The Apple iPad Air 2 Review
by Joshua Ho on November 7, 2014 9:30 AM EST- Posted in
- Tablets
- Apple
- Mobile
- iOS
- ipad Air 2
Final Words
Overall, there’s a lot to go over on the iPad Air 2. While the name suggests that it’s an iterative update in nature, in practice these updates add a lot of compelling hardware to the high-end iPad line. One of the first areas worth looking at here is the design. While not a radical shift from the iPad Air, the differences in design and the even thinner build helps to set the iPad Air 2 apart.
The next item of note is the A8X, which represents a return to dedicated SoCs for the iPad line. This is presumably done to preserve performance parity at native resolution for the iPhone and iPad line, and the extra CPU core is intriguing as it represents a shift away from the two CPU core system that Apple has stuck with for a while. In practice, this makes the iPad Air 2 one of the fastest ARM-based tablets on the market. Only NVIDIA’s Tegra K1 is able to compete with its GPU performance, and at the cost of greater heat and power consumption.
The next major point of note is the display. While not much has changed to the display itself, the surrounding components have seen a few upgrades that have been sorely needed for the past few years. The display is now laminated to the cover lens, which dramatically improves interactions with the device as the display feels much closer to the glass than before. The iPad Air 2 also has a custom anti-reflective coating on the display is really unlike anything else I’ve seen before as the frequencies reflected make the glass appear to be producing purple reflections. Despite keeping the tablet at 200 nits, I found that it was still fully possible to read the display outdoors during the day. There also seems to be some level of improved calibration, although the panel is mostly the same when judged by the appearance of the gamut and also the brightness/contrast numbers. At any rate, this display is more than capable of doing proper photo editing as the device is more than accurate enough for serious work.
Despite these upgrades and the smaller battery, in practice it seems that Apple has made good on their promise of generally unchanged battery life from the iPad Air. While there are phones and phablets out there with better battery life, I suspect that most will be more than happy with the battery life of the iPad Air 2. If one found battery life to be sufficient on a previous iPad, battery life on the iPad Air 2 should just be more of the same rather than any surprises. Apple also deserves some level of recognition for the incredible efficiency and sustained performance during this test as even the Tegra K1 can't quite do both.
There’s also the question of software, which continues to be class-leading on the iPad. While tablet applications that haven’t been properly scaled on the iPhone line are likely to look horrible due to the scaling factor used, this kind of experience is unlikely to occur due to the strength of the ecosystem at this point. While the same can and does happen with Android apps, it isn’t nearly as obvious because most of the scaling done is far more seamless and simply leaves a great deal of white space in the application that can’t necessarily be used.
As a result of all this work, it seems pretty obvious that the iPad Air 2 continues to deliver some of the best tablet software on the market. For the most part, every application available seems to effectively deliver a tablet-specific experience that helps to set the iPad lineup apart from other tablets. Unfortunately, it seems that due to a lack of competition there isn’t much in the way of attempts to dramatically improve the software experience, and as a result it’s a bit difficult for me to justify carrying a tablet around all the time as its size means I can't just put it in a pocket unlike a six-inch phablet.
However, there are still some notable new features, namely TouchID, which works incredibly well and leverages Apple’s tightly-meshed ecosystem to deliver a better experience than just about anything else on the market. Unfortunately, I’m not necessarily sold on TouchID on a tablet as an ergonomic ideal as the sheer width of the device makes it a bit harder than usual to properly place my finger for scanning. The functionality makes up for it though and TouchID remains one of the real killer features of Apple devices.
Finally, the camera is a nice step up from the iPad Air. While it may seem like an incremental step, a meaningful camera change to the iPad Air 2 is relatively surprising given that it hasn’t significantly changed since the iPad 3. It’s surprisingly competent in daytime, although at night a great deal more noise creeps in than one might expect from an iPhone 6 or similar device which has a larger sensor.
Overall, the iPad Air 2 is likely to be one of the only tablets worth buying on the market today. While iOS isn’t perfect, it’s definitely delivering the best tablet experience as its app support is second to none. While other OEMs may have more features, iOS manages to hold on by virtue of its superior polish and integration with Apple hardware. While I’d like to see Apple push the envelope further with the iPad line, it’s hard to argue this when other OEMs seem to be content with the status quo. While it’s likely that Apple will be able to hold on to its tablet lead, it remains to be seen if Google’s Nexus 9 can prove to be a viable competitor to the iPad Air 2.
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wewewe - Friday, November 7, 2014 - link
Just received mine. Previous was an Ipad 4th gens. One word ! Wow !! This is really magical. Its thin piece of glass with a processing power of a computer. I doubt there is a better tablet experience than this.Hyper72 - Friday, November 7, 2014 - link
I replaced an iPad 2 (512MB RAM) with Air 2, imagine my wow experience...Yes I also enjoy the thinness more than I thought I would. Only using it ~ two hours a day means it has more than plenty juice in any case.
