Apple iPad Air offers three iPad models each year – the new, 2020 $599 Apple iPad Air (2019) will retail for between the $329 10.2-inch iPad 9 and the $799 11-inch iPad Pro. The Pro is a great mid-range option for folks who want the perks of a pro-level iPad and don’t want to spend anywhere near $1,000. The downside is that it costs nearly twice as much as the standard iPad, but it’s worth it because I love mine more than anything.
The 10.9-inch iPad Air 4 impresses with its flat-edge design (available in multiple attractive color options). As a member of the new-generation iPad Pro family, it shares all the good qualities of the 11-inch iPad Pro. but its Apple Pencil (2nd Gen) and Magic Keyboard support mean it’s more capable of replacing your laptop. It’s super power-efficient, has lots of storage space, and is as slim as a MacBook.
The iPad Air is a tablet computer designed, developed, and marketed by Apple Inc. It is the fifth generation of the iPad. The iPad Air was announced on October 22, 2018, and released on November 7th.
The iPad Air is an upgraded version of the previous model with a slimmer design and faster performance. The new model also has better battery life than its predecessor.
This iPad Air (2020) review will explain how the only downsides are relatively small and might not be noticeable to you if you don’t use a lot of other tablets. The iPad Mini is pretty bright and colorful; however, competitors such as the Samsung Galaxy Tab S2 provide a more brilliant display with even more color options. Additionally, battery life is comparable to other competitors including Apple’s iPads (excluding the A10 model).
The Apple iPad Air 5 has arrived – and it improves on the iPad Air 4! The newest release in the series includes a new M1 chip, 5G connectivity, and much more. Plus, with a display at least as good as its predecessor’s (according to DxOMark ), and a battery that lasts about an hour-long, this is worth checking out
iPad Air (2020) Release date and price
The iPad Air 4 came out on Friday, October 23rd, 2020. The 64GB version begins at $599 while the max 256GB model costs only $879. An LTE cellular connectivity upgrade will cost an extra $130 and however much a user ends up paying is all up to them!
The Air’s price looks good when we consider that the iPad Pro is selling for $599. Some customers may feel sticker shock if they remember how the iPad Air 3 used to sell for $499, though. Fortunately, Amazon’s currently hosting a sale that delivers it for less than $400, which might be just enough to put some customers at ease about their purchase decision.
iPad Air (2020) Design
The iPad Air 4 is light, powerful, and thin. It looks like an updated version of the iPad Pro which is fitting because the screen size is similar to that of the 11-inch version. It’s available in a variety of different colors: green, blue, rose gold, silver, and Space Gray. The color we tested was minty fresh- I can recommend that one.
Considering the new iPad Air 4 with no home button, it’s logical that Apple used this change to increase their screen size. The 10.9-inch screen on the new iPad is bigger than what we experienced with the older models.
The other unique aspects of the iPad Air 4 are its buttons and security measures. For example, it comes with a Touch ID fingerprint scanner that’s hidden inside of the lock button. I think the iPad Air 4 is better than the Galaxy Tab S7 both in terms of fingerprint access and tablet design. The iPad’s button sticks out slightly, making it easier to detect visually, while the Tab S7’s fingerprint scanner is recessed and can’t be detected with touch alone.
The new iPad has changed to USB-C, which will make it easier for me to use fewer cables in my day-to-day life (I won’t need a separate one for my iPhone and AirPods). It would be nice if this change were also made on the regular iPad.
Apple’s not the only one who’s gone wireless – the iPad Air 4 doesn’t have a headphone jack either. I wouldn’t be surprised if we see other devices follow suit and get rid of the headphone jacks on their phones as well. I’ve started to keep those wired headphones connected to my mic because the AirPods don’t need them.
The iPad Air 4 measures 9.7 x 7 x 0.2 inches and weighs 1 pound even, which makes it the same size as the 11 inch iPad Pro while being thinner and lighter. The Samsung Galaxy Tab S7 is also a touch heavier, but still lighter than the Apple iPad Pro (10.2 x 7.2 x 0.24 inches, 1.5 pounds).
iPad Air (2020) Display
The iPad Air 4 has a sharp screen, but it doesn’t seem to be bright enough. When I watched the Midsummer film on it, I could see plenty of detail when Florence Pugh’s character hallucinated that her feet were made of grass, with blades of grass showing brightly as she walked through its blades. Color reproduction was good when I watched a sneak preview for “The Suicide Squad”. The reds and blues of the outfit worn by the Peacemaker were very visible.
