iPad Air 4 Review — Two Weeks Later! By Rene Ritchie

- I've been using Apple's new iPad Air, the 2020 model, fourth-generation for almost two weeks now. Tapping, swiping, penciling, typing, watching, working, sketching, surfing, just all of it. But after two weeks, yeah, I've come to some deeper conclusions of my own. And I'm gonna tell you all about them right now. Sponsored by Skillshare. Now, I know the most common question in tech is how the new iPad Air compares to the current iPad Pro.

And I get it. I totally get it. Nerds are just gonna nerd. And part of that, is Apple's fault. They use the iPad Pro line and it's higher price tag to introduce new, more advanced but also more expensive technologies to sort of push the state of the art of tablets.

And things like the new industrial design, the edge to kinda edge displays, promotion, adaptive refresh rates, LIDAR, smart connectors, Apple pencil, all of those things. And then as they pay them down they relentlessly push those technologies down to lower and lower price points. So after a couple of years, the iPad Air gets the keyboard and pencil, and then the iPad, nothing gets them as well. Making those technologies evermore affordable and accessible, but also making those iPad better and better, just more enticing, snapping at the heels of the Pros and forcing the Pros to keep pushing even further, even faster forward if they wanna stay ahead, if they wanna survive. And right now today we're at a point where the iPad Air has just almost caught up with the Pro, almost.

And that's why nerds like me are just so fascinated by the comparison. Because Apple has let them get just so close, so close. But I also think the vast majority of people just don't look at it that way, like at all. The vast majority of people have an original iPad Air or Air two, maybe a 9.7 or 10.5 inch Pro and are looking for their next upgrade. And they're wondering if they could save some money and go with the iPad 8 or spend a little more and get an almost Pro Air but at less than full on Pro prices.

So, here's the deal, the new iPad Air inherits the current generation iPad Pro design. So yeah, it trades in the gentler curves introduced by the original Air and the mini for the flat or more retro future style design that came to the iPad Pro in 2018 and the iPhone 12 just this month. And personally, I all caps love it. I loved it on the Pro and I love it just as much now that it's on the Air as well. Even more maybe, because unlike the Pro Apple lets the Air is just loosen up a bit, have some fun, have some color like a party going on in ID and pink, green and blue are finally invited.

Now, it is thinner and flatter so you do wanna be more careful with it, not baby it per se, but if you need it to be more rugged throw it in a more rugged case or if you prefer the classic design and that's the most important thing to you, you're gonna want to stick with the classic iPad, currently the iPad 8. But this design to me just better delivers on the promise of the original iPad. It's closer to that slab of glass that can just become any app, any webpage, any task you need it to and almost full window into the digital world. And color aside, it's all but indistinguishable from the iPad Pro design. Like the iPhone 12 and iPhone 12 Pro the differences here now between the Air and the iPad Pro are just way more than casing deep.

If you're coming from an older iPad, pretty much any older iPad, the new iPad Air display is gonna be just one hell of an upgrade. The home button is gone, the bezels top and bottom are gone with it and that space is now just all taken up by the display. At 10.9 inches it's not quite as big as the 11 inch iPad Pro, the bezels are ever so slightly still more baezeley, but I haven't used the 11 inch since the original launch back in 2018 and I don't really notice the difference. I've been using the 12.9 inch iPad Pro because I just personally prefer that size. What I want from a digital canvas is more canvas.

And if you want the same you'll have to get the iPad Pro to get it. But if the original iPad size was and is your jam, if you've been at anything from 9.7 to 10.2 to 10.5 inches you'll be super happy with 10.9 or 11 because the overall size just hasn't changed much. The display is simply grown out to fill most of it out. And sure, it's still LCD, Apple doesn't seem to like OLED on larger panels and we'll likely go mini LED instead at some point but it's wide gamut, which means more colorful, richer reds and more vibrant greens. And Apple does a really, really terrific job with the calibration and the color management.

So it's pretty much one of the best LCDs in the business. It's definitely not HDR. You don't get the same inky, blacks and bright whites but it'll play back HDR content including iPhone 12 Dolby vision using things like temporal dithering. So unless you have an HDR panel next to it or pay really close attention to those blacks and those whites, it still looks all shades of terrific. It's also 500 nits of max brightness instead of 600 nits like the Pro.

And it's locked to 60 Hertz instead of using promotion for adaptive 24 to 120 Hertz like the iPad Pro does which I only kind of miss, not so much for scrolling. I forget about that. Like after a day or so of not seeing it though I really do notice it when I go back. But because the Pro can show movies at 24 frames per second, which, it's the way nature and Hollywood intended. I noticed that every time, even though it's totally just a nerd thing.

And the Air is also laminated and anti-reflective which is something started doing with the iPad Air two but which still isn't on the iPad 8 which gets at screen design and glare from the original Air. But if none of that matters to you, at all, you'll be fine with the iPad 8. If you need or want that bigger screen though, that 12.9 inch screen then you'll have to go with the iPad Pro. But for most people, most of the time unless you're really sensitive to that peak brightness or those refresh rates I think the 10.9 inch iPad Air display is all but indistinguishable from the 11 inch Pro. I'm also really, really impressed with touch ID on the iPad Air.

