Wired.co.uk's
in-depth review of the new iPad Air shows the device is Apple's best tablet to
date.
Thinner,
lighter, less bulky, faster, more refined. These are all words reviewers are
typically able to apply to new Apple products when comparing them to a
predecessor. Few times has this felt more appropriate than with the iPad Air versus
the iPad 4; Apple's 10-inch tablet has reached a new milestone with the Air.
It's on
sale now from £399 (16GB, Wi-Fi-only).
Design
When
Apple released the iPad mini, it did so hand-in-hand with the iPad 4. Such was
the dramatic difference in size, weight and bulk, the iPad mini almost felt it
had overshadowed Apple's own flagship model. The mini is a tremendous product,
but alongside the iPad 4 it was also a more portable one. Its bigger brother
was a slab-like hunk of a product; it was a powerful class-leader, but heavy,
and an obvious choice to leave out of a bag if shoulders began to complain.
It is
this issue that Apple has addressed more obviously than any other with the iPad
Air. Upon first being held, it's obvious you are using a markedly different
product. It's almost 30 percent lighter than the 4, and 20 percent thinner. The
9.7-inch screen remains, but the bezel around the edges has been reduced. The
reduction in bulk is profound. You can comfortably hold this device in one
hand, which was not easily the case with the previous model.
Screen
quality has improved slightly, too. The pixel count is still 2,048x1,536, but
the colours are more accurate. Side-by-side with an iPad 4, whites on the Air
were "whiter" than the past model, which in comparison had a very
slight yellow/green tint. As a proofing tool for photographers, this is a point
worth keeping in mind.
The
Retina brand lives on with the iPad Air thanks to the screen's resolution
staying the same. Many phones, including the iPhone 5s and to a greater extent
the HTC One and Samsung Galaxy S4 have far higher pixels-per-inch counts, but
the size of the iPad's screen means that it's often being used further away
from the face. The result is a screen that appears just as sharp, anecdotally
at least.
It's a
good size to type on, too. Although not full-size compared to a laptop, the
screen is easy to type at speed on. We have written this entire review
exclusively on the device to put this claim to the test and although we are
making slightly more errors, most of them are down to iOS choosing the wrong
autocorrect for certain keystrokes (most commonly choosing to opt for
"in" when we intended in writing "on" -- goodness knows
why). Writing every day on the Air is not preferable over a laptop, but for
single days of writing out in the field (or in a field) it's extremely
responsive and enjoyable. Plus Apple's Pages word processor, which by no means
full-featured for super-pro users, is a capable app with fantastic usability,
and it's free with the iPad Air by default along with Numbers (basically Excel)
and Keynote (basically PowerPoint, only far more fun and less time-consuming).
In short,
it's by far one of the best screens on the market in a tablet, and in our
testing an improvement over the predecessor to boot in terms of colour
accuracy.
Features and performance
To the
naked eye very few, if any, features have been added to the outside of the
iPad. The rear camera -- which we will test later in this review -- has the
same five megapixels and there is no flash; the front-facing camera also
remains externally identical.
Apple has
also not included the Touch ID fingerprint sensor it introduced with much
fanfare on the iPhone 5s. This came as something of a surprise, and having used
the 5s for some time now it's a shame this feature hasn't made it across. We
would suspect this is to do with the fact that most tablets live at home and so
security outdoors is less of a pressing concern, so it was an area Apple could
leave out in order to save costs. Once the company starts using Touch ID more
deeply for purchases, or with third-party apps in future, this is a hardware
feature we may see introduced to support that.
Processor
Internally
Apple has used the 64-bit A7 processor, which was introduced with the iPhone
5s. Except there's a bonus: it's ever so slightly faster. The version in the
iPad Air runs at 1.4Ghz, according to our benchmarking with GeekBench 3; in the
iPhone 5s it runs at 1.3Ghz. This is likely to compensate for the fact that the
resolution of the iPad's screen is getting on for double that of the iPhone, so
some extra power was needed.
And power
it has, even versus the iPad 4's A6X processor. Even though both are 1.4GHz
chips, the A7 is almost twice as fast at the previous model. Often the
differences this sort of improvement makes on day one is negligible for all but
the most demanding user, as apps and developers need time to take advantage of
the speed improvements available to them. On the iPad Air you can see the
difference immediately.
A good
example is not Infinity Blade 3, which many people use as performance
demonstrations. It's actually Asphalt 8, the free-to-play 3D racing
game. Played side-by-side against an iPad 4 we were genuinely surprised to see
how much better it ran on the new iPad. Graphics were by and large the same to
our eye, but the frame rate (smoothness) was dramatically better on the Air by
what looked like several frames per second. Whether or not this is down to poor
coding by the team that developed Asphalt (the iPad 4 is hardly
under-powered), there was no argument that the iPad Air ran this high-end game
better.
Certainly,
though, playing Infinity Blade 3 is a great way to see the difference in
graphical capabilities of the new model. Textures are richer, lighting is more
realistic and subtle effects that are typically confined to consoles and PC
gaming are now emerging in the tablet world with this title. It's a good sign,
if nothing else, that the power of the iPad Air for gaming is strong. It's a
welcome fact as more and more amazing games are being released for iOS.
