iPad Air 4 Review - Who Needs an iPad Pro? By Brad Colbow

The new iPad Air looks like the iPad Pro uses. The new pencil, like the iPad Pro even has the newer a14 processor newer than the iPad Pro. So is this the best iPad out there, let's find out hello, my name is brad. I review tech for creative professionals, we're talking about illustrators and designers, the people who are responsible for designing this. I guess today I'm looking at the iPad Air 4. This is the newly redesigned iPad that comes in a slightly lower price than the iPad Pro, but brings a lot of those great pro features with it.

The first pro feature is the design this gets rid of the face button and shrinks down those top and bottom bezels brings in more of the rounded corners bumps up the screen size a little, and we see more of that squared off edge. Look that we're used to seeing on the iPad Pro and these flat sides aren't just pretty to look at. They have a real functional benefit. The Apple Pencil 2 can magnetically attach and charge along the side and then there's the a14 chip, which is actually two generations doer than the iPad Pro's a12 processor, but I'm getting ahead of myself here. So let's take a look at the hardware and see how all of this breaks down.

First up, let's take a look at the screen. It is 10.9 inches corner to corner. That's a resolution of 2 360 pixels by 1 640 pixels, with a refresh rate of 60 hertz. The bezels are just a touch bigger than what you have on the 11-inch iPad Pro. It's almost unnoticeable.

The processor is a brand new a14 bionic chip, the same one that we're seeing in the latest iPhones it's great to see these processors dropping into the iPads. At the same time that they're coming out for the iPhones- and I would say many of the iPad apps- are going to take more advantage of that higher end processor than many iPhone apps. Would anyway, the starting storage on the iPad Air is a reasonable 64 gigabytes. You can bump that up to 256. There's no middle ground update to like 128 here, since it's such a big jump that does come with a big price jump as well 150 dollars this year.

We see a nice little ram, upgrade to four gigabytes because it lets you deal with larger file sizes and drawing apps like procreate, you're going to be able to use more layers. Now the pro comes with six gigabytes of ram. So if this is an area where you need more layers, you need larger file sizes. It might be better to look at the pro over the air along the back. We have a single camera, that is a 12 megapixel camera and along the front we have a 7 megapixel FaceTime camera that FaceTime camera is aligned along the top.

So if you use this in portrait mode, and you're using it for conference calls or something like that, your face is still going to be a little off there. It also comes in five colors silver space gray rose, gold, green and sky blue guess, which color mine is, if you said, green you're right, I'm also rocking the green folio cover here, which I'm really digging, there's also a touch I'd fingerprint reader built into the on and off button located along the top of the iPad. I've seen this on android phones before, and I think this is a great place for a touch ID sensor. One thing to note here is the iPad Pro does have face ID which is not available here on the iPad Air. The air also has an USB port along the bottom for charging.

You can use this for all sorts of different devices. Memory card readers, external drives, all sorts of stuff- also worth noting- is that apple's, newer magic keyboard cover also works here on this iPad as well. You're, not just getting the keyboard there, but you're, also getting the mouse support and all that newer stuff that they've been introducing to iPadOS key question here with that processor is: does it have enough horsepower to run the art and design apps? You need absolutely? Yes, it does, that is the beauty of iPadOS. It's not doing nearly as much as mac, OS or even windows, so it's really running efficiently, even on a more inexpensive, lower end iPad, even though I'd argue with the a14 chip. This is not a low end iPad anymore, and getting this a14 chip now really means that you're going to have a longer lasting snappier, faster experience on this iPad for years to come.

If you're getting this for art and illustration, the Apple Pencil, it is fantastic, it's just great to draw with its accurate crisp. The pressure feels amazing. It's just one of those top-of-the-line art tools. It's always been that way, and it continues to be that way here. This works with the second generation Apple Pencil that magnetically connects to the top of the iPad.

It also charges when it's there, it stays on pretty. Well too, it's important to note that it doesn't come with the iPad Air. This is a hundred and thirty dollars extra. So that's something to factor into your buying decision as well. I've been using the Apple Pencil 2 for about two years now the drawing experience feels almost identical to me pretty much identical to the original Apple Pencil.

I don't think my Apple Pencil has ever run out of battery just because it's always stored there. It's always setting there, whereas the old Apple Pencil I had to remember to plug it in, I had to put it in a safe place, so it wouldn't get bent or broken off, and that sort of thing, so I didn't charge it as much only when I really needed to charge it, whereas now it's always available charged up when I need it now, you might be thinking hey. I could save a couple bucks if I went with the older Apple Pencil and just used it on this new iPad, but unfortunately, because of the way it pairs, it requires a lightning port. You don't have that on the new iPad Air, so you have to use the new pencil with this one. Are there any downsides to drawing on the iPad? There's really only one that I can think of, and that is the iPad screen is made of shiny glass.

