Thinner, lighter, faster, yet the same price BY DAVID PRICE
Pros: Slimline design; A7 processor
Cons: iPad 2 £70 cheaper
Company: Apple, apple.com/uk
Price: Wi-Fi, £399 (16GB), £479 (32GB), £559 (64GB), £639 (128GB); Wi-Fi and Cellular, £499 (16GB), £579 (32GB), £659 (64GB), £739 (128GB)
It’s that time of year when Apple updates its iPad range, and this time around the company seems to have followed the mantra that thinner is better. Indeed, the Air seems almost ethereally light when you pick it up. However, despite its low weight, it feels solid enough. The chassis has the same construction style as the iPad mini, constructed with a thinner bezel along the left and right sides when held in vertical, or portrait, mode.
We were slightly concerned about accidentally brushing our fingertips against the screen while holding the Air by the edge, but brief experiments with iBooks proved reassuring: it appeared to intelligently ignore touchscreen input near the edges.
If you’ve got reasonably big hands, you should be able to grip Apple’s tablet with one hand – it’s only 170mm wide. This highlights just how light the Air is, helped by the thickness: 7.5mm, compared with the iPad 4’s 9.3mm. Apple has also reduced the size of the battery from 42.5Wh to 32.4Wh – to minimise the weight and physical size of the Air. Yet it claims verall battery life is roughly the same, at its favoured figure of 10 hours of web browsing or video.
How does Apple maintain battery life while using a smaller battery? The new Apple-designed A7 processor improves efficiency
– that’s the same chip found in the iPhone 5s, and (as in that device) is accompanied by the M7 motion processor. The A7’s clock speed isn’t quoted, but Apple says the Air is around twice as quick
– both in terms of overall processing speed and in graphical tasks – as the iPad 4.
What about the Air’s screen quality? The short answer is that it’s the same as ever, which is to say, exceptional. The Retina-class display looks the same as on previous Retina models – the iPad 3 and 4. Once again, we’re looking at 2048x1536 pixels, and a pixel density of 264ppi (pixels per inch).
In theory that’s as sharp as you’d ever want a screen to be, since at what Apple considers to be normal viewing distance, the average human eye won’t be able to pick out individual pixels – a higher pixel density wouldn’t be noticeable. It’s worth noting, though, that the iPad 2 and first-generation iPad mini don’t have Retina displays and the screen quality on those devices is still impressive, so don’t expect a massive difference.
Wi-Fi performance looks to have improved, now that the iPad Air has a dual-antennas setup to allow multiple in/multiple out connectivity. However, it’s still using the older 802.11n standard rather than the latest (and faster) 11ac, which has been rolled out to the MacBook Air, iMac, MacBook Pro with Retina display and Mac Pro.
More LTE networks are supported, and we were told by Apple that the iPad Air supports more LTE bands than any other tablet; this is specified to cover at least EE and Vodafone’s 4G services in the UK at the moment.
As far as the cameras are concerned, the Air has a 5Mp snapper on the rear that’s capable of shooting Full HD 1080p video. The front-facing camera can take 1.2Mp photos, shoot 720p movies and be used to make FaceTime and Skype calls.
In other words, nothing has changed. Graphics is another area that benefits from the Apple A7 upgrade. Although we haven’t yet run any benchmark tests, during testing we found that the interface looks and feels smooth, whether twisting around 3D renders or playing the latest and most graphically demanding games, such as Infinity Blade 3.
Macworld’s buying advice The first thing that grabs your attention about the iPad Air is just how thin it is. It also feels light to hold, but reassuringly well built, and the Retina display looks fantastic. The A7 processor means its Apple’s most powerful iPad yet. The iPad 2 is still available for £70 less. The iPad Air goes on sale on 1 November.
