2020 iPad Air 4 Honest Review after 1 week.. By Max Tech

We've spent an entire week with apple's brand new iPad Air 4. So instead of focusing on the specs, like everybody else, do I'm going to explain why apple gave the air the features that it has, including things like the modern design and the all-new touch I'd power button? Because if the new iPad Air 4 does one thing and one thing only, it gives us a glimpse into the future of Apple's iPad lineup. But before we get into all of that, let's talk about what makes the iPad Air seem like such a great deal. As you already know, the biggest standout feature of the new iPad Air is the modern design that came from the pro, with rounded corners on the display and flat edges, just like the iPhone 12, and because of that design. We of course get support for the second generation Apple Pencil, which is an absolute game changer compared to the first one thanks to wireless charging and pairing. We also finally get an USB port, just like the pro has, and this is honestly a very big deal because lightning was so limiting in terms of connecting accessories like storage and displays.

Now, if you're wondering why apple gave the air the same design as the iPad Pro, there are two main reasons. The first one is so that the new air supports the same magic keyboard case as the pro, and this is huge for apple, because, if you're not willing to spend between 800 and a thousand dollars on an iPad Pro apple can instead sell you on the new iPad Air for six hundred dollars and then upsell the magic keyboard and for reason, number two. As soon as the 2018 iPad Pro came out with the new redesign, the iPad Air 3 took on the previous generation, iPad Pro's 10.5 inch chassis, so it seems like the air is the little sibling that gets all the hand-me-downs. Now, apart from the new design, the iPad Air just works. Great, the display is excellent for an LCD panel.

Everything feels very snappy. Performance is incredible with the new a14 bionic chip, which, by the way, is much more powerful than the a14 and the iPhone 12, but I'll get into that in just a moment. A really weird choice was to give the iPad Air 4 a brand-new touch I'd power button, instead of just giving it face. I'd like I personally was expecting, but what makes it even more weird is just how far apple went out of their way to not put face ID on the new air. Two vice presidents from apple called the touch I'd power button in incredible feat of engineering, saying that there was a ton of work trying to figure out how to make the cellular model antennas work with the new touch ID location, along with a bunch of algorithm work as well, and I'm willing to bet that it actually cost apple more money to create this new touch I'd power button than to simply just put face ID on the iPad Air, and this shows just how hard apple was willing to work to keep face ID and iPad Pro exclusive feature.

Now you might be asking why well apple had to be very careful to make sure that the iPad Air is a nice upgrade, but not nice enough to make the iPad Pro look like a bad value compared to the air. That's why the air doesn't get the larger camera bump with the ultra-wide camera and the LIDAR scanner. That's why the air's USB-C port isn't as fast as the one on the pro they even went as far as to put basically the same exact display panel into the air, but they gave it thicker bezels so that it would only be 10.9 inches instead of 11 inches on the pro, and even though it's the same exact panel, the iPad Air doesn't get 120 hertz promotion technology because that's an iPad Pro feature getting even deeper that same exact panel on the air is limited to 500 nits of brightness compared to 600 nits on the pro. This is exactly the same thing they did on the iPhone 12 lineup, the regular 6.1 inch iPhone 12 can only get up to 625 nits of typical brightness compared to 800 on the 6.1 inch iPhone 12. Pro, even though they have identical display panels and identical battery sizes, apple even gave the iPad Air 4 speaker grilles, but it only gets dual stereo speakers compared to quad speakers on the pro, because once again, Apple needs the pro to stand out and to make it even more interesting.

