I was a bit confused by the iPad Air at first. With each passing addition to Apple's iPad lineup, they fill out more of their pricing umbrella, leaving less room for competitors.
For a consumer looking to buy the right device, this year's iPad is not a good fit. The regular iPad is the cheaper one. You buy your kids that one. The iPad Pro is a good choice for the high end. Someone who is in an office or a creative is using it as a laptop replacement.
The iPad Air is even more powerful thanks to Apple's M1 chip. Its performance is very close to that of the iPad Pro. It is the beefiest performance option for people in the middle of the lineup, which is $200 cheaper than the iPad Pro. What do you get for $200 less? You don't get the ProMotion tech in the display. The enhanced camera array of the iPad Pro is not available to you.
Half of the storage is given to you. This is the biggest weakness of the iPad Air when it comes to placing it in the lineup. It's easy to see why it only has 64GB of storage at the base configuration because of the reasonable difference in price to the next iPad up in the line. Above the base it is very difficult to see why you wouldn't jump to the iPad Pro.
Let's pull that apart a bit more, but first we need to know how the new stuff works.
First, you get M1, Apple's first generation of technology. It hurts. The iPad Pro lineup got M1 last year. The previous iPad Air had a speed increase. The scores are better than those of the M1 MacBook Air, and it is nice to see that there is not any significant throttling here on the mid-range iPad.
The front camera has gotten a 12MP upgrade, and is definitely better than the previous Air. The Center Stage enhancement we saw on the iPad Pros last year is also available on FaceTime. This is a huge improvement for those who video chat a lot, as the auto-crop and tracking feature mitigates the odd left-hand side placement of the camera when the iPad Air is in landscape mode. The angles are more natural and less awkward. The video call quality has been improved.
Matthew Panzarino has an image.
The iPad Air is one of the better and more versatile FaceTime devices Apple has currently on the market.
The color this year deserves an honorable mention. I was testing the blue model and it is one of the better blue finishes they have ever done. It is bright and sparkle-rich. I was a bit skeptical of the colors, but in person they are really good.
Matthew Panzarino has an image.
With Touch ID, it should be very easy for a new user to get the iPad unlocked in either portrait or landscape mode, without having to do any gymnastics. It can beat Face ID for convenience and seamlessness, but its inclusion in the power button makes it a fairly minor difference for most users.
The iPad Air came in 2020 with the switch to theusb-c. This makes it easier to charge your iPad wherever you need it. I tested the desktop sync and transfer and found it much quicker than a Lightning-enabled device. I think the number of casual consumers doing this falls every day. This is more important for institutional customers that use MDM solutions to wipe and reinstall docked iPads. The faster and more universal port of the iPad is likely to be very well received by those customers.
The iPad Air's positioning question is who is going to buy the iPad Air at $600 instead of the iPad Pro at $800?
Ben Bajarin, CEO and principal analyst at Creative Strategies said that the iPad Air has found a nice market with higher education and some parts of enterprises where front-line workers and highly mobile workers need a capable tablet form factor.
The new iPad Air, with M1, could appeal to even more enterprise buyers due to its increase in performance and stellar battery life.
Matthew Panzarino has an image.
I think it's important to note that $200 is $200. The amount of money is not insignificant. If many of the customers for this device are buying for large-scale deployment, then those dollars add up fast.
If an individual buyer is on a budget and just can't stomach the idea of a $100 price tag for a pro, this plus a keyboard will get them most of the way to what the pro offers. You will probably miss it if you have never had ProMotion. It will be a big loss if you have. Testing this with the iPad Pro shows that ProMotion provides a distinct edge in user experience, especially long sessions of browsing, gaming or drawing. The higher-end display is more expensive and harder to execute. It's just better. The color rendition and other aspects of the display show off well here.
The lineup starts to feel a little bit crowded in the $400-$400 range because the iPad Air and the 11-inch iPad Pro are so close in price and capability. The iPad Air is pleasant to use and capable, but pricing positioning is not important. If you have never had the chance to use a screen larger than 10 inches with ProMotion, you may not notice the difference.
Matthew Panzarino has an image.
One reason the iPad lineup feels crowded is that we haven't seen what the new iPad Pro models will look like. It's possible that come Q3 we'll see new models that add enhancements and maybe even widen the price gap between the smaller iPad Pro and the iPad Air.
The iPad mini was introduced last year. The mini is an amazing option if you use it as a travel device for media consumption or as a reading device. Because it is not the cheapest iPad, the mini can be more expensive and more capable, without really competing with the low end iPad at all. The iPad Air is competing with the mini and the Pro at the same time.
Every year, we circle back to the fact that Apple's tablets are the only thing worth buying on the market. There is no other option on the planet that can match the reliability and capability of the iPad.
That makes the Air an interesting central focal point that, despite its similarities in price, could end up being one of Apple's best sellers aside from the entry level 9th generation iPad. The storage and better screen of the iPad Pro make it attractive to less budget-conscious users.
The iPad Air came with theusb-c in 2020.
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