WHAT IS THE IPAD AIR?
IPAD AIR DESIGN – THE POWER OF LIGHTNESS
Lame as Apple's "Power of lightness is" tagline is it does seem apt. The iPad Air is much lighter than the iPad 4, in fact it’s lighter than most other tablets in its class at 469g. It has shed almost 200g, or 29%, of the weight that the iPad 4 carried. That's a massive generational leap.
iPad 3 on the left next to the iPad Air
Unsuprisingly the weight is the first thing you’ll notice when picking it up. It really makes a big difference when using the iPad Air for long periods of time. The iPad Air is perfectly balanced which means you can hold it to read or watch a movie for hours simply by cupping a corner in your palm. Attempt the same with an iPad 4 and you’ll quickly succumb to shaky arm fatigue.
The look and design are taken straight from the iPad mini 2’s drawer. A tough aluminium shell encases the entire back and sides of the iPad Air, unless you opt for a 4G model which has a small plastic panel at the top to house the antennas. The edges where the screen meets the aluminium are diamond cut, providing a sleek, shiny surface.
While the iPad 4 also has an aluminium shell, the iPad Air’s is grippier and the sides rounder – both useful for keeping a comfortable hold of it.
The plastic buttons on the previous iPads were slightly at odds with the otherwise high-quality design aesthetic. Thankfully, Apple has replaced them with the metal equivalents found on the iPad mini 2. It’s a small touch, but the metal buttons add to the premium feel of the Air.
The metal buttons on the iPad Air are well positioned and feel premium
It’s not just the weight that has been reduced. The iPad Air is also much thinner and narrower than the iPad 4, while keeping the same screen size. At just 7.5mm thin it really shouldn’t feel as solid as it does, only the Sony Xperia Tablet Z is thinner at this screen size, but that tablet suffers from it by feeling a little flexible.
The screen bezels have also slimmed down significantly, which makes the iPad Air 16mm narrower than before. Slim bezels are sometimes a mixed blessing. Yes, they make the tablet more compact, but an accidental thumb on a corner of the screen can hit a link or cause the screen to be inoperable. We’ve experienced it plenty of times on other tablets and phones, but the iPad Air’s screen is designed to ignore an errant thumb and we haven't experienced a single issue with it.
IPAD AIR SCREEN – RETINA DISPLAY
The iPad Air is one of the most comfortable and premium 10-inch tablets we’ve ever used, but a great screen is just as important for a good user experience.
On paper the iPad Air’s Retina screen is the same as the one on the iPad 4. It has a 2,048 x 1,536 IPS panel offering 264 PPI (pixels per inch) with scratch-proof and oleophobic protective glass that's resistant, though not impervious, to greasy fingerprints.
If there was one thing the iPad Air could take from the previous versions without getting too much stick it’s the screen, but Apple has made some subtle improvements to it nonetheless.
Look at the screen straight on and the colours on the iPad 4 and iPad Air match almost exactly. Tilt the screen, however, and you’ll notice that the Air maintains its excellent colour accuracy at impressive angles. Text is also more legible from acute angles.
The screen on the iPad 4 is good, but we did find that it have a slight pinkish tinge to white backgrounds, particularly noticeable when browsing the net. The iPad Air has clearly been given a dose of Vanish and manages to provide cleaner whites. Turn the brightness up to eleven and the screen is noticeably brighter, too.
The 4:3 aspect ratio on the iPad Air is one we prefer on a tablet this size. It makes it easier to browse the internet, but you do get bigger black bars when watching a film than you would on a 16:9 or 16:10 tablet like the Samsung Galaxy Tab S 10.5. It's one of those trade-offs you just have to live with, but we can't think of a good reason for Apple to change this aspect.
It’s the best screen on a 10-inch tablet, only the Nexus 10 even comes close, but if there’s one thing we’d like Apple to improve it is the reflectiveness. Use it outdoors on a sunny day and you’ll find yourself looking for the best angle to minimise the mirror effect. The brightness means you can still see what’s happening on-screen but an anti-reflective coating would improve matters.
IPAD AIR: SOUND QUALITY
Stereo speakers come as standard on the iPad Air. It’s a step up from the mono speaker on the iPad 4 and brings it in line with the iPad mini. Unfortunately the stereo effect isn’t that impressive, primarily because both drivers are located next to each other at the bottom of the tablet, something the Nexus 7 and Kindle Fire HDX 8.9 avoid by placing speakers at either end when held in landscape.