Recently, aside from the two games mentioned, high-end titles from the Call
of Duty and Batman "Arkham" franchise have landed on the
App Store. The store continues to be strong in general, although Android has
done a fantastic job at closing that gap. Many top-tier releases are available
on Android now, and look incredible on flagship devices such as Google's Nexus
7, Nexus 5 or Samsung's Galaxy line. But iOS still seems to be a developer's
first choice, and as such continues to be the recommended ecosystem to be a
part of if high-end gaming is an absolute necessity.
In terms
of raw numbers the iPad Air's processor scored well compared to its
predecessor. GeekBench 3 runs a series of demanding tasks through the device's
processor to see how quickly it can complete them. A higher number means a more
powerful processor. The results for the Air, using both of its CPU cores, was
2,693 (and 1,482 using a single core). For the iPad 4, that number was 1,427
for both cores (and 783 with one core only). This means that just one of the
iPad Air's processing cores is faster than the combined power of the iPad 4 -
and the Air has two of them working in tandem. In our test that's an 89 percent
performance increase between the two iPads.
Battery life
The iPad
has always had some of the best battery life in the tablet world and the iPad
Air continues this. Apple rates the Air as having ten hours of life for
continued usage under general conditions. We can certainly believe this, and
perhaps claim Apple's number is on the modest side. For example, we took the
Air off charge at 100 percent at about 2pm one afternoon and used it most of
that evening for music and podcasts, installing apps, browsing the web and
doing some email. The following day we did not put it on charge, but still used
it for several hours here and there throughout the day and evening, finally
falling asleep to a TV programme downloaded from iTunes. The following morning
the battery still had 20 percent charge left.
Although
by no means a scientific test, this is a solid result. It's in line with what
we expect, based on Apple's claims, and is no worse than the iPad 4 despite one
major, very surprising fact: the battery is much smaller than the iPad 4's. You
can't access it without ripping open the device, but the iPad Air has a
32-watt-hour battery; the iPad 4 had a much higher 42-watt-hour battery.
The
difference in the battery capacity answers two questions. Firstly, it shows how
Apple was able to get the size of the device down by such a significant volume:
the battery, which takes up about 80 percent of the internal volume of an iPad,
is far smaller. But the second question it answers is why the 1.4GHz A7 is so
much better than the 1.4Ghz A6X: it's far, far more efficient, both in terms of
performance and power efficiency. The A7 is an incredibly capable processor.
That
processor has some help though. For starters, motion sensing duties
(accelerometer, gyroscopes etc) are handled by the dedicated M7
"coprocessor". This discrete chip handles a certain set of tasks more
efficiently than a CPU, in a similar way to how a dedicated graphics card in a
PC handles 3D graphics better than a regular processor, and that helps save
energy. We suspect iOS 7 has a hand in this too, as there are certain quirks
noticeable when using the device in low light that affect battery life. In
particular, the screen will dynamically lower it's backlight during dark scenes
of a movie, say, and increase it when brighter scenes appear. This helps
conserve power, but also aids in keeping black levels deep. Some regular
television sets do the same thing to prevent dark, moody parts of a film being
overshadowed (literally) by a backlight blazing underneath a soft nighttime
image.
Camera performance
Apple
hasn't changed the external properties of the iPad's rear-facing five-megapixel
camera; there is no flash and the lens hasn't been upgraded. But image quality
has nonetheless seen a modest improvement, specifically in terms of detail and
colour depth.
Take a
look at the following photographs. One was taken on the iPad 4; one was
captured on the iPad Air. Both photographs were taken with the aperture set at
f2.4, shutter speed at 1/120th of a second and light sensitivity fixed at ISO
64. You can see that one image is notably more detailed, with slightly richer
blue and red visible on the coloured objects in the picture.
Conclusion
We have no hesitation in saying that this the best 10-inch iPad Apple has ever made. It feels like a milestone: the first iPad was a game-changer, but it was bulky and slow. The iPad 2 refined the design but didn't radically alter our perception of what an iPad could be. The iPad 3 and 4 refined the internal performance to the point that the iPad could replace a laptop for many uses, but it got fatter and bulkier in the process. The iPad Air, then, feels like the peak of all of that development. It's blazingly fast, but beautiful; it's frequently as capable as a laptop, but it's compact, lightweight and bakes in stunning battery life.Advocates for open platforms and flexibility will easily criticise Apple's consistent ring-fencing of apps with its App Store, and it's easy to complain that the camera isn't as good as on the iPhone 5s, that it doesn't have fingerprint tech, that it's still expensive compared to some of the competition.
But here's what matters: it's still insane value for money when you consider the performance and capability of the computational horsepower hiding behind the higher-than-HD screen, and when you factor in the vast software options available in the App Store store that only becomes more important.
It's a stunning tablet and a worthwhile upgrade
even from the iPad 4 if weight or performance is remotely an issue.
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