The iPad Air Review
by Anand Lal Shimpi on October 29, 2013 9:00 PM ESTBattery Life
With the iPad Air Apple moved to a 32.4Wh battery, a significant decrease from the 42.5Wh unit in the 3rd and 4th generation iPads. The smaller battery doesn’t come with a change to Apple’s claim of 10 hours of battery life, which implies a reduction in overall platform power. I confirmed a substantial reduction in platform power in my crude measurements earlier in the article. Although it’s possible for the iPad Air to draw substantially more power than the iPad 4, our earlier power data seems to imply that it’s unlikely given the same exact workload. Our battery life tests agree.
We'll start with our 2013 smartphone/tablet web browsing battery life test. As always all displays are calibrated to 200 nits. The workload itself is hidden from OEMs to avoid any intentional gaming, but I've described it at a high level here.
Our web browsing workload came in at exactly 10 hours of continuous usage - an improvement compared to the iPad 4. Battery life on LTE was good as well, consistently delivering just under 10 hours of usage. The fact that both LTE and WiFi tests deliver similar results tells me that we may be bottlenecked by some other component in the system (perhaps display?).
I've been running the same video playback test for a while now, although we're quickly approaching a point where I'll need to move to a higher bitrate 1080p test. Here I'm playing a 4Mbps H.264 High Profile 720p rip I made of the Harry Potter 8 Blu-ray. The full movie plays through and is looped until the battery dies. Once again, the displays are calibrated to 200 nits:
Video playback battery life also improves slightly compared to the iPad 4. Apple’s battery life claims aren’t usually based around video playback, so exceeding their 10 hour suggestion here shouldn’t come as a shock. Apple’s video decode power has always been extremely low.
Our final cross-platform battery life test is based on Kishonti's Egypt HD test. Here we have a loop of the Egypt HD benchmark, capped to 30 fps, running on all of the devices with their screens calibrated to 200 nits.
Our 3D battery life rundown test shows a substantial improvement in battery life over the iPad 4. IMG’s PowerVR G6430, running a moderate workload, can do so more efficiently than any of the previous generation GPUs in Apple’s SoCs. Much like the A7’s CPU cores however, there’s a wider dynamic range of power consumption with the G6430. Running at max performance I would expect to see greater GPU power consumption. The question then becomes what’s more likely? Since the majority of iOS games don’t target the A7 (and instead shoot for lower end hardware), I would expect you to see better battery life even while gaming on the iPad Air vs the iPad 3/4.
Charge Time
The iPad Air comes with the same 12W USB charger and Lightning cable that we first saw with the iPad 4. Having to only charge a 32.5W battery means that charge times are lower compared to the iPad 3 and 4:
A full charge takes a little over 4 hours to complete. The adapter delivers as much as 12W to the iPad, drawing a maximum of 13.5W at the wall. I still think the sweet spot is somewhere closer to 2.5 hours but that’s another balancing game that must be played between charge time and maintaining battery health. It’s still so much better than the ~6 hours of charge time for the iPad 3 and 5.69 hours for the iPad 4.
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StigtriX - Tuesday, November 12, 2013 - link
Actually, the new Kindle 8.9 has at least as good a display as the iPad Air, if not better:"Amazon’s always touted the displays on its tablets, and the screen it’s using on the HDX 8.9 is a doozy. At a ridiculous 2560 x 1600-pixel resolution and 339ppi, it’s either higher-resolution or more pixel-dense than virtually any other tablet on the market. It also has great viewing angles, excellent color reproduction, and high brightness levels. It’s really just a great screen, whether you’re gaming, watching video, or reading text — it’s right up there with, if not better than, the Retina display on the iPad Air."
- The Verge
"While the speakers feel like something of an afterthought, Amazon is clearly waging a battle on the display front. The company keeps upping its game, and indeed, the screen here dazzles, with 2,560 x 1,600 resolution and a pixel density of 339 pixels per inch. That's a big jump up from the HD 8.9's 1,920 x 1,200 display, not to mention the new HDX 7-inch tablet, which has a 1,920 x 1,200 screen. It's even enough to make the iPad Air's 2,048 x 1,536 resolution (264 ppi) seem modest. It's simply a gorgeous thing to behold, making movie watching a downright pleasure. Heck, it even managed to make Sharknado look pretty good, which is no small feat. All in all, images are sharp, the level of detail is impressive and the colors are vibrant."
- Engadget
But, I do agree with you that too many let their personal opinions colour their reading of reviews. I prefer Android and PC, but I have an iPad and have tried several Macs. Even though I prefer other units, there is no point in denying the excellent quality and style Apple products come with. They, like Nintendo, only release products "when they are done" - no rushing.
MassiveTurboLag - Tuesday, October 29, 2013 - link
Really? You clearly never looked over one of their Android phone reviews. They are stupidly detailed.dsumanik - Wednesday, October 30, 2013 - link
Read this review with a grain of salt. Anand lai shimpi is heavenly vested in apple stock, doing everything he can to boost the dismal situation.Thinner bezels and light weight do not hide the fact that functionally, this iPad is the same as the previous 2 generations.
Sent from my ipad3, which will be upgraded when apple actually updates the product line.
Here's some basic ideas mr cook:
Wireless charging
Fingerprint scanner
Thunderbolt sync or usb3
Haptic feedback
NFC
Solon - Wednesday, October 30, 2013 - link
Wireless charging - deeply inefficient charging; maybe 50% of energy is actually picked up by the deviceFingerprint scanner - probably getting one next gen
Thunderbolt sync or USB3 - maybe; and it is possible the hardware already can do this; but Thunderbolt (a PCI-E spec) will never happen
Haptic feedback - dead concept; no one actually wants this; RIM failed at haptic
NFS - in a tablet? and is NFC actually used? No, it isn't.
dishayu - Wednesday, October 30, 2013 - link
Agree with your wireless charging argument, but that limits you from charging your iDevice if you don't have your own cable. All android phones use microusb, so it's not hard to find one at all (speaking of the real world here). Apple chose not to afford themselves that luxury.Fingerprint scanner : Although I think it's a gimmick and useless for the masses (almost everyone except from corporate users), they could have done it now, since they already have it in 5s. Why wait till next gen?
Haptic feedback : You probably would have said the same about touchscreens around 2005. I tried staying away from smartphones altogether until the Xperia Pro because there were no decent phone with a proper keyboard. After that I finally gave in an bought the HTC One and I still really miss my physical buttons. Haptic feedback could cure that.
NFC : I use it as much as I use Bluetooth (which is to say not a whole lot but a very handy feature still and I'd like to have it)
ws3 - Tuesday, October 29, 2013 - link
Yeah. Anyone who wanted to be truly objective would stopping running all of those tests that the iPad Air does so well in. If you want to be truly balanced, you have to run a bunch of tests that the iPad sucks at too, like maybe an .apk loading test or a malware running test.zeagus - Wednesday, October 30, 2013 - link
+lulzKoolAidMan1 - Wednesday, October 30, 2013 - link
Perfectpdjblum - Thursday, October 31, 2013 - link
Anand himself has stated where his loyalties lie: He said during a podcast that his advertisers were the motivating force behind the change in the look of the website. Obviously he is a slave to his advertisers who obviously want as much crApple content on the site as possible; of course they want it be overwhelmingly positive. This crApple model generates tons of hits for theverge and it does the same for anandtech.markthema3 - Monday, November 4, 2013 - link
He changed the layout of the site to better place the advertisments on the page. That's not catering to an individual company. The conclusion that he is therefore a slave to the advertisers is unfounded.