notice, and you'll just appreciate the a14 performance and how fast it is. But for me, coming from the iPad Pro, I noticed that the Apple Pencil just isn't as smooth and responsive, isn't quite as fast when I'm scrolling through the device 60hz display, like I said again, and I'll kind of just summarize, if you've never used a faster refresh promotion display, it won't be a big deal or a dealbreaker, but it is just kind of unfortunate that apple decided to do this. Of course, they want to differentiate this iPad from the iPad Pro, so no 120, hertz refresh rate, so not quite as good apple, pencil and just general usage of this tablet, and the last point is just when you're looking at it and comparing it to something like the 300 iPad or maybe the more expensive iPad Pro the feature. Differentiation, isn't that crazy, so, when you're looking at this tablet, both only have one rear camera, both don't have a rear, flash both have 60, hertz displays, etc. , etc.

Of course, this is miles better than this iPad for a lot of reasons, but there's a lot of features that are similar for 300 difference I'll make a full video comparing those two iPads in a future video, that's not what this is about. So at the end of the day, if you're wanting to spend five or six hundred dollars, you want a beautiful tablet with Apple Pencil, 2 support a great color and a fast iPad go for this. If you're a student you're going to be able to read on it and take notes and watch videos and do everything that you need to do on a beautiful display, etc. , etc. , and this iPad will be able to do it.

However, if you're really thrifty with your technology, which I try to be outside the whole technology reviewing thing, then you might want to look at a used or refurbished 2018 iPad Pro or even something older, like the 10.5-inch iPad Pro. Those are just my thoughts, those are just a couple options. Let me know what you think about this iPad Air 4. It's an amazing device. Don't get your feelings, hurt, I'm just trying to give people different options anyway, we'll see in the next video and make sure you check out flexil2 for the iPad.

Source : Harris Craycraft