Later on, I noticed a wide range of greens in the foliage surrounding the iPad Air 4. According to our Klein K10-A colorimeter, it has excellent color reproduction with 102.9% of the sRGB spectrum the Galaxy Tab S7 exhibits this phenomenon with 121% on Natural mode and 155% on Vivid, which is comparable to the 12.9-inch iPad Pro, at 122.4%. The regular iPad does exhibit a similar behavior at 97%.
The iPad Air 4 maxes out at 440 nits of brightness, a rating that’s good on its own, but outshined by its competitors. That includes even the normal iPad (484 nits), which is only slightly dimmer than the Galaxy Tab S7 (499 nits). The iPad Pro (559 nits) gets even brighter.
The iPad Air 4 has a very sharp 264ppi pixel density, which is the same rate as the normal iPad and the iPad Pro. The Tab S7’s 11-inch 2560 x 1600-pixel panel has a density of 276 PPI, a hair higher than that of Apple’s products.
On top of its sharpness, the Air 4 also has a fully laminated screen and an anti-reflective coating, so it’s not as sensitive to glare or fingerprints as other iPads.
The colors in the documentary You Cannot Kill David Arquette looked fine when I turned my iPad Air 4 or watched the scene on its side. I noticed that the viewing experience with the Galaxy Tab S7 was better than on my tablet.
iPad Air 4 owners will find that the screen is noticeably less smooth than those of other iPads and Android tablets. Ideal for early adopters, but probably not useful to most people.
iPad Air (2020) Touch ID security
The iPad Air 4 has a sliding power button and feels like a fusion of the iPad’s ease of use with the iPad Pro’s Touch ID fingerprint scanner. I’m not sure what Apple’s thinking was, as the iPad Pro has minimal bezels, which means it can accommodate the Face ID selfie camera.
The Touch ID sensor in the new iPad Air has been very fast so far when using Apple Pay, but I wanted Face ID to stay. Why? The iPad Pro’s facial recognition technology just works if your hand isn’t covering up the camera. I’ve had this happen to me a few times, though.
The iPad Air 4’s Touch ID power button is a neat trick, and it does a better job than the Galaxy Tab S7’s as I’ve said earlier. Samsung gets points for this because it offers both facial and fingerprint recognition, whereas Apple only does one.
One reason the iPhone 13 might not have Touch ID embedded in its screen could be the lack of a fingerprint sensor on Apple’s newly-announced iPad Air 4. The Touch ID sensor makes more sense for the iPhone than it does for the iPad. Assuming we all continue to wear face masks in public, at least.
A14 Bionic performance
The iPad Air 4’s A14 Bionic chip is the first to have a Hexa-core CPU, which gives it a serious speed advantage over most tablets. Combine that with its quad-core GPU and you have one of the fastest tablet experiences on the market. I was impressed by the fluidity of the screen on the machine I saw – it had 12 Safari tabs open and a 1080p YouTube video was playing and Tweetdom was open in slide-over mode. I didn’t notice any stutter. ML Super Resolution is powerful because it can up-razz an image in seconds, a task that usually takes days if done manually.
The iPad Air 4’s Geek bench 5 scores of 4,262 beats out the Samsung Galaxy Tab S Pro with a score of 3,299. The Samsung S7 (Snapdragon 865+) scored 3,074, the Apple iPad 2020 (A12 Bionic) got 2,685 and when pitted against the iPad Pro 2020 (A12Z Bionic), it scored 4,720.
Asphalt 9: Legends ran smoothly on the iPad Air 4! I carried out missions with the Mitsubishi Lancer and I didn’t see any stuttering or frame drops. It was a very satisfying and engaging experience that showed off the power of this latest tablet.
iPad Air (2020) review: Audio
The iPad Air 4’s stereo speakers fill not just my small-to-medium-sized home office but also spill over to adjacent rooms. As Fleetwood Mac’s ‘Dreams’ played on my tablet, Stevie Nicks’ soothing vocals filled the room and took some of the stress off my shoulders. The brisk drum cymbals were also a refreshing dose.