The compact size of the iPad Air means we shouldn’t expect greatness from the speakers, but they are very good for a tablet. Audio is crisp and clear and doesn’t suffer from the tinny treble that affected dialogue on previous iPads. The speakers also offer a mite more bass, which means voices are deeper and more accurately portrayed.
They're acceptably loud too, enough so that you can happily watch a film in quiet company, although, as with any tablet, you’ll want a separate speaker set-up to listen to music. One issue is the fact that the speakers face backwards, directing sound away from your ears. Cup a palm behind the speakers and the sound bouces back loud and clear. We're sure the speakers face backwards for aesthetic reasons but HTC managed to integrate good-looking forward facing speakers onto the HTC One M8 and we'd like to see a similar set up on the iPad Air.
So it looks great, sounds good and the display is solid, but how does it perform day to day?
IPAD AIR PERFORMANCE – THE 64-BIT A7 STRIKES AGAIN
When Apple announced the performance increase the A7 processor gave the iPhone 5S we were a little sceptical. It didn’t take long, though, to find out how special the dual-core CPU/quad-core GPU SoC (System on Chip) is. It also goes to show, once again, that clock speeds and the number of cores aren’t the be-all and end-all of real world performance.
The iPad Air shares the same processor with Apple’s flagship phone, albeit with a slight bump in clock speed. While the 5S runs at 1.3GHz the Air runs at 1.39GHz. It can achieve this because of the increased space and improved heat dissipation of the Air compared to the much smaller iPhone 5S.
Indeed, before we go into the detail about performance it’s worth noting that the iPad Air manages to keep its cool with consummate ease. Even when running intensive 3D games and apps for hours it barely breaks a sweat and, therefore, neither do your hands.
In practice, the iPad Air is blisteringly fast. Apps open instantly and games like Infinity Blade 3 look sumptuous and run smoothly. The benefits of having a SoC means that the GPU can be used to tackle compute tasks, which makes video editing and compute intensive apps, like AutoCAD, show no hint of slowdown.
The iPad Air can run complex AutoCAD wireframes smoothly
This is born out with our benchmarking tests. The iPad Air performs 59% faster than the iPad 4 in the 3D Mark Ice Storm Unlimited CPU and GPU test and 91% faster in Geekbench 3 tests. The Peacekeeper browser test, which assesses web browsing performance, shows that the Air trounces its predecessor by being more than twice as fast. It's also faster than the stonking Snapdragon 800 processor on the likes of the Sony Xperia Z Ultra and Google Nexus 5. We're talking matter of degrees here, but the difference is there all the same.
Head to our iPad Air benchmarks page for more detailed comparisons
There has been a lot of talk surrounding Apple’s move to a 64-bit processor. If you want to know more about the implications read our A7 guide here. Suffice it to say the biggest wins become apparent when the software is also 64-bit, so it will take a little time for the full benefits to appear on the iPad Air. Apple has helped by re-engineering some of its key iOS apps to take advantage of 64-bit computing. This includes the iWorks and iLife suite of apps we’ll cover a little later, but it's probably more significant for games and 'pro' applications like AutoCAD, the latter being the kind of apps that 99% of iPad owners don't deal with.
Infinity Blade 3 on the iPad Air
One reason the A7 was made 64-bit was so that the iTouch fingerprint scanner on the iPhone 5S could work smoothly. Sadly, iTouch is omitted from the iPad Air. It would have been a great addition, but it’s less of an issue on a tablet, which doesn’t require unlocking as often as a phone and where inputting passwords is less fiddly thanks to the larger keyboard. This doesn't totally excuse the omission, of course, but judging by the iPhone 5S delays (reportedly caused by iTouch) it's probably just as well Apple didn't include it.
Aside from the A7 there’s another, much smaller processor called the M7. This has one job only, to manage the iPad’s motion data. It improves battery efficiency by being much more low powered and is particularly effective for the 4G models. For example, if the iPad Air isn’t receiving 4G signal in a specific location it will stop looking. When the iPad is on the move again the M7 will notice and tell it to start searching for signal again. Being out of signal is a significant drain on battery life and this is a neat way of solving it without just throwing a bigger battery, and therefore more weight and bulk, at the problem.