It looks beautiful, but the pencil tip is plastic, and it's kind of slick to draw on, especially if you get like some finger oils on the screen that drawing experience can be kind of inconsistent and at times hard to control. I like to draw on something with a little more texture and resistance, and that is where today's sponsor paper light comes in. They sent me a screen protector to try out on the new air, and I love how it looks and feels it gives your iPad that paper-like texture, hence the name even has that cool paper sound when you draw on it. You see these screen protectors on my iPads. In almost all of my videos, you can get one to fit any size iPad.

You can check out my link down below in the description. There's also a second link there that you probably want to check out as well. They have some cool free procreate, brushes that you could download from their site get your paper like today and tell them that brad sent you. Let's talk about the app ecosystem. I think this is the main differentiator between the iPad and windows and android, if you're an illustrator who's coming from the desktop and are used to those apps, and you use them every day.

You're going to find a lot of what the iPad has to offer may seem a little limiting at first. There is a learning curve if you're used to drawing in photoshop. The good news here is that the learning curve on many of these apps for newcomers like procreate or art, studio pro many of those things they aren't steep at all and after playing around for a half hour, so you're going to get the hang of the basics. There are dozens and dozens of other drawing apps out there as well concepts median clip studio paint. Yes, the full version that you get on the desktop eclipse studio paint that's available here, there's even a paired down version of adobe photoshop that they rolled out last year.

It's not full photoshop. I mean it's kind of full photoshop kind of hard to explain, but adobe's been supporting the iPad in other ways as well. They have an app called adobe fresco, and also they just rolled out Adobe Illustrator as well. I have a video on that I'll link that up above too, if you don't want to go down the subscription route, there are pro level apps available for the iPad, like affinity, photo and affinity designer. They are truly fully featured apps.

I also know a guy who teaches courses on those apps. The iPad ecosystem keeps getting better and better. Last year they made a real file system, and now we have more and more apps starting to take better and better advantage of that, there's a feature called sidecar. That turns your iPad into a second display for your Mac. You can even use the Apple Pencil with that and use it kind of like a Wacom tablet.

It's a cool feature. It's great for little drawings photo retouching. I wouldn't get the iPad specifically for that. It's a little laggy for my taste, but in a pinch it works pretty well, and this year, they've been focusing on adding more features around the Apple Pencil and some of their other accessories to make the iPad more usable. For example, the new scribble features are all about handwriting recognition and note.

Taking a line through text will highlight it and a scratch through will delete it and, of course, if you're, just writing, that's going to automatically turn to text, and, it's surprisingly accurate too. These are just little things, especially when you're talking about drawing, but it's kind of nice. If you're in procreate, not to like to pull up the keyboard all the time you can just rewrite the name of a layer or change some parameters or write some numbers into a text box here and there handy stuff. I think the main question a lot of folks are going to have us. Why would I want to get an iPad Pro now? The iPad Pro has an a12 processor.

This has an a14, the iPad Pro and the iPad Air have the same form factor and hot dog. Those colors look. Pretty good, don't they think, for a lot of people. This might be the better choice. There are some good reasons here that you still might want to reach up and go for the iPad Pro.

However, first, even though this is a newer chip that outperforms the a12 bionic z and single core tasks, which is what most illustrators need it for, the a12z bionic is a multi-core processor. So, if you're doing video editing or something that needs that extra speed, the pro is still the way to go for art. I wouldn't worry so much about the processor here. The big trade-off that we have to take a look at as illustrators is ram apple, does not publish how much these devices come with, but with a little digging, you can find that it comes with 4 gigabytes of ram, which is still less than the iPad Pro. Why does this matter? Some apps like procreate, limit the number of layers that you can have based on how much ram your device has.

I would say that, if you're working with lots and lots of layers you're going to want to go with the pro, if you're, just not sure, and you're like do, I need that kind of power. Do I not chance? Are you don't? The other thing? I think a lot of artists look at is the refresh rate on the iPad Pro on the air. It's only 60 hertz, whereas you jump up to 120 hertz on the iPad Pro. This definitely gives the UI a smoother feeling. It also helps in drawing and pen like.

However, I think this is an overrated stat in many ways, and I feel like the software and the hardware working together, like in apps like procreate, do far more to reduce lag than the actual refresh rate of the tablet itself. So the answer whether you want the pro or the air really comes up to you and what you're going to need it, what you're going to use it for. So what do you think? Let me know down below in the comment section. Thank you guys for watching, and I'll talk to you in a couple of days.

Source : Brad Colbow