New Delhi, December 31 – For many users the iPad is the very definition of a tablet. After all, it is a product that created the tablet market in 2012. However, over the last two years, the sales of tablets have slowed down.
If anything, Microsoft’s Windows-based tablets have shown signs of taking off and Android dominates the low-end with tablets of varying sizes and prices.
So, where does that leave the iPad?
The iPad still outsells its rivals and on most accounts it remains a superior tablet. But Apple can’t take its position in the market for granted. Every year it has to make sure the top iPad remains the best tablet in market.
With the iPad Air 2, the aim is same. And we can say that Apple succeeds spectacularly. The Air 2 is not without its faults. But keeping in mind what Apple’s competitors offer, these are minor faults. The iPad Air 2 is a fantastic tablet. It is so good that in its class it stands alone and unchallenged.
Design:
The iPad has always been the most attractive and well-designed tablet in the market. The iPad Air, last year was a redesign of the tablet after 3 years of the same design, so we expected the same design this year too.
However, the folks in Cupertino had different ideas. The iPad Air 2 boasts an all-new design. It is significantly slimmer and lighter than its predecessor. At 6.1mm it is the thinnest tablet in the world. Heck, it is thinner than a pencil! It is also one of the lightest large screen tablets at 437 grams.
The iPad Air 2 feels like an engineering marvel. In ways, Johnny Ive’s team has managed to blend design elements from the iPhone 6, and the previous iPad Air, in such a holistic way that the iPad Air 2 just looks beautiful.
From a distance, it does not look radically different from its predecessor, but when you hold it, you realise the difference is massive. The device has iPhone 5S like chamfers, but this has the rounded design of the previous generation iPad Air.
While Apple has not reduced the vertical and horizontal dimensions of the product, the fact that it is vastly slimmer and lighter makes it more usable with single hand.
For the first time, we feel, you can buy the iPad Air 2 instead of an iPad Mini and not feel it to be a burden. Though still, it will not fit in a trouser pocket. The compromise regarding portability is quite minimal in our opinion. And when one adds to the fact that the internals are superior on the iPad Air 2, then it becomes a no-brainer.
For the first time, the iPad also gets the touch ID fingerprint scanner, which is nice. As always, the build quality of the iPad Air 2 is sublime. It uses a unibody shell made of aluminium. The finishing is top notch and despite its thin frame, the tablet feels sturdy and compact.
Display:
The iPad Air 2 retains a 9.7-inch ‘retina display’ with 2048×1536 pixels resolution. This time around, Apple claims it has fused the display panel and the digitiser in one layer, which makes the screen clearer and nicer to view.
While Apple uses an IPS panel, the screen shows extremely vibrant colours like an AMOLED panel. The display is very good and the viewing angles are superb. Visibility under direct sunlight is very good.
For any use-case – be it watching movies, gaming, viewing photos, or reading text — the display on the iPad Air 2 is very good.
Camera:
The iPad Air 2 has an 8-megapixel camera on the back. There’s no flash but it has f/2.4 aperture. While, the idea of shooting photos with a large device like an iPad is rather stupid, the camera on the back of the iPad is bloody good.
Heck, it is better than cameras found on many top-of-the line smartphones. It is easily the best camera we have seen in a tablet. Images clicked with the iPad Air 2 are sharp, with loads of detail and natural colour reproduction.
The noise levels are also on the lower side. If we compare the camera on the back of the iPad Air 2 with a smartphone, then its performance would be slightly better than the camera in the iPhone 5.
Even in low light, despite the missing flash, the iPad Air 2 has a very usable camera. Apple has also included the slow-motion video capture in the Air 2 so you can shoot videos at 120 FPS with it. These videos are a lot fun.
The iPad Air 2 can also shoot 1080p videos at 30FPS while reliably maintaining focus and keeping everything sharp and clear. The front camera has a 1.2-megapixel resolution. Despite, the seemingly low-resolution, the front camera performs admirably during video chats and while clicking selfies.
Software:
While hardware in the iPad Air 2 is flawless, software is not such a rosy story. The device is powered by the iOS 8. It is simple to use and now has a number of new additions like inter-app communication, a better mail client, but still it lags behind Android and Windows on many accounts.
The biggest omission is a windowed-multitasking system, which one can have on Samsung’s Android tablets and all Windows powered tablets. Microsoft calls this feature Snap, while Samsung calls it Multi-Window. This allows more desktop like multitasking, which obviously enables higher productivity.
It is even available on some large Android smartphones, so it is quite puzzling that Apple has not added this feature in iOS powering its tablets. If you want to be comfortable doing real work (and not just consuming content), it is likely Windows will be your operating system of choice even on a tablet as it offers more flexibility.
In fact, on the iPad Air 2 even small things like transferring a video or an audio file is tedious because it happens through iTunes. But when it comes down to the typical mobile use cases, the iPad reigns supreme as it offers the best selection of tablet apps on the planet. In fact it is the only tablet where you can get apps made by Apple, Microsoft and Google.
Performance:
Powered by the new 64-bit A8X SoC, the iPad Air 2 packs incredible power. On many accounts it is considered to be the best ARM based mobile CPU in the market.
The A8X processor is even more powerful than the A8 CPU on the iPhone 6 as it has 3-core CPU and 8-core graphics unit. In the A8 used in the iPhone 6, Apple uses 2-core CPU and 4-core graphics chip.
The iPad Air 2 also has 2GB of RAM, which is 1GB more than what we have seen in the iPhones and iPads so far. The processing power of the iPad is approaching what one would find in a personal computer four or five years ago. It is a pity that the iOS 8 does not take full advantage of it.
With iOS 8 being a very frugal OS in terms of resource usage, the iPad Air 2 with its new hardware feels like Lewis Hamilton’s world championship winning Mercedes.
The speed at which it opens apps and switches between apps is electric. It also runs multiple apps in the background without any trouble. We managed to have 33 apps open simultaneously and there was no issue.
All this sounds great, but the truth is that the last year’s iPad Air is not significantly inferior. An iPad Air user will not find the performance of the iPad Air 2 life changing.
The graphics that the iPad Air 2 can push out in games border the quality found on consoles. Games like ShadownGun 2, Dead Trigger 2, Nova, and Asphalt 8 look beautiful. Needless to say, these games also run butter-smooth on this tablet.
Battery life:
The iPad Air 2 offers the best battery life found in any large tablet we have tested. Consistently, over 2 weeks of usage, it offered 10-11 hours of battery life on a single charge. In some cases, the battery life would even cross 12 hours. We tested the Wi-Fi only version and the cellular version will have slightly lower battery life.
Our usage included streaming music using iTunes Radio, 2 hours of web browsing, an hour of intensive gaming, 2 email accounts, 2 social media accounts, reading books on Kindle, writing stories on MS Word, and bit of photography.
Should you buy it?
In terms of hardware, the iPad Air 2 is the best tablet in the market. For normal tablet use cases, which include gaming, reading and consuming media, there is no better tablet than the iPad Air 2.
However, if you need to get work done and need something that will run Adobe Photoshop, then a Windows based tablet or laptop will be a better bet. That said, if your work revolves around Microsoft’s Office apps, for example Word, then the iPad is a good option.
We tested the Wi-Fi only version but if you need to access internet on the go, we suggest that you go for the 4G/3G version of the tablet. With a price starting at Rs.35,900, the iPad Air 2 is one of the most expensive tablets in the market.
But unless you already have last year’s iPad Air, this is also the best general-purpose tablet in the market for you. For most, the iPad Air 2 retains the crown of the best tablet in the world even though it does nothing to reinvent the wheel.
-INDIA TODAY
