Which iPad should you buy in Late 2020? By Max Tech

So right here in front of my I’ve got every single iPad from Apple’s current iPad lineup. We’ve got the 10.2” Budget iPad for $329, we’ve got the iPad Mini 5 for $399, the new iPad Air 4 for $600 and the 2020 11” iPad Pro for $800. So in this video, I’m gonna show you guys all of the differences between them to help you decide which iPad you should be buying for your specific use-case. And since the last version of this video, my purchasing recommendations have changed drastically thanks to the updated budget iPad and the new iPad Air 4, but before I talk about the one iPad that you definitely should not buy right now, let’s get into comparing all of the physical differences. The iPad Air has now moved over to the modern design of the iPad Pro, which includes flat sides like the new iPhone 12, an edge-to-edge display with rounded corners compared to square corners on the other iPads, and even bezels all around thanks to removing the home button on the front, making them look so much more modern compared to the iPad and iPad Mini. Now while the iPad Pro gets Face ID authentication, the iPad Air 4 gets Touch ID in the power button, and to be completely honest, it doesn’t work nearly as well as Face ID, and I’d argue that the placement of the sensor is a bit awkward, but it’s totally worth the new display.

Moving over to the back side, the Air and the Pro get a completely flat back, and they both get larger camera bumps that stick out, but they look more premium. The Pro takes it a step further by having a square bump like the new iPhones, which I think looks great! The iPad Mini is the only one that doesn’t get Apple’s smart connector, which is used for connecting keyboard accessories. And while the Air and Pro have a larger connector on the back of the iPad, the budget 10.2” iPad has it on the side. What makes the Air a great value is that it also supports Apple’s Magic Keyboard, which I think is the best keyboard case ever made because of the unique hinge design and the pass-through charging port, but it’s a little bit pricey at $300. Thankfully, Logitech has excellent Folio & Combo Touch keyboards for each iPad other than the Mini since it’s so small.

In terms of speakers, both the Air and the Pro gets grilles on both the top and bottom, but only the Pro has quad speakers, with the Air simply having one speaker on each side, which is still better than the Budget iPad and the Mini which only get speakers on the bottom, leading to much worse audio quality, as you’ll see in the speaker comparison in just a minute. The Air and the Pro both get USB-C ports, which is the best case scenario compared to lightning on the other two, since it gets better accessory support, and it’s important to note that the Pro’s USB-C port is twice as fast as the one on the Air. As far as the chargers that come in the box, the iPad Mini is the only one that doesn’t get Apple’s new 20W charger, instead, it gets an old outdated 12W USB-A charger which won’t support fast-charging on Apple’s new iPhone 12 lineup. However, the Mini gets a headphone jack, just like the budget iPad, while the air and Pro no longer have one so that they would be nice and thin compared to the rest. Now getting into display quality, they all have at least 264 pixels per inch, with the mini having a bit more because of the small 7.9” display. The budget iPad gets a 10.2” display which is a decent size, but I like the 11” display size of the Pro the best. While the Air has the same exact body size as the Pro, the display is slightly smaller at 10.9” due to having thicker bezels for some reason. In terms of brightness, the Pro can actually reach 600 nits of brightness compared to only 500 nits with the others, even the new Air.

Now out of all of these iPads, the budget iPad gets the absolute worst display quality, since the display isn’t laminated. This means that there’s an actual gap in-between the glass and the display, which can be noticeable by looking at it from the side, and it also makes it feel a bit hollow instead of solid like the rest of the iPads. The budget iPad is also much more reflective compared to the other iPads which have anti reflective coatings. And taking it even further, it lacks true tone technology which automatically adjusts the white balance of the display to match your surroundings, and it doesn’t support P3 wide-colors either, so the color accuracy isn’t as good as the other iPads. Now while the display on the iPad Air seems like it matches the iPad Pro, the Air is actually missing 120hz ProMotion technology, which allows the display to automatically adjust between 24hz and 120hz based on what you’re doing, like playing a game that supports 120 frames per second.