The Air4’s sound is excellent in landscape mode, but when the iPad pro’s Smart Speaker technology kicks in, you’ll have significantly better results than from this device. Although the iPad Pro has a quad-speaker setup that allows you to get stereo sound no matter where it is – as it’s smart enough to adjust to stereo when you’ve got the tablet in the upright position. vertical/portrait orientation.
iPad Air (2020) review: Apple Pencil and Magic Keyboard
The iPad Air 4 is the cheapest iPad Apple offers that lets you use its accessories. What’s not to like? One of the newest features of the Apple Pencil is that it can snap to the top edge of iPad Air 4, and it doesn’t require any charging through the port at the bottom edge (like many other styluses do)
And that’s important because iPadOS 14 gives you Scribble. It’s the ability to write into text fields with the Apple Pencil and have that handwriting turn into legit text. And it even works with my chicken-scratch.
More importantly, the iPad Air 4’s support for the Magic Keyboard means that typing on this iPad is as easy as on the iPad Pro. I explained in my iPad Pro-Magic Keyboard review that the more comfortable typing experience comes from the keys having more vertical travel, and for feeling like you’re either typing on a traditional desk or laptop. For people so used to typing on a touchscreen keyboard, this is going to be a game-changer. The Magic Keyboard also has a touchpad, which the Smart Keyboard always lacked; this is an advantage over the iPad Air 4 because it can more operate like a traditional laptop
I’m already used to typing on my Magic Keyboard, I’ve just typed at 78 words per minute with 97% accuracy on the first try.
The Magic Keyboard is frustrating at $300. I don’t know how Apple makes it but the price point compared to the iPad’s entry-level price doesn’t seem justifiable to me. That being said, anyone considering the $179 Smart Keyboard Folio should invest in the touchscreen-enabled version. It has a much better typing experience. The new Samsung Tab S7 Bookcover Keyboard has a touchpad, but the key size is small and the design is 2 pieces. The Magic Keyboard’s process for attaching & detaching is much more seamless.
It’s worth mentioning that there is a new keyboard coming out, the 2nd Generation Apple Magic Keyboard. It will likely support both the iPad Pro and Air, as well.
The $129 Apple Pencil 2nd Gen is admittedly a bit too pricey and I wish they’d put it in the box with their tablets for free how Samsung does with their Galaxy Tab S7’s S-Pen. That being said, the Apple Pencil 2 feels a lot more substantial than Samsung’s S-Pen. Again, though, you should avoid the $99 Apple Pencil for the iPad Air 4 as it can’t be connected to the tablet without a USB-C connection. The extra $30 is worth it when buying the 2nd gen Pencil.
iPad Air (2020) review: Cameras
There are now people who use the iPad Air 4 as a camera. Apple encourages this, for example by giving it a 12-megapixel wide-angle webcam. The color reproduction on the sensor I used is excellent and also picked up the reds & yellows of my mid-review snack. Additionally, it captured some other colors like blues and browns in detail.
The 7MP front-facing webcam might seem like a minute detail but it provides sharp images of your face. I’ve tested this in my living room with a selfie: the picture I took includes small details such as my nose, even though that was not planned.
But then I did try the new iPad Air 4 at Google Meet and found the experience satisfactory. After we were told the video quality was “better than, if not equal to, a real webcam,” I hooked up an external Logitech C920 webcam to my work laptop and joined the call from that device. I’m glad my boss was right when he said the images would look better if taken with a different device. The iPad Air 4’s camera captured stronger greens on my t-shirt and handled sources of light better, allowing them to illuminate backdrops instead of just render as blown-out white areas in photos.
Just like with the Galaxy Tab S7, the iPad Air 4’s camera bump protrudes a bit, and there’s a little back and forth rocking if you lay the tablet screen-up on a table — the only way you ever should.
iPad Air (2020) Battery life
Apple’s iPad Air 4 has 10-hour battery life. That’s 2 hours more than the iPad Pro, and over an hour longer than the Samsung Galaxy Tab S7. Because the iPad Air 4 has an improved battery, it may charge slightly more often than previous models. However, the benefit of that current is worth the additional cost.
iPad Air (2020) Verdict
When people ask me what tablet to buy, I always recommend them to go for the new iPad Air. Not only is it faster and more stylish than the old version, but it has Apple’s new Keyboard Cover which means it can potentially replace a laptop. The Apple tablet is impressive, but if it were better on battery life and had a higher display brightness, then it just may be the best tablet.
If you want longer battery life, the Galaxy Tab S7 costs $50 more than the iPad; it has a camera and stylus support but is not as fast. The iPad Air (or any other cheaper competitor) is faster. Those who want the brightest screen out there should check out the iPad Pro, but it’s $200 more expensive than less-bright tablets.
Overall, this iPad Air 4 review has shown why it’s the best iPad out there, thanks to taking most of the iPad Pro features people will appreciate, and making them available to a wider audience.