Apple iPad Air 2 Tablet Full Review
Apple iPad Air 2 Tablet Full Review
What can Apple do with the world’s most popular tablet? It’s come so far since the first iPad was launched just four years ago, with screen resolution and battery life improving iteratively.

Apple iPad Air 2 Tablet Full Review


The iPad Air was a great leap in design, but it feels like tablets are becoming a little staid – you can now get ones that provide good experiences for less than £200. Apple had to provide something new, and it has with the iPad Air 2. But has it done enough?
Same resolution but improved screen technology
The 9.7-inch screen’s not had the upgrade to near 4K resolution that many anticipated. It’s still an LCD IPS display, so you don’t get anywhere near the infinite contrast ratios of the Samsung Galaxy Tablet range’s superb AMOLED screens, but from what I saw it does a solid job on dark scenes and provides excellent colours.
Apple’s managed to make the screen thinner by removing the space between the display and the glass, and the lack of air gaps between the different components means that internal reflection has been reduced. An anti-reflective coating has also been added, which Apple claims reduces reflections by a further 56%, making this the least reflective tablet ever.
The iPad Air 2 gets its own processor
Perhaps the biggest surprise of the iPad Air 2 is that it comes with its very own custom-built processor. The iPad Air’s A7X processor was about 5% faster than the A7 on the iPhone 5S, so the performance improvement wasn’t earth-shattering.
There were no direct comparisons with the iPhone 6, but Apple claims that the A8X chip has a 40% faster CPU and 2.5 times faster GPU than the iPad Air before it. These are some impressive numbers, which result in major speed improvements to intensive tasks such as image and video processing – up to four times faster, according to some app developers.
iPad Air 2 8 megapixel iSight Camera
The iSight camera on the iPad Air 2 has seen an obligatory boost. It’s now 8-megapixel with 1.12 micron pixels and an f/2.4 aperture. It’s similar in spec to the camera on the iPhone 5S, albeit with smaller pixels. It can now record 1080p video but more importantly comes with all the tricks that make the iPhone’s camera such fun to use.
Panoramas, burst mode and time-lapse are all there, as is my personal favourite: slo-mo video. These don’t reach the levels of the new iPhones, but you still get 120fps at 720p, as well as dual mics for better audio recording.
Top-spec iPads get cheaper
The iPad has always been one of the most expensive tablets to buy, and this won’t change now. What has changed is the cost of models with higher storage capacities. So the 16GB Wi-Fi-only model will retail at $499/£399, the 64GB for $599/£479 and the big 128GB model $699/£559. There’s no 32GB model, but the 64GB and 128GB ones are $100 cheaper than when the iPad Air launched last year. You’ll need to pay an extra $130/£100 for the Wi-Fi and 4G versions.
iPad Air 2: Early Verdict
It’s another step in the iPad’s evolution – and it’s a promising one. Apple has taken the right tack by not playing the specs game and by making useful improvements to the screen. iPad photographers, of which there are surprisingly many, will love the new camera features that iPhone users have been enjoying for a while, and Touch ID will cause delight and empty wallets in equal measure. Most of all I’m pleased that Apple has opted for a custom processor. It’s not that the A7X on the iPad Air is slow – far from it – but it’ll make productivity tasks that much faster and games look that much better.