iPad Air 4 Unboxing and Setup | Is it Worth it? By Kevin Ross

Now, there's no reason why you would even know this or suspect it, but the last iPad that I purchased was gen 1 literally the first iPad. Today, though, we got ourselves a bit of an upgrade the iPad Air 4, and it's in sky blue got my blue shirt on just to match it, but rather than doing just an unboxing and initial impressions, I want to help you make a buying decision, whether you're thinking about this tablet or the iPad Pro or maybe even a MacBook Air. If you're a student, a creator or someone just looking to have an everyday carry, I actually want to put this thing to the paces. I want to see how tough sky blue is, because I think sky blue is pretty tough, so let's actually get into it real, quick and then what we're going to do. Am I'm going to come back here, and I'm going to give you my thoughts and help you make that buying decision, but I've already taken the outer plastic off these things are tough to get into? We don't need to get into that stuff. Um! All right! You beautiful humans! Welcome back to the channel, thank you so much for hanging out while I actually messed around with this thing, because I'll tell you what I've it's been really hard to put this thing down.

I have enjoyed testing this thing out, and I'm continuing to do so, putting it through its paces, but we're going to simmer down for a little, because I need to give you my honest opinion, my honest recommendations when it comes to whether you're a student, a professional, a creative is this something that you should make an investment in. I do have those thoughts, but I also want to put out a disclaimer disclosure transparency for those of you who are android users well as much as I am baked into the Apple ecosystem, especially now having an iPad in my life and in my workflow I'll also tell you that I'm an android user as well, and I've been using android since the nexus 7. Furthermore, I have a nexus 7 literally somewhere around here in this office. So anytime, I reference iPadOS and I mention something, and you're, like yeah android's, been doing that for a long time. I know, but I've got some context here and so for those of you, who've also invested in an iPad Pro recently, and you're.

Seeing the titles out there saying that this iPad Air is the iPad Pro killer or question mark no, I mean very capable- and I did run some benchmarks and I have to say that as a creator as a professional, what I can tell you what apple is doing, especially with this a14 chipset, seeing the future of what is coming down the pipeline and even the rumored uh, the max silicon, so the silicon that goes into the max and that's actually happening sometime in November, at least there's an announcement that we know, and so that being said, there's a lot to talk about. There's a lot to unpack. So let me just I can put that down. I can not hold it now talking about some similarities here, I'm just I'm just going to show you just real quick. You know some similarities as far as the footprint is concerned with iPad Air and the pro is that it's pretty much the same footprint.

It's the same tablet, at least externally, that is and of course, with the USB connection. Thank goodness for that, because apple's touting this whole environmental uh approach that they and they've been doing that for years. But as of recent with USB becoming standard across the board on a lot of hardware yeahs, it makes sense not to mention from a media transfer and data transfer as a creative using USB. It's just much faster, and it also is just has a lot more connectivity, um and I'll actually talk about that in a second and as far as the color game, it's concerned, the iPad Air does have DCI p3, so a 25, wider gamut, and so, as far as being a creative and doing things for social media and doing things for myself, I feel like the iPad. Air is plenty now if I'm still doing, client work.

That's one thing that you have to ask yourself: do you really need a desktop or a laptop or a color calibrated monitor? I would say if you are a pro, that's certainly something to consider, but again we'll kind of tease that out in just a little and of course, while we're on the display. Obviously the pro has that pro motion display and that 120 hertz refresh rate. Now, if you're someone who has experienced that whether on your television android devices, I mean it is becoming more prevalent and more common, you know if you know, and so the 60 hertz refresh rate on the air is that problematic I mean as a creator and as someone who does consume media. I don't like, I know the difference, but if it's so minute and for the general consumer who may look at the display that looks colorful, it's beautiful, it seems responsive. You may not even notice, but again for those of you who are well entrenched into 120 hertz refresh rate, you might say, like nah.

I think the pros fine for me and then, of course, another difference between the air and the pro are the lack of face ID on the air. However, it does have the touch ID if I can find the button, and I do like the fact that I love touch ID and that's the one thing that I've really loved on the se2, and I have to say that it's its great so like if you're holding a tablet like this, I would highly recommend when you're setting up your fingerprints to do multiple, because I have this finger and then, of course, if I have it in this display, then I also have this finger as well. So I certainly would recommend it, but here's one. One thing that I do want to note is when I was setting it up initially, and you may run into this issue- is that when you're setting it up, I got a failed to set up um touch ID uh initially. But, however, when I got into the iPad and I went to the fingerprint and the touch ID to set it up again, it was set up.

So it actually worked. So I'm not exactly sure why I was met with that screen. So, just as a heads-up, that might not be a complete failure on like what you're trying to do. It may just be something that is kind of wonky in the software, as I know, that apple has spent quite a bit of time and investment in researching making sure that this is going to work, because it sounded like based on what they were saying that this was a pretty tricky situation to put touch ID into the power button, the way that they did and then, of course, we have the single camera that is 12, megapixels and f 1.8 so same there, except for no ultra-wide, no telephoto and, of course, no LIDAR. And for those of you who might be wondering about LIDAR.

I still think that this is very experimental. It is left to the pro devices right now with apple, and I think that they're just kind of getting some feedback on how people are actually using this in their personal and business lives and, of course, giving that feedback to app developers to see what we can do with it. However, for an iPad, I'm not one to be filming with an iPad. However, if this is your only camera or your only decent camera, I'm not going to knock it, but if we ever get to a point where we are going to uh our kids concerts, and we are wanting to film and take photos, please don't be that person where you have this thing literally up and taking video and photo and blocking people's way. I'm just I'm just saying it's.