And as you can see from this slow-motion clip between the Air and the Pro, the display on the Pro is super smooth for scrolling and everything else. ProMotion also greatly reduces the latency of the Apple Pencil down to 9ms on the iPad Pro, as you can see in this slow motion clip, giving it the best Apple Pencil experience. Besides that, the iPad Air now finally supports the 2nd-gen Apple Pencil, which uses wireless charging on the side to both charge and pair, just like we already had on the Pro. Another great benefit of this Pencil is the new design and the added double-tap gesture support for swapping tools and other things like that, but both the iPad Mini and the budget iPad are still limited to the original Apple Pencil which uses Lightning to charge. And the budget iPad also has the worst Apple Pencil experience because of the non-laminated display which gives it a noticeable gap between the Pencil tip and the actual display underneath the glass.

And with that, let’s finally get into our speaker comparison. Now before we get into performance, let’s quickly compare the cameras. Both the Air and the Pro get a 12MP wide camera on the back compared to 8 Megapixels on the other two, giving them better detail in photos and the ability to record 4K video at 60 frames per second compared to just 1080P 30 on the others. The iPad Pro is also the only one that comes with an extra 10MP Ultrawide camera, which gives you a unique perspective that you can’t get on the other iPads, and it’s also the only one that has a flash which can be helpful for document scanning. The Pro is also the only one that gets the LiDAR scanner, which greatly improves depth tracking for things like augmented reality, so in this comparison to an iPad without LiDAR, you can tell that it’s able to detect objects and distance much more accurately.

As far as the front-facing cameras, the budget iPad still gets a very bad quality 1.2MP selfie camera compared to 7MP on the rest, so selfies will look quite a bit worse, especially compared to the Pro which uses the Face ID sensors to enable Portrait mode. The iPad Pro also gets five microphones compared to two on the rest of the iPads, so it sounds much better as well. Now let’s finally get into performance, both the budget iPad and iPad Mini only get 3GB of RAM, compared to 4GB on the Air and 6GB on the Pro. As far as the chips, the budget iPad and iPad Mini have the A12 Bionic chip from the iPhone XS, while the Air has the brand new A14 chip from the iPhone 12 lineup, and the iPad Pro has the super powerful A12Z chip. Comparing single-core performance in Geekbench 5, the iPad Air destroys all of the other iPads, including the Pro, because it’s using the latest and greatest tech from Apple.

But in terms of multi-core performance, the Pro still outperforms the Air by about 400 points, and it’s much more powerful than the other two iPads. But for graphics performance, the Air surprisingly beats out the Pro by just a little bit, but they’re both over 2x more powerful than the IPad mini and the budget iPad. In terms of gaming, those lower-end iPads still do an excellent job for things like Call of duty mobile, running at a smooth 60 frames per second. Now if you want to play higher-end games, like maybe Genshin Impact or something like that, the extra performance of the Air and Pro will give you extra peace of mind. But out of all of them, the iPad Pro is the best choice for gaming because it supports 120 frames per second gaming thanks to having ProMotion technology.

Now let’s quickly mention some other spec differences before I start recommending which iPad you should buy. The budget iPad gets bluetooth 4.2 compared to 5.0 on the others, and this year, the Air now gets WiFi 6, just like the iPad Pro. And as for the battery life, they’re all rated for the same 10 hours like they always are. Now with all of that said, let’s get into my recommendations, starting with who should buy the 10.2” budget iPad and why. The value of this iPad jumped through the roof this year because it went from the old A10 chip to the A12, which means it feels much more snappy for everything from navigation, using apps and playing games, since we got a solid 60 frames per second in call of duty mobile.

