A Stellar Design
Let’s start with what is most noticeably different about this fifth-generation iPad: At 0.29 inches, the iPad Air is the thinnest full-size iPad Apple has ever made. It’s also the exact same thickness as the new iPad Mini Retina. In fact, if you’ve ever seen an iPad Mini, you know exactly what the iPad Air looks like: it’s essentially a larger clone.
If you’ve never had the pleasure of touching or seeing an iPad Mini in person, the iPad Air is most easily described as an elegant slab. The back is almost entirely brushed aluminum (it comes in standard aluminum color and "space gray" — my test unit is the latter). The LTE model has a plastic bar at the top for the antenna, and there’s a 5-megapixel iSight camera on the back.
The lightly tapered edges house metal volume buttons and a rotation-lock/mute switch on one side, a power/sleep button and 3.5mm audio jack on top, and the Lighting port and speakers on the bottom edge.
The front is very familiar-looking, a black or white face with a 9.7-inch screen, a 1.2MP (720p) FaceTime camera and the very familiar Home bottom near the bottom. Apple didn't include its new Touch ID technology in the iPad Air. When I asked them about this, their explanation was vague, but equated to, “We just added it in the iPhone 5s, so...” For what it’s worth, I’m so used to unlocking my 5S with my thumb that I truly missed this feature on the iPad Air.
There is another stark difference between the fourth-generation iPad (and really all other previous iPad editions) and this one: the iPad Air is almost three-quarters-of-an-inch narrower. That’s right, Apple managed to make the iPad Air thinner and smaller while maintaining the exact same screen size.
The end result is a one-pound tablet that's incredibly comfortable to hold
The end result is a one-pound tablet that's incredibly comfortable to hold, even if you grab it with just your fingertips.
Other tablets are lighter. The Amazon Kindle Fire HDX, for example weighs 0.825 pounds. However, with an 8.9-inch screen, it’s actually a smaller tablet.
The effect of the iPad Air’s thin profile, largish 9.7 inch screen and now decreased bevel size is that you feel as if you’re holding the screen, or rather, what’s on the screen in your hand, and the rest, what there is of it, fades into the background. It's a trick no other consumer tablet effectively pulls off.
It’s What’s Inside That Counts
Apple’s now spreading its powerful A7 chip across the top tier of its mobile products line. Although the company assiduously avoids details about mobile CPU clock speeds, we know that the A7 is a 64-bit dual-core CPU that runs at roughly 1.3GHz. Amazon is currently packing Snapdragon 800 quad-core CPUs in its new line of Kindle Fire HDX tablets. I can tell you from experience that the new Kindle Fire plenty fast. Even so, the Apple iPad Air’s dual-core A7 felt just a powerful. No process or task ever lagged.
The A7 is paired with a M7 coprocessor. Its job is to monitor all the motion sensors in the iPad Air, essentially taking that task off the core CPU’s hands. That may be part of the reason the A7 operates so efficiently. On the other hand, it’s hard to see exactly what the M7 is doing right now without a bunch third-party tools (hardware and software) to access it. Apple tells me they’re waiting for third-party companies to take advantage of the M7 (the same chip pair can be found in the iPhone 5S and iPad Mini Retina).
The iPad Air’s screen is not only exactly the same 2,048 x 1,536 resolution as the previous iPad, it’s the same resolution as the smaller-screen iPad Mini Retina. The funny thing about these Retina screens, which supposedly describe a resolution as fine as the eye can perceive, is that other tablet manufacturers are now offering even higher resolutions. The Amazon Kindle Fire HDX 8.9 and Google’s Nexus 10 both offer 2,560 x 1,600 displays, though the former is a smaller screen and the latter is a larger one.
I’ve had some hands-on time with the 8.9-inch HDX (and reviewed the HDX 7-inch, which has more pixels per inch than the iPad Air), and I honestly cannot tell the difference between those screens and the iPad Air’s retina display. The all look fantastic.
The Look of iOS
Apple’s new mobile operating system, iOS 7, looks great on the iPad Air. The large screen offers plenty of room for sweeping up from just outside the screen to access the Control Center, where you can quickly adjust brightness, audio volume, the clock, the camera, airplane mode and more, and sweeping down to see you daily calendar and notifications. You can also place your finger on the home screen, in between your apps, pull down and access Spotlight search. It’s one of my favorite iOS 7 features.
If you’re running multiple apps, as I always am, you can use for fingers to quickly gesture through them (which kind of reminds me of how on Windows 8.1 RT you pull running apps into focus from just outside the screen). A double press of the home button shows you which apps you're running in a sort of carousel view. A flick of the finger is all it takes to dismiss one.
The base of the screen starts with four fixed apps: iMessage, Mail, Safari and Music. It can hold up to five apps and you can choose any five you like.
Even though iOS 7 is the most radical redesign since iOS’s inception in 2007, the platform is still very, very recognizable. If you like Apple’s ecosystem, you will not be disappointed. Personally, iOS remains my favorite mobile platform. I think it’s smart, super-navigable and rarely, if ever, makes you think you’re using a computer. I cannot say the same thing about the confused Windows 8.1 RT (on the Surface 2) or even Amazon’s Fire OS Android overlay, which, while doing an excellent job of hiding Android’s geekier parts still, on occasion, has to lead you to the nerdiness underneath.
