iPad Air Full Review by Unbox!

When Steve Jobs first unveiled the iPad in 2010 he probably had a lot of things he wanted to improve with it. In hindsight while the first generation iPad was a game changer, it was actually clunky, heavy, and a bit slow (especially with current day standards). Using it with one hand was ridiculously tiring and it was hard to use as a productivity tool. The iPad Air, in our opinion, is probably the closest to the vision that Steve Jobs had for the first-generation iPad. The iPad Air is razor thin, weighs in at under a pound, and leaves all others in the dust when it comes to processing power. It’s even supported by a robust ecosystem of software (so many exclusive apps) and wide range of Apple hardware integration and accessories. We’ll try to cover all of this in our review.

Before anything let’s quickly take a look at the specifications.

iPad Air Spec Sheet

• 1.3GHz Dual-core Cyclone (ARM v8-based), Apple A7 Chip
• Quad-core PowerVR G6430 Graphics
• 1GB RAM DDR3
• 16GB/32GB/64GB/128GB Internal Storage
• 9.7-inches LED backlit IPS Display
• Retina Display, 1563 x 2048 pixels, 264 pixels per inch
• 5.0-megapixels primary camera with autofocus
• 1.2-megapixels secondary camera
• LTE, Bluetooth, WiFi, WiFi Hotspot, GPS/aGPS
• iOS 7
• “Legendary iPad 10 Hour Battery Life”

>>> SEE ALSO: iPad Air Unboxing and Initial Hands-on

Don’t let some of the numbers there deceive you folks. The iPad Air is proof that spec sheets aren’t everything. The sum of all parts is greater than the individual.

Hardware: It’s the iPad Mini All Grown Up!

The iPad Air takes the best of the iPad 4 and the iPad Mini and puts them together in a one-of-a-kind tablet. We get the gorgeous 9.7-inch Retina Display. Spacious and a very generous surface for applications and media. Notice that the bezel is also thinner compared to the iPad 4, something that Apple started doing with the Mini.

We also get an unbelievably thin and lightweight body, clearly inspired by the industrial engineering and design behind the iPad Mini. Truth be told, the iPad Air looks like a “Big iPad Mini”, lol. While it sounds funny, users will definitely appreciate and love how easy it us to use the iPad Air even with just one hand for extended durations. When it comes to being ergonomic, the iPad Air is clearly light years ahead of other tablets in the same size/category.

Let us just stress that one more time — you get the full screen of the big iPad and almost the same weight and thinness of the iPad Mini. That’s just a #somuchwin proposition right there folks.

All the buttons and ports are in their usual places: the Power Lock, Volume Buttons, Home Button, and the Lightning cable port down below. The iPad Air also features better external speakers and you won’t need to “cup” it anymore to focus the direction to your face, hehe. The speakers are still at the back but they sound much better.

When it comes to hardware and design, there’s nothing to “not like” about the iPad Air. It’s the best designed tablet we’ve seen since Apple started the tablet category with the first-generation iPad in 2010.

Performance: Unbelievably Fast

The 64-bit A7 chip and the quad-core graphics on the iPad Air is not just a gimmick because we’ve never seen graphics intensive games like Infinity Blade 3 run so smoothly on a tablet… ever. Loading time is unbelievably fast, a huge improvement over the seemingly “forever” of the iPad Mini and even the iPad 4. The game itself runs almost flawlessly. Complex cut scenes seamlessly flow into one another almost turning Infinity Blade 3 into some sort of animated movie.

Note though that we said “almost”, hehe. We still encountered some crashes but it was less than five. Hopefully this can be addressed with some software updates on the side of either EPIC games or Apple.

Productivity Machine

Other than gaming, the iPad Air also makes a compelling case for productivity, especially if you use primarily the apps of iWorks (Keynote and Pages). One of the biggest surprises during the iPad Air announcement was that the entire iWork and iLife suite of apps would be free for new iOS devices. Keynote for iOS is designed specifically for touchscreen use so it’s actually quite intuitive and easy to put together nice presentations.