And I know other companies have done power button based fingerprint biometrics since like 1812 or something but touch ID is always just been best in class. And when you mess with an implementation like that you never know what kind of quirks or edge cases will just creep in but so far so none, it's really great. Instead of registering my thumb like I've always done on my iPhones I registered both index fingers so it really doesn't matter if I'm holding the Air in portrait or landscape upside or down, touch ID is just always really close by and for me, that's even better than the old home button based touch ID. Especially because you can tap to wake the display now and just rest your finger and have the lock screen swipe itself up. Though so sometimes I rest and then I forget and I click and I ended up locking myself out again because multi-state is both a blessing and a curse.

Which is part of the reason overall the touch ID is just not quite as convenient as face ID for me. The other part, is when on the smart keyboard or magic keyboard where you can just press any key and it opens because face ID has been just sort of staring at you the whole time, but with touch ID you still have to reach over and put your finger on the button like an animal, yeah. But it's close and touch ID isn't phased by a mask so if you're using your iPad around other people especially in a work environment that could end up being just much more convenient and much more important to you. But I remain one of those people who just wants multiple biometrics on everything, face, finger, voice, all of it. So they identify me long before I have to identify myself and hopefully we'll get there eventually.

Like the iPhone 12, the iPad Air has Apple's latest, greatest, custom Silicon. The A14 Bionic. I've done a whole deep dive video on that already, link in the description. So I won't recapitulate all of it here, but yes it does make things a little awkward when you compare it to the A12Z in the current iPads Pro. My guess is Apple was so busy working on the A14 platform for the iPhone 12 and upcoming Apple, Silicon Macs and yeah, the next generation of iPads Pro that they literally didn't have time to make an A13X for the March, 2020 model.

So instead they used an eight GPU bend version of the A12X instead, and just called it the A12Z to highlight that extra core of graphics performance. And absolutely that means then you iPad Air now has better a single core perf than the iPad Pro. Things like how responsive the interface is and how fast apps launch. How much better than machine learning and photo processing are. But the iPad Pro still has more cores, two extra CPU and now four extra GPU, greater memory bandwidth and six gigabytes of RAM instead of four gigabytes.

So, any really intensive workloads things that hit those multiple cores and just suck up a lot of memory will still be better on the Pro. And for me, that includes what I swear is just a tiny little bit more lag when using multiple windows at the same time on the Air, especially over time, because six gigabytes just velocities you completely. Battery life has been really good though. Apple seems to be targeted on that 10 hours of average battery life for an iPad and still pretty much always just hits that mark. And that's especially true for me at least now while I'm not traveling.

So unless I'm hitting the processor really, really hard it just goes and goes. At $599 for 64 gigabytes though the Air is up over that classic ideal 499 iPad for everyone price. Unless you're big on streaming, like Netflix and Spotify all the time and everything stored up on the Google or Microsoft or whatever cloud then you might want to go up in storage. But unfortunately unlike the iPhone 12 where you can get to 128 gigabytes for just 50 bucks more the iPad Air is stupefyingly missing that as an option. If you want more, you have to go all the way to 256 gigabytes and pay much more.

$150 more. Bringing the price up to $749 for the wifi version, more for LTE. And that's only $50 less than the 256 gigabyte 11 inch iPad Pro. Also, unlike the Pro which goes all the way up to one terabyte of storage, if you're willing to pay for it the Air tops out at that 256 gigabyte option. So if price is a concern, just really figure out how much storage, you think you need as opposed to want or just realistically what you can get away with.

And if longevity is a major concern for you the A14 the iPad Air, will likely support an extra year or two of iPad iOS updates, more than the A12 models. In other words, the extra processor overhead means it'll take longer for it to age out. Other than that though, day-to-day I don't think many people will notice much of any difference between the current Air and the current Pro. Everything is just super slick and snappy. And if you do the kind of work where you absolutely will notice that difference then I'm willing to bet you've already selected yourself into the Pro.

The iPad Air gets USB-C this year which the iPad Pro got in 2018. It's not quite as fast as a Pro version. Five gigabits per second, instead of 10 gigabits. But otherwise it connects to the same traditional computer class accessories, peripherals, and displays and I love it just USB-C all the things but if you're all in on lightening and aren't willing to pay a dime, one more for new adapters the iPad 8 will let you just stick with the dongles. Otherwise, the Air will connect to everything you need, including up to 4k displays.

And it's so good, I really want to USB-C ports now. Yeah, on the main iPad. Nevermind the magic keyboard, especially the Pro but even the Air because what's a computer, if not a hub to all the things we want to do with them. All right, I'm not gonna get into my usual rant about how I wish Apple would give iPad just the same quality level of cameras as iPhones. Pro for Pro, non-Pro for Air.