Super Fun Time
If you are looking for a tablet that will entertain you 24/7, the iPad Air fits the bill. There are roughly a half a million iPad Apps available and while you sometimes can’t find the coolest games on competing platforms, you will always find them in the App Store. I have my personal favorites; Asphalt 8, Batman: Arkham Origins, Limbo, and Infinity Blade III. All but one are available on Android, but the latter’s absence is notable. Fears of content piracy, which may or may not still be well-founded have kept developers like Chair Entertainment, which makes IBIII, off Google’s platform.
Still, for my tests, I played Infinity Blade III because it's a rare 64-bit mobile game built from the ground up to take advantage of the A7. On the iPad Air, it loads super fast (as compared to previous iPads), and everything is rendered in exquisite detail. For platform comparison, I also played a game I can find on Android: Asphalt 8. This first-person racer offers intense driving action, beautifully rendered race cars and incredible environments. I raced through Nevada, Iceland, London and Tokyo on both the iPad Air and Amazon’s Kindle Fire HDX 7. The game worked perfectly on both tablets, though I certainly prefer iPad Air’s larger screen.
I also played both while wearing headphones and using the built-in speakers. Audio quality on the HDX 7 was a bit louder than through the iPad Air’s speakers, but otherwise the differences weren’t all that noticeable.
Music and Movies
As I mentioned, Music is one of the default home items on the iPad Air, which makes sense since Apple sort of made its mobile bones in music. Similarly, Amazon’s content-consumption-friendly Kindle Fire HDX, naturally, features books as one of its main menu items (Music is right after that). Apple doesn’t even include iBooks on the iPad — you need to download the app for free.
Most of Apple’s content-consumption apps, like music, feature iOS 7’s skeumorphic-free design. In fact, music is possibly a bit too austere and white for my tastes. iBooks, oddly, still looks like a real book shelf. Even Amazon has moved away from a realistic-looking shelf.
Reading in either device is a pleasure, though I have to say I especially enjoyed consuming comic books via the comiXology app on the iPad Air. The artwork on DC’s Earth One Superman graphic novel looked amazing, and convinced me that I could enjoy reading digital comic books and that they look best on a larger screen.
Newsstand is where you read newspaper and magazines on the iPad. This got an upgrade in iOS 7 and it looks quite sharp. While I didn’t get animated page turns on the copy of Men’s Journal I downloaded, the pages and images looked stunning.
For reading books, I prefer a small, dedicated reading device like Amazon’s Kindle Paperwhite. That’s said, the iPad Air is a very able backlit reading device. Apple even added a neat trick that lets you rest your finger on the edge of the page and turn pages with another finger.
Both Amazon and Apple have very rich movie libraries (for rental and purchase). Playback on either device looks fantastic. Overall, however, Amazon may have a bit of an edge here. If you pay $75 a year you gain access to Amazon’s expansive library of streaming content. To be fair, Netflix members need only download the app on their iPad Air to start enjoying streaming content.
The Amazon Kindle Fire HDX also includes X-Ray, an IMDb-powered database of information about the actors and trivia in many of the movies. There are similar X-Rays tools for books and music. The iPad has no such integrated, content-consumption-centric tools.
Speaking of music, Apple now offers iTunes Radio, free streaming music in a variety of genres. You can also build your own stations. It’s a decent alternative to Pandora and Spotify. Amazon does not have a similar offering, though its X-Ray for music adds lyrics that play back alongside supported tunes.
Live It
At $499 for a 16 GB, Wi-Fi-only model, Apple is unapologetically charging at least $100 more than most comparable tablets. The Kindle Fire HDX 8.9, for example, costs $379 for a 16GB Wi-Fi model. In fairness to Apple, Amazon does force the user to accept sleep-state advertising and offers (or pay $394).
With or without the ads, Amazon’s tablets, which offer equal levels of power, performance, and utility are simply cheaper. Apple doesn’t really address the price issue, but it is finally offering more value — up front — for those who buy its newest technology.
Anyone who buys the iPad Air can download both the iWork productivity suite and the iLife creativity suite for free. This is not like typical free software where you get a couple of features in the trial version ad have to pay $30 or more for full functionality. These are very rich apps, of varying utility, that I’m certain you’ll want to download.
iWork is a good, but not comparable, substitute for Microsoft Office. The Keynote presentation app is one of the better tools in the suite. Even without a physical keyboard or mouse, it’s remarkably easy to pull together a colorful, animated and, dare I say it, entertaining presentation.
Pages is a solid word processor, loaded with templates and even more powerful tools like tracking. It’s nowhere near as rich as, say, Microsoft Word, but it’s certainly more powerful than the document tool in Google Apps. I’m not a fan of the Numbers spreadsheet app — as soon as I used it I wanted to run back to my PC and the comfort of Microsoft Excel.