IPAD AIR APPS AND IOS 7
There’s one thing that should always be remembered when discussing the 9.7-inch iPad – the App Store. There are more than 475,000 iPad optimised apps on there, some free, some paid for, but all designed for a screen bigger than that of a phone.
Android on 7-inch tablets like Nexus 7 2 isn’t quite the warty experience it is on bigger ones, but there is a stark contrast between using an iPad optimised app and using upscaled Android apps on a 10-inch tablet. The iPad provides a slicker and more optimised experience. The Windows Store, meanwhile, is still a little threadbare and lacking some top apps.
So the App Store is still the best in the business, but what about Apple’s new iOS 7?
iOS 7 is Apple's biggest redesign of its mobile operating system since it first launched. It has had a mixed reception with detractors claiming it looks too childish and still lacks some of the best Android features. Whether or not you like the flatter, more colourful design, is a matter of taste. We think it’s a refreshing take and retains the instant accessibility that has made iOS so successful in the first place. The addition of an easy-access control centre that lets you have quick access to some core settings and the updated notification bar are welcome.
iOS 7 Control Centre provides quick access to key settings, but you can't customise it
However, iOS 7 still lags well behind Android and Windows when it comes to customisation. Aside from the lack of widgets there is still no option to create user profiles – something both Android 4.3 and Windows do very well. If you want to protect your tablet so that your kids can use it without accessing inappropriate content or accidentally deleting your emails or apps you’ll need to look at other operating systems.
Where Apple gains some brownie points is with the reworked 64-bit iWork and iLife suite of apps. They now come absolutely free for anyone buying an iPad Air. iWork is Apple’s version of Office and comes with Pages - for documents, Numbers - for spread sheets and Keynote – for presentations.
Plenty of improvements have been made but perhaps the most interesting is that Apple has created a unified file format that means it’s easier than ever to work on documents across platforms. Following the footsteps of Google Docs you can now even share files with anyone, regardless of platform. It’s a great addition and means that Apple users can now collaborate easily with PC users.
Where iWork handles productivity, iLife covers creativity. iPhoto, as the name suggests, lets you tweak and manage your photos, as well as order print versions in bundled photo albums – a 20cm x 20cm book with 25 pages costs around £20. Because it’s been re-engineered in 64-bit it’s very fast, opening an album with hundreds of images is instant and means you don’t have to wait ages for the images to show up. iMovie lets you manage your videos while Garageband gets your creative juices flowing by making music in minutes.
Both iWork and iLife apps are made for the touch interface and really are easy to use, although not quite as powerful as their Microsoft Office counterparts.
IPAD AIR: CAMERA
The camera on the iPad Air has had some minor tweaks made to it. Just like the iPad 4, it has a 5-megapixel rear facing camera and a front facing 1.2-megapixel camera for 720p video calling. The pixels in the sensor have been increased in size, however, so image low-light performance is slightly improved. There’s still no flash, though, so you don’t expect great results in dim environments.
The camera takes snaps quickly and colour reproduction is accurate, but there is some noise.
A photo of a cat using the rear camera. Because the internet needs more cat pictures
Not much has changed in terms of shooting video. You get 1080p 30fps from the rear camera, which does a decent job. The iPad Air now comes with two microphones, so audio sounds better but noise isolation isn’t great with even light background noise being picked up.
iOS 7 lets you apply a range of filters to pics
We recommend you go for a proper camera or using your phone, but if you have to use a tablet to take pictures you'll find the iPad Air has one of the best camera's you can get on a tablet. It also works great with augmented reality or apps that require OCR (optical character recognition).
IPAD AIR: CONNECTIVITY
You don’t get much in the way of physical connectivity with the iPad Air. The Lightning port does allow adapters that enable HDMI or microUSB, but these need to be purchased separately and can be pricey. If you opt for a 4G version you also get a nano-SIM slot.
The iPad Air comes well stocked in terms of wireless connectivity, with one minor omission, there’s no adoption of the new 802.11ac Wi-Fi standard. This means that if you are one of the lucky few that has an 802.11ac router then you won’t get maximum Wi-Fi speeds on the Air.
What Apple has done, however, is boost the Wi-Fi 802.11n speeds by using MIMO (multiple-input multiple-output) and two dual antennas that cover both 2.4GHz and 5GHz bands. This, theoretically, doubles Wi-Fi speed to up to 300Mbps.