I'm just a complete camera nerd and I'll own that. But until it happens it will remain my beautiful love to dream. That said, all of the front facing cameras are just seven megapixels across the lineup but the Air doesn't have face ID like the Pro. So it doesn't have the true depth camera. So it also can't do all the fancy effects like portrait mode and Memoji.

And that camera is still stuck in portrait orientation, even as 2020 and online meetings have increasingly forced us into a landscape world, as have pretty much all of Apple's keyboard accessories since the original. And I really hope Apple can figure out a way to move the front-facing camera there in the future even understanding the smart connector and pencil charger are just hogging up all the valuable landscape real estate now. But I just want it, so that when I'm giving someone wicked side-eye over FaceTime, they know it's on purpose. The back camera on the iPad Air is the same 12 megapixel wide angle as the iPad Pro but it doesn't have the same ultra wide angle or LIDAR scanner, which I don't really miss. The ultra wide angle is just super fun and I use it all the time on the iPhone but the use cases just haven't been as compelling for me on the iPad, probably because I have the iPhone but I imagine if you're doing some very specific creative or even industrial tasks, then you might benefit from that.

LIDAR also just isn't as well integrated on the iPad Pro as it is on the iPhone Pro. It doesn't help with focus or portrait mode, at least not yet, but that could change in the future. Either way, both are just light years ahead of the iPad 8 cameras, both for stills and video which are basically geared towards barest minimum for classroom or workplace projects. You have stereo speakers. They are not the four speaker system of the iPad Pro where you have four completely separate speakers.

And as you rotate them, they rotate the sound stage with you. This has dual speaker systems. Now there are four grills that way if you're holding it and you cover one set of grills the audio can still come out the other set. You're never really obstructing the audio up or down but, it is using the same kind of widening technology the computational audio that the iPhone has been using for a while, to widen the soundstage so that the bits are driving the atoms to perform just better than they have any right to on their own. The really, really cool thing about the 10.9 inch iPad Air now, essentially, being in the 11 inch iPad Pro body is that it works with those iPad Pro accessories, specifically and especially the Apple pencil two and magic keyboard. If you've never used an Apple pencil or only ever used the original Apple pencil, either way the Apple pencil two is revolutionary at least for me.

It's magnetic and inductive and so you just slap it on top of the iPad and it just charges, so much so that you start to forget, it even needs to charge. It's just always there, ready and charge. It even has a capacitive button so you can double tap on it to change tools like from pencil to eraser and back again. The Air doesn't have the faster refresh rate potential of the Pro. So depending on how perceptive you are to those things, you might notice it's not quite as silky smooth and just immediately responsive on the Air as it is on the Pro.

But the Air has better machine learning through the A14 so theoretically the predictive algorithms that try to keep ahead of your pencil strokes or figure out your scribbles, could be just a little bit faster. So once again, comparisons never easy. I don't really notice the difference unless I'm using them side by side, turning my head and kinda squinting just so. I do notice the smaller screen size compared to the 12.9 inch iPad Pro because like I said I'm just used to using that. I just love that bigger canvas but the utility is still very, very close.

Same with the keyboard. Actually, I've been using the smaller magic keyboard for the last two weeks and it's fine better than I thought it would be. It's probably the best small keyboard I've ever used. Apple just really nailed the magic and the magic keyboard. But if I have my druthers, I still prefer the roomier feel of the bigger magic keyboard on the 12.9 inch Pro as well. And that 12.9 in size, is what's absolutely gonna keep me on the iPad Pro. But I'd go for a 14 inch maybe even a 16 inch iPad Pro if Apple ever made one.

So, judge me as you will. On the flip side, if you just want an inexpensive iPad to do iPad things with, the iPad 8 still starts at 329 and has the OG pencil and keyboard options as well. So, if low price is just the most important spec and feature to you that remains, the iPad 8 remains just one of the best values in tech. If you want more though, and you prefer the smaller size the 10.9 to 11 in size then the new iPad Air is just so good it should be your immediate default. If you don't need the wide angle camera and LIDAR, if your workload doesn't demand the two extra CPU and four extra GPU cores and the two extra gigabytes of RAM, if you don't need the up to one terabyte of storage and if you don't care desperately about promotion adaptive refresh rates then you can save a little bit of money, add some color and a fancy new processor, do your life and be just absolutely delighted with the new Air.

Especially if you pair it with something like Thomas Frank's, new productivity class which teaches you how to build sustainable habits and just get every ounce of productivity out of the new iPad Air that you possibly could imagine. Thomas goes through all of his research, his experiences and his own trial and error, and lays out the groundwork for lasting habits, which is just, it's just so important right now. When so many of us are wondering what is going on, what's even happening next and are looking for ways to create some sort of structure. Any structure in our lives to meet a small set of goals. So we can regain that small sense of control and accomplishment in 2020.

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Yeah, free. So click on that link, act now and start learning today. And clicking on that link just really helps out this channel. For more, much more on the new iPad Air, iPhone 12 and just all of Apple's new products from before, put them on the playlist above where I preview, unbox, review and compare all of them, all for you. Every feature, every product, click on the playlist and I'll see you in the next video.

Source : Rene Ritchie