In iLife, there’s the updated iMovie. Like most of Apple’s other new apps, this version drops the cheesy skeumorphism in favor of a multi-pane workspace that makes capturing and adding HD video a snap. What’s more remarkable is how smoothly the iPad Air (and its A7 chip) handles the task. I shot and edited 1080p video, including trimming, reorganizing and even adjusting video speed, with nary a hiccup.
Similarly, iPhoto is a good photo-editing tool, with a wealth of filters and fun tools for creating slideshows, web journals and hardcover photobooks that can actually be printed and delivered to you (for a fee).
If you're a musician or musically inclined, Garageband is a revelation. It can recreate a staggering number of musical sounds and styles and lets you record, play back, sample and edit. Even if you're not a musician, it's fun to noodle around with the virtual guitar, keyboard and drums. I walked away wishing I actually had some musical talent.
Picture This
Though many of Apple’s tools focus on photos and videos, Apple has not exactly advanced the state of the art in digital imagers. The iPad Air features Apple’s previous generation 5MP iSight camera. This means no panorama photo or slo-mo video options. The FaceTime camera, though, appears to have gotten the same update applied to the iPhone 5C: It has much better low-light performance. In FaceTime calls with my wife, she could clearly see my face, even under dim lighting.
Communication and Collaboration
Apple now provides a lot of incentive for owing multiple iOS and even OS X devices. As I was testing the iPad Air, I was also looking at the new MacBook Pro 15-inch and setting up my own new iPhone 5S. With one Apple account I’m able to receive iMessages on all three devices. These messages are often sent to my phone number via SMS, but as long as they’re received on an iOS device, iMessage sends them to all devices. Similarly, I can communicate with any of my contacts through the iMessage platform on all of these devices.
Apple, Amazon, Microsoft and Google all offer excellent cloud-based services. Apple iCloud is great for backing up the iPad Air, storing and sharing work files and making sure all my photos and videos end up safely stored in the cloud — and away from fallible and losable local hardware. Unfortunately,
Apple’s base (free) iCloud offering of 5GB is kind of skimpy.
Apple’s base (free) iCloud offering of 5GB is kind of skimpy. Microsoft offers 200GB of free storage if you buy a Surface 2 or Surface Pro 2. Amazon offers unlimited storage for any content you buy from them, but only 5GB of free space for your files.
I tested a 128GB iPad Air ($799 for Wi-Fi only) and for most people I recommend at least the 32GB model ($599 for Wi-Fi only) . How are you supposed to back that up to a 5GB space, especially if you won two or more iOS devices?
Browsing and Email
Email setup and usage is just as easy as ever on the iPad Air. iOS 7 has made the act of deleting mail incredibly quick. I like that.
Safari got a significant makeover in iOS 7, but it's not consistent across mobile devices. For now, the iPad version lacks my favorite feature: the ability to view web pages in a card view and dismiss open tabs by flicking them away. It's still a very good browser and the Shared Links from those you follow on Twitter (under Bookmarks) is especially useful.
Battery Life and Connectivity
Apple promised 10 hours of battery life on the iPad Air. My model, which came with Verizon 4G LTE, gave me more than a full day of usage that included movies, music, web browsing, email, action game-playing, video editing, photo editing, and more. At the end of the day, I still had roughly 50% power.
LTE connectivity was strong and the iPad Air is available in virtually every other band you can think of and will be available on Verizon, T-Mobile, AT&T, and Sprint in the U.S.
Wi-Fi technology also got an upgrade. The iPad Air is using MIMO (Multiple Input Multiple Output) antennas, a multi-antenna Wi-Fi technology that’s actually more than a few years old, but can improve connectivity and throughput. In my tests, I did notice that, over Wi-Fi, HD movies downloaded significantly faster than they did on, for instance, an iPad 2 or even the more recent iPad Mini (first generation).
Why I Love It
Is the Apple iPad Air a major innovation in tablets? No. Heck, it doesn’t even have the cool, or oddball, Mayday 24/7 video-chat customer service found in the new Amazon Kindle Fire HDX devices. Time will tell if that’s a good thing or a bad thing. For me, though,
the question is not which tablet offers the most whiz-bang features
the question is not which tablet offers the most whiz-bang features. It’s which one serves as the ultimate consumer device.
Yes, I know, tablets live and survive in the workplace. iPads started showing up in my meetings almost as soon as they were introduced more than three years ago. The iPad Air is up for the corporate challenge, and is, obviously, lighter than any Ultrabook (so it's easy to carry around the office). That said, it’s also an excellent content-consumption, entertainment and connectivity device. So, too, is the Amazon Kindle Fire HDX. I like that tablet quite a bit, though I still think the iPad Air has the design edge over it and all other tablets on the market.
Yes, it’s true, the iPad Air is essentially a larger iPad Mini Retina. For some, that’s a disappointment. For me, the new iPad Air is close to everything a consumer tablet should be: Light, fast, fun, beautiful and a little bit like the future.
The Lowdown
What's Good
- Excellent design
- Huge app library
- Sparking performance
- Free iWork and iLife
What's Bad
- More expensive than competitors
- No Touch ID fingerprint sensor
Bottom Line
Apple made tablets cool and still leads the pack when it comes to design, performance and overall desirability with the iPad Air.
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