Klug4Pres - Friday, November 7, 2014 - link
" While tablet applications that haven’t been properly scaled on the iPhone line are likely to look horrible due to the scaling factor used. While the same can and does happen with Android apps, it isn’t nearly as obvious because most of the scaling done is far more seamless and simply leaves a great deal of white space in the application that can’t necessarily be used."Please tidy that up by using actual sentences, because it is difficult to understand what you are saying here.
"As a result of all this work, it seems pretty obvious that the iPad Air 2 continues to deliver some of the best tablet software on the market. For the most part, every application available seems to effectively deliver a tablet-specific experience that helps to set the iPad lineup apart from other tablets. Unfortunately, it seems that due to a lack of competition there isn’t much in the way of attempts to dramatically improve the software experience, and as a result it’s a bit difficult for me to justify carrying a tablet around all the time as its size is relatively massive compared to even a 6 inch phablet"
You are saying the iPad Air 2 has some of the best tablet software, but tablets in general are not worth carrying around because they are too big relative to phablets. You attribute this to a lack of competition for the iPad, which means Apple has failed to make dramatic improvements to tablet software, improvements that would be necessary to make it worthwhile to carry tablets. OK. What about just having one for use at home? I think you are trying to say too many unrelated things in this paragraph.
"Overall, the iPad Air 2 is likely to be one of the only tablets worth buying on the market today."
I think this is rather too sweeping a statement for a review focused on one tablet, not very helpful when you omit to mention the other tablets worth buying, and anyway the statement isn't well supported in the article itself.
name99 - Friday, November 7, 2014 - link
"The glass is flat, which makes it seem noticeably different from the iPhone 6 line in that regard as it meets the chamfered edge of the back cover rather than making a seamless curve."iPad manufacturing has always lagged iPhone, I imagine because the volumes are lower.
I wouldn't read any "statement of direction" into this.
For example my iPad Retina came out at the same time as the iPhone 4/4S. The 4/4S was incredibly slick for its time, while the iPad Retina used a sort of lacquer or something to form the bezel around the screen, and there was noticeable unevenness in this lacquer. (Uneven meaning not visible, but you could feel it if you ran your fingers over the bezel.)
Of course the iPhone 5 ramped up slickness of manufacturing to a new level with the really tight tolerances, the feel of a single block of material; the 6 retained that while now converting straight edges to curves. I'd say the iPad Air 2, in terms of manufacturing slickness lives halfway between the 4/4S and the 5/5S. It doesn't QUITE reach that feeling of a single uninterrupted block of material, probably because it's striving for curves --- they might have been able to make it if they'd gone for a look exactly like the 5/5S.
The larger pattern, I think, is that the manufacturing/fit-and-finish is improving for iPads every year; they just suffer in comparison with the absolute perfection of the phone manufacturing.
sporkfan - Friday, November 7, 2014 - link
In agreement with you here. I'm really not a fan of how the TouchID is integrated into the iPad Air 2. I'm not sure if it's just lower tolerances than the iPhone 5s, or perhaps my unit is weird. But if my fingernails are long enough that they contact the ring at all (not that long, I swear!), they catch on the sharp outer edge. It feels icky. On the iPhone 5s this is totally not an issue.feeblegoat - Friday, November 7, 2014 - link
Hey, Josh, the data doesn't really match your conclusions about efficiency too much. I can see that performance degraded slightly more on the shield tablet, but only at the very end, before the last ten minutes. Up until then, performance stays at a steady 57fps (http://www.anandtech.com/show/8329/revisiting-shie... However, considering that this is an onscreen test, I'll assume the 5-7 fps advantage compensates for the lighter workload given by the lower resolution screen. So, assuming the workload is even, then we must consider the battery size difference. Ignoring the screen power usage for now, the Shield Tablet has a 19.75 Wh battery, the Air 2 a 27.62 Wh battery. Ratio the battery numbers with the battery life difference, and we end up looking at a 23% efficiency win for the Air 2, maybe up to 25-28% because of the larger screen. That's a little less than I would actually expect (but pretty close to expectations) considering the A8X is 20nm and the K1 28nm. So if anything, praise the efficiency of 20nm; because considering the gap in architecture, the efficiency is maybe worse than the K1's GPU.Sidenote: (Of course, that's a somewhat invalid argument, because the A8X has 20nm, K1 doesn't, and we can't just say that the K1 is more efficient - it's not. But still, the difference is due to 20nm. Kudos to Imagination, though, for making a GPU that has similar hypothetical efficiency to the juggernaut Nvidia. Can't wait for Maxwell SoC's though. One SMX on a phone?)
techconc - Friday, November 7, 2014 - link
"Ignoring the screen power usage for now"Huh? Once you do that, the rest of your question is meaningless. The screen is the largest power consuming component by a large margin. What's more, you're comparing a device with a 5" screen to a device with a 10" screen and attempting to guess at the efficiency of the chip components based the the respective battery sizes for these devices. That's an exercise in futility as you're not able to draw any meaningful conclusions based on the data you have.
lucam - Friday, November 7, 2014 - link
He doesn't get..so be it..dwade123 - Friday, November 7, 2014 - link
Lol Android devices are nowhere close to the iphone 6 let alone Air 2 in raw power and app library.Morawka - Friday, November 7, 2014 - link
Thanks for the review! finally ! haha