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
GPU Performance
On the GPU side of things the iPad Air 2 seems to have a GX6650, which should provide a healthy boost to GPU performance when compared to the GX6450 in the A8. Apple has placed a strong emphasis on gaming for their iPad line, so there are some obvious comparisons to be made between NVIDIA's Tegra K1 and the A8X as well. To test this, we use a suite of benchmarks that can give a good idea of real world gaming performance.
In practice, while we see that the A8X's GPU is extremely close to Nvidia's single Kepler SMX across the board, with the sole exception of 3DMark which seems to be due to the dependencies present in the physics test that dramatically lower the overall score. NVIDIA's Tegra K1 seemed incredible for its GPU performance earlier this year, so it's just as surprising to see Apple successfully rival NVIDIA in this area. Of course, GPU performance is a function of both peak performance and sustained performance, so we'll have to look at the GFXBench battery rundown test to get the full picture here. If Apple can deliver far superior performance and battery life in such a situation, it's pretty clear that the jump to 20nm will be critical to pushing the limits on what's possible in a mobile device.
NAND Performance
As we've seen before on some tablets, poor storage performance can cause major issues with the overall experience as I/O pauses can far exceed just a few frame drops that one might expect from cases of UI lag induced by insufficient performance elsewhere. In order to attempt to quantify this performance we use a custom utility developed by Eric Patno. While such testing is far from a complete look at performance, this can give a rough idea of what to expect.
Overall, it seems that Apple does quite well on the storage tests. It seems that the iPad Air 2 shares its storage solution with the iPhone 6. While I don't have an iPad Air on hand for testing, it should match quite closely to the iPhone 5s. This represents a generally high-quality NAND solution, but as mentioned before random I/O could stand to improve a bit. Compared to most of the lower-cost Android tablets it's definitely as good as it gets though.
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darkich - Saturday, November 8, 2014 - link
What a disaapointing review.After all of this waiting I was expecting some deep chip architecture dive, something we havent read in other reviews ,but NOTHING here came across as new and interesting.
Also, it was written rather poorly ,with a lot of grammar mistakes and bad, half hearted sentence structure.
And this was supposed to be the review highlight of the year on AT.
wyewye - Saturday, November 8, 2014 - link
Joshua, this article is horrible:1. Extended use of "aforementioned" when refering to stuff you dont know and already mentioned, like some magic "arhitectural" benefits.
2. There is no need to inflate the article by saying the same thing over and over again.
3. "In the basic definition of a tablet, the iPad Air 2 definitely fits." - No shit sherlock the ipad is a tablet - what is this, retard bingo?
4. You randomly switch sorting order of the graphs so the better is no longer on top, conveniently when Apple performs weaker.
5. On every set of tests that Ipad Air 2 performed mid to low compared to competition, you still present a missleading summary that Ipad was the best.
6. For every weakness of the iPad Air 2, you try to find excuses.
Yes the iPad has both advantages and disadtantages. Try to maintain some reasonable level of objectivity, there are way too many fanboi "reviews" out there.
Since when AnandTech does asskissing "reviews"? Bring back Anand before the site dies!
konradsa - Saturday, November 8, 2014 - link
Disgruntled Nexus 9 owner? :-)konradsa - Saturday, November 8, 2014 - link
A lot of people at the mac rumors forum are complaining about a) distortion on screen when pushing on back and b) excessive vibration due to speakers when watching movies or playing games. Bad enough many are returning them again.Can you comment on that? Could you compare the cellular and Wi-Fi versions and see if they behave differently with respect to a) or b)?
JoshHo - Saturday, November 8, 2014 - link
I can confirm that both of those are present on the cellular version that we were sampled, but distortion from pressing on the back is something that I've noticed on multiple devices this year. The vibration effects are definitely strong but this really isn't an issue.Morawka - Sunday, November 9, 2014 - link
in order to create distortion from pushing on the back, you have to put significant force on my ipad air 2 wifi 64gbYour not going to see distortion just holding it and moving it around, or swapping hands. You have to actually try and push hard.
mrex - Wednesday, November 12, 2014 - link
sorry, but that was the first thing i noticed when i picked up the device. Swapping or even moving my hands positions caused distortions on the screen. I checked both units in the store and both suffered this issue. i dont know about the vibration, because there were too many people to test the sound quality. the distortion was enough for me and didnt buy it. ill check later if apple has fixed it (secrectly as they do). but now, its only place is on a table at a store...tralalalalalala40 - Thursday, November 13, 2014 - link
Any case will dampen that. You use cases to keep the ridiculously high resale value...mrex - Saturday, November 8, 2014 - link
the lack of info makes me wonder, if anandtech site is just another bitch in apples stall nowadays. no mention the strong vibration... no mention screen distortions which is visible and terrible when keeping it on your hands. it is time to remove anandtech site from the serious reviewers list... seems to be too much connection with apple nowadays to be able to do trusted reviews? :/Ilias78 - Saturday, November 8, 2014 - link
Anand became an Apple employee - what did you expect, negative reviews from Anandtech? No way