Apple iPad Air review: Thinner, lighter, faster, best - CNET

It’s been a long time since Apple delivered unto us a proper redesign of the iPad. The original, boxy, first-gen tablet lived for about 11 months, replaced in 2011 by a far slinkier version. The tapered design language survived, more or less unchanged, for a further 2.5 years -- a lifetime in the consumer electronics world. That period was punctuated by two updates, bringing faster chips and a better display, but it’s a full refresh we’ve all been waiting for, something to make the good ol' iPad look and feel truly new.

And here it is: the iPad Air. With this, the fifth generation of the iPad line, Apple has delivered a proper exterior redesign, crafting a substantially thinner and lighter tablet that finally eliminates the chunky bezels handed down since the first generation -- at least on the left and right. But, despite this significant exterior reduction, the iPad Air maintains the battery life of its predecessor and offers significantly better performance.

The Air is a tangible upgrade over the previous, fourth-generation iPad, no longer in production and so banished to the annals of history. The new iPad slots right in where its predecessor left off, priced at $499 for a lowly 16GB, $599 for 32GB, $699 for 64GB, and $799 for the maximum 128GB configuration. Cellular models -- with LTE and support for AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile, and Verizon in the United States -- cost an additional $130 beyond the above prices.

So, yes, it’s still very much the premium-priced choice, just as it’s always been. However, the market continues to shift, offering more and increasingly sophisticated alternatives at far cheaper prices, tablets like the Kindle Fire HDX and Google Nexus 10. That, plus strong competition from within Apple’s own ranks with the upcoming iPad Mini with Retina Display , means the iPad Air has to be better than ever. Thankfully, it is.

From left: The original iPad Mini, iPad Air, and fourth-generation iPad

Design

Last year’s iPad Mini introduced a fresh new design, taking cues from the latest iPod Touch to create a high-end tablet in an impossibly slender form factor. You could think of the iPad Air as a 20 percent scaled-up version of the Mini, as the two tablets feature near-identical styling details, the bigger one differing only by having more speaker holes on the bottom (80 vs. 56 on the Mini).

Impressively, though, the iPad Air isn’t 20 percent thicker than the Mini. In fact, at 7.5mm, it’s only 0.3mm deeper -- a massive 1.9mm thinner than the previous full-size iPad. Despite that, the tablet feels just as sturdy and rigid as before, not flexing a bit even under rather aggressive attempts at twisting.

It’s light, too, weighing just 1 pound in Wi-Fi-only guise. That’s 0.4 pound lighter than the previous generation and 0.3 pound heavier than the Mini. In other words, the iPad Air’s weight is actually closer to the Mini than to its fourth-gen predecessor. Indeed, pick up an Air and you’ll be reminded of the first time you held a Mini. It’s a "wow" moment.

We were big fans of the Mini last year, and we’re big fans of how the Air looks and feels now. The more rounded profile and chamfered edges give it a modern presence, while the new shape means the buttons and toggle switch situated around the upper-right corner are much easier to find than before.

Stereo speakers flank the Lightning connector on the bottom, placement that makes them far less likely to be obscured by your hand than the previous-gen iPad’s famously mediocre single output. They’re also far louder. However, we can’t help but wish Apple had positioned the left channel speaker on the top, to allow for proper stereo separation when held in portrait orientation while watching a movie. As it is, you’ll hear everything on the right.

Our only other design complaint is the missing Touch ID. This is Apple’s term for the fingerprint scanner built into the Home button on the iPhone 5S. It allows you to unlock your device without typing in a numeric code, also making iTunes purchases password-free and, therefore, infinitely less annoying.

Apple iPad Air	9.7 inches	4:3	2,048x1,536
Apple iPad 4	9.7 inches	4:3	2,048x1,536
Apple iPad Mini with Retina Display	7.9 inches	4:3	2,048x1,536
Microsoft Surface 2	10.6 inches	16:9	1,920x1,080
Amazon Kindle Fire HDX 8.9	8.9 inches	16:10	2,560x1,600
Asus Transformer Pad TF701	10.1 inches	16:10	2,560x1,600
Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1 2014 edition	10.1 inches	16:10	2,560x1,600

The goal of Touch ID is to make unlocking your phone so easy that everyone enables proper security. Most iPhone 5S users will agree that it succeeds in that regard, so much so that many will find themselves trying to unlock the iPad Air by holding a finger on the Home button and waiting impatiently. That, of course, doesn’t work. We appreciate that most iPads rarely leave the home, so security is less of a concern, but the convenience of not having to type in your iTunes password with every app download is more than enough to leave you longing for Touch ID here. It is a frustrating omission, reminiscent of Siri’s initial iPhone 4S exclusivity. Future iPad generations will surely make this right, perhaps beginning with an iPad Pro.

A7 power

When the fourth-generation iPad rolled out, it contained a custom version of the iPhone 5’s A6 processor called the A6X, offering quad-core performance versus the other's dual-core. For the new generation, Apple seemingly decided that two was enough, and so what we have here is the same dual-core, 64-bit A7 CPU found in the iPhone 5S. Disappointed? Don’t be. The iPad Air is ridiculously fast. Interestingly, it’s slightly faster even than the latest iPhone, which also has the same amount of RAM (1GB). Apple seemingly turned the wick up a bit here, with Geekbench indicating a processor speed of 1.39GHz, versus the 1.29GHz on the iPhone 5S.

We coached the iPad Air through some of our favorite benchmarks, along with a fourth-gen iPad running the most recent version of iOS (7.0.3). The results were quite compelling. In Sunspider 1.0.1, the old iPad took 661ms on average to complete the tests, whereas the new Air blasted through in 402ms average. That’s a greater than 50 percent improvement in Web rendering speed. (The iPhone 5S scored 417ms.) Geekbench 2 was similarly improved, 1,797 vs. 2,382 (higher is better here), and on Geekbench 3 the gap widened, 1,429 vs. 2,688. In fact, the iPad Air’s single-core score of 1,475 is higher than the dual-core score of the fourth-generation iPad.

In case you’re wondering, yes, the iPad Air does get quite warm when doing this sort of number crunching. The back of the tablet feels slightly cooler at full-tilt than its finger-toasting predecessor, but there’s still plenty of heat coming off the back, reinforcement that your slinky new tablet is, indeed, working hard.

Of course, nobody cares about numbers if the experience doesn’t back that up, and it does -- though perhaps not to that same degree. Apps load noticeably faster, particularly big games, where you’ll be able to jump into and out of levels far more quickly. Additionally, we noticed slightly higher frame rates in some games, though that was far less prevalent. We’d anticipate this becoming a far more common thing once more titles become optimized for the 64-bit A7 CPU.

Apple iPad Air	1 pound (Wi-Fi); 1.05 pounds (cellular)	6.6 inches	9.4 inches	0.29 inch
Apple iPad 4	1.44 pounds (Wi-Fi); 1.46 pounds (cellular)	7.3 inches	9.5 inches	0.37 inch
Apple iPad Mini with Retina Display	0.68 pound (Wi-Fi); 0.69 pound (cellular)	5.3 inches	7.9 inches	0.28 inch
Microsoft Surface 2	1.49 pounds	6.8 inches	10.8 inches	0.35 inch
Amazon Kindle Fire HDX 8.9	1.25 pounds	6.4 inches	9.4 inches	0.35 inch
Asus Transformer Pad TF701	1.29 pounds	7.1 inches	10.4 inches	0.35 inch
Samsung Galaxy 10.1 (2014)	1.19 pounds (Wi-Fi); 1.21 pounds (cellular)	6.7 inches	9.6 inches	0.31 inch

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