The speaker grills on the new air are quite a bit larger, which makes you think that the quality is better, but it's not just listen to this sound comparison. So in that case, why the new speaker grills on the air? Well, I personally believe that these new, larger grills are going into the 2021 iPad Pro next year and that iPad Pro is also getting the new mini, LED display, which this air obviously doesn't have, and it might not have for a while, since that feature alone will cause people to pay more for the pro, which is apple's end goal now, since Apple tried so hard to avoid giving face ID to the iPad Air. You can bet that this exact touch I'd power button sensor is gonna, go into the rest of apple's lower end iPads like next year's redesigned, iPad Mini and that new mini will also get the redesign with the flat sides, which means it's getting. The second generation Apple Pencil, the new modern display with rounded corners, probably speaker, grilles on both sides, and it's almost certainly getting a price bump from the current 399 dollars to 499 dollars. However, the budget 329 iPad is probably gonna stick with the older design for at least one more year, and I'm willing to bet that the 2021 budget iPad will quite literally have the same frame as the 10.5-inch iPad, air 3. , and I'm willing to bet that the new one is going to come with the 813 bionic chip, and it's going to start at a higher 399.

All of this wild speculation can be made just by analyzing the features that apple put into the iPad Air 4, as well as looking into apple's trends from the past. Like them, recycling older iPad frames into lower end iPads, but getting back into the new iPad Air. Let's talk about the performance of the a14 bionic chip, while the CPU performance is still behind the pros. A12, z chip, the graphics performance is what really matters, because that's the main limitation and with the e14, it's absolutely insane being better than the iPad Pro, which we didn't expect from apple's own performance gain numbers that they gave us during the September event. The a14 chip basically means that games and apps are going to run as smooth as butter on the new iPad.

Air 4. And Apple might seem a bit crazy for making the air so close to the iPad Pro, especially in terms of graphics performance, but keep in mind that the pro hasn't really been upgraded since 2008. Yes, I know there's the new 2020 iPad Pro, but that was barely improved at all. The a12z chip is quite literally the same exact chip as the a12x, except that they enabled the 8th graphics core. That's it.

In my personal opinion, I feel like the only reason we have the 2020 pro with the imposter a12z. Chip is because apple knew that the mini, LED displays would be delayed due to the moved lockdowns, so they slapped on some of the other features that they were working on, and they put it up for sale to take advantage of the lockdown demand. So what I'm trying to say is that, while the new iPad Air looks like an iPad Pro killer, Apple is going to release a new iPad Pro within half a year, and it's going to blow the roof off of this iPad Air, I'm expecting anywhere from 20 000 to 25, 000, metal, graphics, score and geek bench 5, which is rivaling. The graphics performance of apple's, 2400 dollar 16-inch MacBook Pro, and we know that the new iPad Pro is going to have insane performance, because the upcoming Apple Silicon max are going to be built on the a14x chip and Apple needs. Those macs to have as much performance as possible to really prove that they made the right call by ditching intel so based on everything that we can learn from the iPad Air 4, the future of Apple's iPads and the new Apple Silicon mac lineup is looking brighter than ever before, but getting back to the new air is the new iPad Air 4 worth buying right now? Well, if you can't see yourself spending at least eight hundred to a thousand dollars on an iPad Pro, then absolutely yes, the base, 64 gigs of storage is definitely the air's biggest downside, but it's still a great purchase because it falls in line with apple's, modern design scheme looking just like the iPhone 12 lineup.

So it looks up-to-date and current, and on top of that, I don't think that the iPad Pro is getting redesigned just yet. So that means that next year's iPad Air is going to stick with the same design or Apple could even skip next year completely. So, in 4 to 5 years, the iPad Air 4 is still going to look modern, while the older current iPads, like the budget iPad and the current iPad Mini 5, are gonna. Look ancient so right now is the perfect time to buy the new iPad Air. But if you can see yourself buying the 2021 iPad Pro, which will most likely have a shockingly powerful a14x chip and a new mini LED display, then I would honestly just wait another six months to see what the new pro will offer.

Hopefully you guys enjoyed this review and if you did go ahead and tap the like button and click the circle above to subscribe for more videos like this one and definitely check out our iPad Air comparison videos over there, thanks for watching, and we'll see you in the next one.

Source : Max Tech