After a long time spread in between, Apple’s iPad Air 2 finally received a proper successor! Technically, the iPad Air (2019) arrives nearly 4.5 years after the iPad Air 2, which is a staggering amount of time in the world of tech. Until the arrival of the iPad Pro, the Air was largely considered the top of the line tablet in Apple’s stable, but if pricing dictates structure, the iPad Air (2019) is now classified as the mid-range offering – sitting in between the iPad (2018)at $350 and the 11-inch version of the iPad Pro (2018) priced at $800. The $500 sticker price of the iPad Air (2019) seems appropriate for any mainstream tablet, but where does it rank in the greater scheme of things?
In the box:
- iPad Air (2019)
- USB Lightning Cable
- USB Power Adapter
- Quick Start, Safety Guide, and Stickers
Design
Apple has chosen to keep the Touch ID fingerprint sensor. It would have been great if it had put Face ID here, but Touch ID is also very good and simple to use. The 3.5mm headphone jack is still intact here, which is surely a sight for sore eyes given that the newer iPad Pros don’t have them.
Looking elsewhere around the tablet, all of the same ports and buttons from before are located in their typical locations. On the bottom edge, we have its Lighting port and two speaker grills that flank it. To the right, we have dedicated volume up and down buttons – while the top houses the power button, headphone jack, and microphone.
Indeed, it’s been 4.5 years in between the two iPad Air models – so you’d think that this new model would be deserving of a new facelift. Apple doesn’t believe it needs one. And there’s very good reason for that because all you need to do is look at the competition. No one else sells more tablets than Apple, so this “old” design works because it has shown to all of us that it has aged nicely. It’s thin, lightweight, and solidly built. What more can we ask for in a design like that?
Display
All of this sounds fancy and enticing for this newer iPad Air, but we wouldn’t go beyond saying it’s leaps and bounds superior than the iPad Air 2’s display. Yes, it’s brighter by nearly 100 nits over the iPad Air 2 with its peak brightness output of 525 nits, but it still delivers the same crisp and accurate colors – in addition to the same accurate color tones. With True Tone on, the Retina Display of the iPad Air (2019) appears richer, skewing towards a slightly more saturated tone, but with the feature turned off, it achieves complete accuracy in the sRGB color gamut spectrum.
Display measurements and quality
Interface and Functionality
You’ll find a gesture-based interface here, which won’t be a total surprise for any iPad users. Naturally, they’re practical and effective in making iOS 12.2 a versatile tablet platform. The same swipes and multi-finger gestures are in play here, allowing us to access the control center by swiping down from the top-right corner of the UI, switching from app-to-app by using four finger swipes, and even getting back to the home screen at any time with a five-finger pinch gesture. These gestures aren’t new, seeing that we’ve seen them previously before.
While veteran users of the iPad will feel at home right from the onset, anyone new to the iPad may feel a slight learning curve getting to know the ins-and-outs of the navigational experience. After some time, however, these gestures become second nature. And the beauty of iOS is that it favors simplicity in both how the interface is presented, as well as in the feature set of the experience. We’re big fans of being able to have two apps running simultaneously side-by-side to one another. Technically, though, on limited basis because we’re able to run one of four native apps – iMessage, Safari Browser, iTunes, Mail, and Files – which can then be combined with another app. There are different combinations available here, but not all of them will work. Despite that, it’s nice to know that there’s a level of productivity that’s available now with the experience, as opposed to having to constantly switch between apps.
In terms of tablet experiences, Apple has evolved its iOS experience through the various iterations over the years – with this one being obviously more complete. Whether you’re looking to casually doing some work, or just killing time by enjoying a flick or game, iOS 12.2 here on the iPad Air (2019) has everything we need for a tablet.
Processor, Memory, and Performance
Apple’s iPads have always been notoriously responsive, so don’t expect that to change anytime soon either. Powered by Apple’s latest A12 Bionic chipset coupled with 3GB of RAM, the new iPad Air is what you’d expect it to be with its performance – exceptionally responsive! We honestly can’t complain about its performance, as it blows its predecessor out of the water with the synthetic benchmarks. Then again, we should expect it to mop the floor with its performance given the significantly updated chipset it’s packing!
On the surface, your typical operations such navigating around the interface and running apps seem buttery responsive. But the aging iPad Air 2 still delivers buttery results as well with the same tasks. Even though it may be tough to discern the improvements brought along with the new iPad Air, the area where you’ll see the most improvement will be gaming and other processor-heavy functions. In our time using the new iPad Air, it never once showed any indication of stuttering or slowing down with its performance.
Camera
People still use tablets for taking photos and videos, so even though we would typically refrain from this practice, we’ll spend some time going over the camera here. If we’re to look at the specs of the rear camera, it pretty much matches what was offered by the iPad Air 2. What we have here is an 8MP backside illuminated sensor with an aperture of f/2.4. That’s nothing to gloat about in the world of cameras, but then again, we’re dealing with a tablet here. Interestingly enough, it’s the front-facing camera that receives a makeover – featuring an upgraded 7MP camera, up from the iPad Air 2’s pitiful 1.2MP camera.
Image Quality
Okay, we’ll admit that it takes some pleasant looking shots when the lighting conditions are ideal. Under sunny outdoor settings, the iPad Air’s 8MP rear camera performs the best with average looking details accompanied by accurate looking colors. It’s good, but not excellent. When there’s a strong contrast in lighting, it’s useful to have auto-HDR enabled because it tones down the scene so that the highlights aren’t overblown – resulting in a better exposed composition. However, we do notice that HDR shots tend to come out softer in tone.
Not surprisingly, though, its low-light performance is pretty bad. When there’s extreme darkness in the scene, the whole shot just appears dark and severely under-exposed. Details are lost due to this, but there’s barely any to find even when there’s some lighting around. While we do like how noise is kept to a minimum, the sacrifice is seen in the muddy details and under-exposed results. It’s a total wash in our opinion.
Aside from the obnoxious looks you may get from taking snapshots using the iPad Air, we really would still refrain from using it for capturing photos. If it’s the absolute last resort when nothing else is within reach, then by all means use it – especially when the lighting conditions are good. Outside of that, you can pretty much forget about it.