It's rude now, of course, stand out features with the pro versus the air. Let's actually just get that summarized here in that. If you need that that camera with the ultra-wide telephoto LIDAR, then okay, like that, could be the deal maker for you also too, that 120 hertz uh refresh rate again, if that's important to you, then you got to consider the pro and then when it comes to storage capacity. Now, of course, I have the 256 gig model here and for me, as a creator, a business person and someone who likes to have as much storage as possible, um without really breaking the bank 256 is great. For me, however, with the pro you can go all the way up to a terabyte, although people will argue then you're starting to get in that territory of a MacBook Pro really MacBook Pro MacBook Air and then does it really make sense? Well, really, what makes sense is that this thing is ultraportable.

I mean we are talking the footprint itself, throwing it in a bag and being very capable. So let's actually talk about the capability here and what this thing can do, what I have been doing with it now as a creator, here's one of the things that I'm really enjoying with iPad Air, and that is this thing being so capable to edit 4k footage on the tablet itself and not to mention that monitor behind me. I can connect this thing to the monitor. If I want to do work on that and here's the bonus and one of the things, let me actually put the caveat out there is that that's an ultra-wide monitor, and so the thing with iPadOS, which I really wish apple, would give us more control so that we can adjust the display settings in iPad so that it will actually take up more of the monitor real estate. Now some monitors it'll actually work just fine, but in ultra-wide you're, definitely going to get much larger black bars on the side that that's fine, because again, that's just part of having an ultra-wide monitor.

However, the fact that this thing is being is USB, the monitor behind me is also USB, and when you connect it to the iPad Air, then you can even I actually have a dock under there. So I actually have my SD card reader and all the other peripherals like connected via USB on a hub, and so when I connect those two things I can actually put a SD card in, and it registers on the iPad Air. I love that, and that is certainly something that I would have missed when it comes to some earlier iterations of iPad. Now, of course, going back to the speed and what this thing is capable of. I can edit 4k footage from start to finish in suffusion.

I could also use like iMovie, but I like suffusion, because what I can do is let's say that I'm at my kids, like soccer practice, I can rough cut a video, bring that footage in rough cut, a video put it in a timeline and then, when I get back to the studio here, I can take that footage out of suffusion and put it into Final Cut Pro now, like I said I can do from start to finish just fine on an iPad and upload it and be okay. But one of the things that I do like about Final Cut Pro is that it gives me extra ways to color, correct and some other key framing things that I actually do so a few more bells and whistles, but suffusion is really capable, and I'll have some videos coming out on how I'm actually using that. Now I did do a video on how you can start a podcast with your iPhone, and so I'm actually going to be doing some podcast tutorials on that iPad and using GarageBand. It's fine. It's really intuitive very simple, and I really think it's enough for people to get started so more videos to come on that, but again very capable, and I tested it.

Furthermore, it works. Furthermore, it works great. There's no lag same thing with like that: video there's, no lag, and so again as a creator. That could be something that you could really get started. If you don't have a decent laptop, if you don't have a decent desktop and your budget's fairly low, the air might be the way to go and, of course, for the working professional and the student out there.

If you need something for note-taking, and I'm actually doing some tests with some third-party accessories to go with the iPad Air. This is the Apple Pencil. The note-taking is fantastic. I do love this, and can understand like why people would invest in something like this. But again I will do a separate video on that.

But going back to some of the apps that you may need, of course, Apple has their own work with keynote and pages and numbers. However, if you're more from Microsoft, again you're not going to get the complete Microsoft experience as you would on a desktop or a laptop, that's one of those things. However, I think it could be enough for a lot of folks out there and what I will say is that I'm more for Google Docs, and so, if that's something that is good enough for you, you're going to be fine to access setting up those Google apps on the iPad and then, of course something that may affect your buying decision is the fact with the rumored um mac silicon, so the silicon in the mac books and that's on the horizon in November. I don't think that iPad, OS or really the iPads are going away, because, honestly, I don't think apple is ready for us to be touching the display on the mac books just yet. I do think there's some consolidation, that's going to happen in the MacBook line when silicon is announced, and so the iPadOS and macOS.

Furthermore, I think that those are going to start uh becoming more of the same, and I think ultimately, that's what apple would want along those lines to be very interchangeable. So again, the tablet could be even more so a replacement for a laptop or a desktop. However, I still think that they may create or keep some delineation there. Some differences there just to kind of keep people intrigued by the iPadOS, but it's just going to become ultraportable, something that you can just take on the go. You know run and gun style, just get things done and then bring it back to your desktop or laptop setup.

However, if again going back to student professional look at the software and the programs that you would likely use the most look and see what requirements may be at your, your college university, your school or your trade or your office like what you can get away with, because I wouldn't want you to pick up an iPad and say like. I can't run that program and I really needed that program. So certainly do your due diligence as far as the apps and how you would use it. However, I do I say: that's my new everyday carry all right. What questions do you have for me? I'm always around YouTube.

So this is the best place to find me so go ahead and hit me up. Let's actually chat it up, go out there do those things that matter keep rocking the faces. I really appreciate your time and attention on this one. I've got several more videos coming out on that iPad, so stay tuned for those, so thanks much be well, and I'll catch you right back here on the next one. You.

Source : Kevin Ross