Summary
iPad Air 2: First Impressions
What can Apple do with the world’s most popular tablet? It’s come so far since the first iPad was launched just four years ago, with screen resolution and battery life improving iteratively.
The iPad Air was a great leap in design, but it feels like tablets are becoming a little staid – you can now get ones that provide good experiences for less than £200. Apple had to provide something new, and it has with the iPad Air 2. But has it done enough?
It’s still one of the very best tablets around, no doubt about that, but it doesn’t have any major innovations we haven’t seen on recent Apple phones.
The iPad Air 2 is much thinner, much faster and comes with a new bonded display. All these improvements are much appreciated, but perhaps the most interesting hardware feature is the addition of the excellent Touch ID to the Home button. Is it as important on a tablet as it is on a phone? I’d argue not – your phone tends to hold more sensitive information, needs unlocking more regularly and is always out and about with you. Still, if you like to lock your iPad it’s a nifty feature.
But Touch ID isn’t just about keeping your iPad Air 2 secure; it’s about Apple Pay, launching on October 20. Apple Pay is how the Cupertino firm plans to revolutionise online shopping and tap-to-pay. For the Air 2, shopping will be key – although no-one at the event was able to tell us if NFC is even included for tap-to-pay purchases. Nevertheless the ability to make secure online purchases at the touch of a thumb removes a big barrier to buying online, and retailers are already flocking to take part in what they hope will be a gold rush.
I’ve certainly noticed that I download and buy more apps since Touch ID came along for app purchasing. It’s easy and it’s slick and you don’t have time to rethink your decision. Can it have the same effect on more traditional purchasing? I think so.
So what else is different on the iPad Air 2? Apple has managed to shave an incredible 1.4mm from the chassis. It’s now just 6.1mm thick and lighter, too. The design is otherwise the same as its predecessor, which is no bad thing. The iPad Air 2 looks and feels like the best-made tablet out there. It has a beautiful, almost seamless design that feels both premium and easy to handle. The fact that it’s thinner and lighter means you’ll enjoy holding it for even longer without any sacrifice to battery life. The iPad Air 2 will last as long as the iPad Air – 10 hours of use.
Same resolution but improved screen technology
The 9.7-inch screen's not had the upgrade to near 4K resolution that many anticipated. It’s still an LCD IPS display, so you don’t get anywhere near the infinite contrast ratios of the Samsung Galaxy Tablet range’s superb AMOLED screens, but from what I saw it does a solid job on dark scenes and provides excellent colours.
Apple's managed to make the screen thinner by removing the space between the display and the glass, and the lack of air gaps between the different components means that internal reflection has been reduced. An anti-reflective coating has also been added, which Apple claims reduces reflections by a further 56%, making this the least reflective tablet ever.
These changes are more important than whacking up the resolution. The iPad Air 2 still has a pixel density of 264PPI, and the reduction of thickness and reflectivity will be more important to most users than greater sharpness. The bonded display shaves off some of the thickness but also provides an effect that makes it look like what’s on screen is painted on the glass.
The iPad Air 2 gets its own processor
Perhaps the biggest surprise of the iPad Air 2 is that it comes with its very own custom-built processor. The iPad Air’s A7X processor was about 5% faster than the A7 on the iPhone 5S, so the performance improvement wasn't earth-shattering.
There were no direct comparisons with the iPhone 6, but Apple claims that the A8X chip has a 40% faster CPU and 2.5 times faster GPU than the iPad Air before it. These are some impressive numbers, which result in major speed improvements to intensive tasks such as image and video processing – up to four times faster, according to some app developers.
iPad Air 2 8 megapixel iSight Camera
The iSight camera on the iPad Air 2 has seen an obligatory boost. It’s now 8-megapixel with 1.12 micron pixels and an f/2.4 aperture. It’s similar in spec to the camera on the iPhone 5S, albeit with smaller pixels. It can now record 1080p video but more importantly comes with all the tricks that make the iPhone’s camera such fun to use.
Panoramas, burst mode and time-lapse are all there, as is my personal favourite: slo-mo video. These don’t reach the levels of the new iPhones, but you still get 120fps at 720p, as well as dual mics for better audio recording.
The prepared images we saw at the presentation and on the iPad Air 2 looked fantastic, but these always do. We’ll need to use the tablet out and about ourselves to see what the camera can really do.
The front camera has also had a nip and tuck. It remains a 1.2-megapixel affair but has much-improved low-light performance and comes with a burst selfie mode and timer.
Top-spec iPads get cheaper
The iPad has always been one of the most expensive tablets to buy, and this won’t change now. What has changed is the cost of models with higher storage capacities. So the 16GB Wi-Fi-only model will retail at $499/£399, the 64GB for $599/£479 and the big 128GB model $699/£559. There’s no 32GB model, but the 64GB and 128GB ones are $100 cheaper than when the iPad Air launched last year. You’ll need to pay an extra $130/£100 for the Wi-Fi and 4G versions.
You can pre-order the silver, gold or spacey grey iPad Air 2 now from the Apple Store, with shipping scheduled for next week.
iPad Air 2: Early Verdict
It’s another step in the iPad’s evolution – and it’s a promising one. Apple has taken the right tack by not playing the specs game and by making useful improvements to the screen. iPad photographers, of which there are surprisingly many, will love the new camera features that iPhone users have been enjoying for a while, and Touch ID will cause delight and empty wallets in equal measure. Most of all I’m pleased that Apple has opted for a custom processor. It’s not that the A7X on the iPad Air is slow – far from it – but it'll make productivity tasks that much faster and games look that much better.
Is this the best tablet out there? It’ll be hard to argue against it.
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