Personally I’ve used Keynote on the iPad 3 numerous times to come up with on-the-go presentations and even present using the iPad through a VGA adaptor. Compared to the experience with the iPad 3, the iPad Air delivers a faster and more crash-free mobile Keynote experience. The integration also with AirPlay (mirroring) also makes it easier to present especially if you have an Apple TV in the office.

When it comes to creating documents, Pages should be more than enough since you easily export your files into Word Documents or PDF files. The only app that still needs a lot of work is Numbers. It still can’t match experience offered by Excel on a laptop.

Perfect with the Apple TV

The Apple TV is a small box-type accessory that you connect to your TV via HDMI and it basically allows you to stream your content and apps from your MacBook and iOS devices to your big TV (you can connect it to your network via WiFi or Ethernet). It sells for under Php5,000 locally and it’s actually a great companion to iPad Air users.

The most basic feature is streaming. You can easily throw whatever you’re watching or listening to on your iPad to your TV and home theater system. For example, here’s us watching Andersoon Cooper deliver the latest news on Yolanda (Haiyan) relief efforts here in the Philippines on the iPad Air:

You can press the AirPay button and then throw it to your TV.

And there you go!

The AirPlay button can be found in a lot of the native Apple apps but it’s also been implemented by third-party apps like YouTube.

Now in the case that there’s no AirPlay button you can mirror your display on the iPad on your TV. Just bring up the control panel by swiping up from the bottom and toggle the Mirror button. Whatever is showing on your iPad then shows up on your TV.

The iPad Air’s productivity and entertainment potential just skyrockets when combined with the Apple TV. Note that you can also do the mirroring and AirPlay using your MacBook, iPod Touch, or iPhone.

Camera: Surprisingly Decent

The iPad Air has a 5.0-megapixel primary shooter. We were pleasantly surprised to find that it actually took decent photos in good-mid lighting conditions. Of course it’s still crapy when you try to take pics in low light but at least it’s a good substitute for a camera phone if you’re too lazy to bring your iPhone out and you need to capture a moment outdoors or in good light quickly.

Sample shots for your reference:

Reminds us a lot of the quality of the shots taken with the iPhone 4.

Battery Life: Still the Legendary 10-Hour Battery Life of Apple

As expected, the iPad Air gives the legendary Apple iPad 10-hour battery life. This is despite the major improvement in form and power. It’s amazing how Apple is able to keep their devices so power efficient. With our use we just charge every 2-3 days. Sometimes even longer depending on our usage .

Verdict: It’s the Best Tablet in the Market

So what’s our verdict? Well it really is the best tablet in the market today. There’s just no point of comparison anymore for Android tablets and the iPad. Maybe in time when Google gets to perfect Android for tablets and Google Play gets more quality developers but for now the iPad Air is still king of the hill. Heck the only competition we think that’s worth talking about for the iPad Air would be the iPad Mini with Retina Display, hehe.

If ever we have one criticism it would be on the software level. iOS 7 is perfect already for the iPhone (or at least a majorly awesome and good update) but there are still improvements that can be made for the iPad. Fortunately we have full confidence in Apple that they’ll be able to deliver a good update soon since they’ve pretty much had a nice and consistent track record of software updates.

So… should you get one? Well it really depends on your needs. The iPad Air offers a much better over-all experience thanks to the power and the form factor. If you’re coming from an iPad 3 or below we think it makes so much sense to just sell your old iPad while it still has resale value and just buy the iPad Air, especially if you’re a heavy iPad user. However if you don’t really use your iPad too much and it’s just at home gathering dust, there’s no need to do so unless the main issue you had with the iPad was that it was too clunky (this was the comment of a lot of iPad 4 users).

The iPad Air is not yet available (officially anyway) locally but online stores like Kimstore are already offering it. They also have cases already. 🙂

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