In our tests connecting wirelessly to a router on a 50Mbps fiberoptic connection located 10m away an iPad 3 achieved 9.6Mbps download and 7.7Mbps upload. From the exact same position iPad Air managed 19.86Mbps down and 15Mbps up, making it twice as fast. There is a worthwhile improvement in Wi-Fi connection speed over range.
The iPad Air also comes with Bluetooth, and support Airplay (audio and video streaming over Wi-Fi) and Airdrop (easy sharing among Apple devices). There’s still no NFC or microSD expansion slot, so you'll gave to pay up front for the on-board storage you think you'll need. That fact Airdrop only works between Apple devices isn't fatal, but it is irksome. You'll have to resort to third-party apps to share things quickly with non-Apple devices.
IPAD AIR: BATTERY LIFE
To make the iPad Air so thin and light Apple has reduced the size of the battery, but still claims 10 hours of constant use. We’ve already mentioned how the M7 processor helps improve battery life, but the A7 SoC is also more efficient.
The 10-hour battery life bears out in real world tests. At around 70% screen brightness we managed to get just over 9 hours of mixed use including 30 minutes of gaming, two hours of streaming video, word processing, Skype video chatting and browsing the internet (over Wi-Fi and for an hour on 4G).
In our standard benchmark tests the iPad Air lost just 2% battery life for a 30-minute 720p movie streamed over Wi-Fi. Over 4G the same video took 6% of the battery. The Air also managed to gain a respectable 0 to 15% (or about two hours worth) of battery life from a 30-minute charge.
Space grey on the left and silver on the right. The screen bezels are black and white respectively
SHOULD I BUY THE IPAD AIR?
The iPad Air is the best jack-of-all 10-inch tablets, but at £400 for the most basic version it is a little pricey. If you primarily want a tablet as a productivity tool, or as a laptop replacement, then you could opt for the weightier Microsoft Surface Pro 2. However, prices start at £719 and you’ll need to fork out extra for Office and the keyboard cover. The Surface 2 starts at £359 and you get Office RT bundled, but the Microsoft Store is very limited by comparison, and the tablet is 50% heavier than the iPad, with a less impressive screen.
Only the Nexus 10 comes close to matching the iPad Air’s screen on a 10-inch tablet, but the app experience on large Android tablets leaves a lot to be desired and
There is a variety of options when picking which iPad Air to buy. It comes in two colours – space grey and silver. You then have the option of Wi-Fi only or Wi-Fi with 4G/LTE. For an extra £100 the latter lets you add mobile internet to your iPad and it’s one of the features that most iPad buyers most regret not opting for.
If you’re going to keep the iPad Air at home then Wi-Fi will be adequate, but if you want to use it on the go then you should consider 4G. Remember, though, that you will need a subscription with a mobile network. EE charges £15.99 a month for 2GB of 4G internet. A third option is to tether to a 4G phone, though that adds a few compilations: you need a tethering compatible phone and contract and it will drain your phone's battery faster.
The Air also comes in four storage sizes 16GB, 32GB, 64GB and 128GB. If you opt for 4G you can afford to go for less storage options and use iCloud and other cloud platforms to store and stream your files, but if you like to keep a decent selection of music, video and games on-board you should consider the 32GB model, at the very least.
Apple sells two types of covers for the iPad Air: the Smart Case for £65 and Smart Cover for £35. Both are leather and fold around to provide a perch for the iPad to stand upright, but we found the Smart Case to be a little unsteady and prone to flattening. We recommend the cheaper Smart Cover that protects your screen but leaves the tough back exposed, or that buyers opt for a keyboard case, which transforms the iPad into a great productivity tool for its diminutive size. We'll be looking at the cases, and possible iPad keyboards, in more depth in a separate feature.
VERDICT
The iPad Air is the best overall 10-inch tablet you can buy by quite a margin. The huge weight reduction makes the larger of the two iPads a far more attractive option again, while retaining all the iPads traditional strengths such as its unrivalled collection of tablet optimised apps. A revolution it isn't, but we find it very hard to see how Apple can top this version now.
Aside from real-world usage we ran some standard benchmark tests on the iPad Air. We are comparing it with the Sony Xperia Z Ultra, which uses the very fast Snapdragon 800 SoC, the iPad 4, which uses the A6X SoC and the iPhone 5S, which uses the 64-bit A7 but clocked to a slightly lower speed.
In all graphs higher is better.
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