Because of the $329 price, it’s an absolutely great choice for kids and teens since they probably won’t mind the worse quality non-laminated display, but it’s also a plus because it’s much cheaper and easier to replace. Not only that, but the budget iPad is a great choice for adults for working from home, since you can get a full laptop replacement package for much cheaper than any other iPad by buying the Logitech Combo Touch keyboard case which comes with a trackpad, so it basically turns into a budget MacBook. And by the way, the budget 10.2” Pad is now on sale for only $300 by using the link in the video description, but I’d recommend going for the 128GB model if you’re gonna be playing games or downloading large apps. Now moving onto the iPad Mini, even though it’s only $70 more expensive than the budget iPad, it’s actually by far the worst value out of all of the iPads this year. It’s not any faster than the budget iPad since they both have the same A12 chip.

And while you get a better laminated display, it’s many times worse than the iPad Air for $200 more for a number of different reasons like having the old design and supporting the old Pencil. And the Mini is also the only iPad that doesn’t come with the smart connector, so it doesn’t support high-quality keyboard cases. But by far, the biggest reason you shouldn’t buy the Mini is because there have been leaks and rumors of a completely redesigned 8.5” iPad Mini 6 coming in the first half of next year, so if you buy the Mini right now, you’re probably gonna be disappointed when you see that redesign. However, if you don’t really care about that, the Mini is a great choice for kids with small hands since it’s easy to hold for things like playing games. Now moving onto the brand new iPad Air 4, this one is in a pretty weird spot.

At $600, it’s right in between the Mini and the iPad Pro for $800. Yes, it gets the brand new design with support for the new Pencil. It gets the USB-C port which is awesome, and it gets support for the Magic Keyboard case which is the best case ever made. From the looks of it, it seems like an iPad Pro killer, but once you dig a bit deeper, you’ll start to see how many downsides it has compared to the Pro, which I’ll mention in a moment. But the biggest downside of the Air is that while it gets the A14 chip with killer graphics performance, you can’t use it to its full potential because the Air doesn’t have 120hz ProMotion technology.

Because of that, the gaming performance is similar to the cheaper iPads, which is a bit disappointing. And on top of that, it only comes with 64GB of storage compared to 128GB on the Pro, so if you want more, you have to go straight to 256GB which brings the price up to $750, basically right into iPad Pro territory. So honestly, there are only a few reasons you should buy the new iPad Air 4. The first reason is if you want that new redesign instead of buying the cheaper iPads which will start to look outdated very soon. The second reason is if you want that new powerful A14 chip that will have many more years of software support.

The third reason is if you have a hard limit of $600 to spend on an iPad, so you can’t justify going for the Pro. And finally, the Air is a great choice if you really just want the Magic Keyboard case, since you can get it for a total of $900 with the Air instead of $1100 with the Pro. And now finally, let’s get into who should buy the iPad Pro. If you want the best and most premium tablet ever made, this is the one to get. And if you take gaming seriously, then this is the iPad to buy because it’s the only one with a 120hz display and it’s got basically the same graphics power as the Air.

But on top of that, it has the highest multi-core CPU performance, and it comes with 6GB of RAM compared to 4 on the Air and 3GB on the cheaper iPads. It’s also got by far, the best speakers and microphone quality. The bezels are thinner than on the Air, and the USB-C port is twice as fast. The display also gets brighter than any other iPad. It’s basically the best of the best, and it comes with 128GB of storage, which is actually a solid amount that most people will be completely fine with, even gamers.

And on top of that, the 11” model is now on sale for $750 on Amazon, which is a killer deal for what you get. And don’t forget that there’s also a larger 12.9” model if you really want to replace your laptop. However, the last thing to consider is that we should be seeing a new iPad Pro with the A14X chip within half a year, and I believe the performance on that is gonna be mind blowing, so keep that in mind as well. So there you guys go, hopefully this video helped you guys out, and if it did, please use those links down in the description below to help out this channel. And definitely check out our full iPad Air vs iPad Pro comparison video right over there to see every difference in detail.

Thanks for watching, and we’ll see you in the next one!.

Source : Max Tech