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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tipoo - Tuesday, October 29, 2013 - link
Agreed, a sub-name only makes sense if a second product is coming out. 12" iPad Platform based system in a MBA form factor, mayhaps?User.Name - Tuesday, October 29, 2013 - link
This device, like so many recent Apple product announcements, is both very exciting, and very disappointing at the same time.Dropping 1/3 of the weight from the iPad and making the device smaller while keeping the same display size is a huge improvement over the old hardware.
But there are so many things I have wanted Apple to address, that they have not.
1. The display is not bonded to the glass. My television from 2010 has this, so does my notebook, my phone, and Microsoft manage it with the Surface. This needs to change.
2. Even though moving to 64-bit requires more memory, they stuck with 1GB of RAM. I was already constantly running into a lack of RAM on my iPad 3.
3. It still starts at 16GB. 16GB on my iPad 2 was tight, and it got worse once apps started coming with retina assets. With no external expansion, 16GB seems awfully tight now.
4. There's no A7X. Yes, the A7 may be a fast chip, and there are less thermal restrictions inside the iPad than the iPhone, but the demands of the iPad are significantly higher. I suppose with them making the device a lot smaller, this is the compromise they thought best, but it's still disappointing.
I sold my iPad six weeks ago in preparation of the new tablet devices, fully intending on replacing it with a Surface Pro 2, but after seeing that they just stuck with the old display rather than improving its color accuracy (all they did was load an ICC profile) and the disappointing battery life, I decided against it.
Being without the iPad for six weeks though, has made me reconsider whether I want one. It was originally my fallback plan if the Surface didn't work out, but now I'm unsure that I want another. The main reason I was moving away from it to begin with was due to the software restrictions, and annoyances such as the screen reflections and lack of RAM, which have not been addressed at all with this update.
I'm having a very difficult time trying to find something which meets my requirements.
dugbug - Wednesday, October 30, 2013 - link
"4. There's no A7X. Yes, the A7 may be a fast chip, and there are less thermal restrictions inside the iPad than the iPhone, but the demands of the iPad are significantly higher. I suppose with them making the device a lot smaller, this is the compromise they thought best, but it's still disappointing."Why? Why do you need an A7X and why is that disappointing?
User.Name - Wednesday, October 30, 2013 - link
In some of the tests, it seems to be performing worse than the iPad 4.In many of the tests, performance is lower than that of the iPhone 5s - by as much as 50% in some tests.
I expect better performance from a large tablet device than I do from something which fits in my pocket.
It means that if a developer does a "simple" port from one device to the other, the iPad version is going to perform worse than the same thing running on an iPhone. I think that's very disappointing, and it's the reason the A5X and A6X existed.
errorr - Wednesday, October 30, 2013 - link
I don't think there are any apps out there that can stress the A7. I see it more that Apple chose ro put a throttled tablet SOC into a phone. It has way too much power for the 5s screen and will bottleneck elsewhere first.dugbug - Thursday, October 31, 2013 - link
The A7 has a lot of headroom, way overkill for the phone. seriously, this is such an edge concern.Kvaern - Wednesday, October 30, 2013 - link
I don't quite get the fuss about the 16gb baseline.I mean if it isn't enough for you then get a larger model but why would you want to force 32gb on people who needs no more than 16gb?
User.Name - Wednesday, October 30, 2013 - link
Apple seem to operate largely by keeping their prices fixed, and introducing better hardware at the same price point. 16GB is not a lot of storage now, considering what Apple is charging, and when there is no option to expand that.As I said in my previous post, I originally purchased a 16GB iPad 2, without knowing how restrictive that would be - you get less than 16GB usable space, and what you may not realize is that you also have to keep 1-2GB free to be able to update apps. (or at least you did at the time; iOS 7 may have changed this?)
Once apps started adding retina assets, many of them increased 2-3x in size, further reducing the number of apps you could keep on the device, even though the iPad 2 itself had no use for those assets.
I think the base spec being 16GB really hurts the user experience. I constantly found myself having to remove apps from the device, and couldn't really store any media on the device itself. (even podcasts had to be restricted)
I then went with a 64GB iPad 3 the next year, and now I would probably recommend that most people buy the 32GB model. I know too many people that bought a 16GB iPad, only to find themselves replacing the device the next year, not because they wanted a faster device, but because it didn't have enough storage for all the apps they wanted to run. (games and educational apps seem to be the worst offenders)
I'm sure there are some people whose usage is fine with 16GB, but when Apple are charging a premium price, I just don't think 16GB is enough.
It's a similar situation to the RAM in the device. 64-bit now requires more memory than previous generations of the iPad, but they stuck with 1GB of RAM, making the user experience worse than it was before.
akdj - Wednesday, October 30, 2013 - link
"64-bit now requires more memory than previous generations of the iPad, but they stuck with 1GB of RAM, making the user experience worse than it was before."Hmmm....I read the whole article, didn't notice that mentioned at ALL! Seemingly, overall...Anand's experience with the 'Air' was significantly 'better' than ANY other tablet he's reviewed/used.
As far as NAND/Storage size....this is ubiquitous throughout the industry. Most OEMs are shipping 16GB models as their 'entry' level device. For folks not interested in downloading games or 'big' apps (My mom loves her iPad 2 16GB and has never run out of space)---that amount is just fine. No other tablets are shipping with 128GB currently, right? You've got choice. Use it. Use your head. Now that you know 16GB isn't enough for you....and 64 is too much, you've finally figured out you need 32GB. Good for you....as I'd also like to see Apple start off with a 32GB iOS device as the minimum, they're not aiming the 16GB model at power users...they offer 4 different sizes with your choice of WiFi or LTE. Same thing, gotta make that choice. I'd love every model to include LTE. It doesn't. You HAVE to make a choice that benefits YOU.
Everyone uses their tablets differently. With cloud storage (Dropbox, iCloud, Box, Google Drive, et al.), one has the option to store their information outside of the tablet and access it when necessary. Many folks don't game. You can now stream from iTunes Match...no need to d/l the entire movie first. That said...if you want more storage, BUY more storage! Apple is in parity with the rest of the entry level OEMs....16GB is pretty standard, other than some that are still releasing 8GB models (first Nex7?)....or models with only options of 16 or 32GB on board.
J
User.Name - Wednesday, October 30, 2013 - link
Yes, but other devices shipping with 16GB storage are significantly cheaper, and/or have expandable storage options. (plug in a 64GB SDXC Micro card)And to move from 64GB to 128GB (+64GB) costs $100 - the same as moving from 16GB to 32GB. (+16GB)
I'm quite sure they could offer a 32GB at the current price.
As for 1GB RAM affecting the user experience, I suppose it depends how you use the device.
I was constantly running out of RAM on my iPad 3, which also had 1GB - and that is effectively more than the Air has.