GOOD AND BAD 10 Days with the iPad Air 4 By Tech Gear Talk

This year I ended up getting all three iPads: the iPad 8, the iPad Air 4 and the 12.9-inch iPad Pro, but I was probably the most excited about the iPad Air 4, because I think it could offer the best balance of price and performance. I just spent 10 days using it as my primary device, so anything from browsing the web watching YouTube, checking and responding to emails. Gaming Zoom calls and editing some photos and video. The only thing that I still did on my main workstation is edit the videos for the channel and my web design work, but for everything else, the iPad Air 4. So let's see how it went what's up guys Saki here and welcome to another tech gear talk today, I'm going to tell you about my first 10 days of using the iPad Air 4. Spoiler alert.

It was pretty good in particular. One frustration that I experienced with the iPad 8 didn't happen with the iPad Air 4, which for me was a big deal and because I already used the iPad 8 and the 2020 iPad Pro. I was super excited to see what the experience will be like with the iPad Air 4. One of the things that I was most interested in is the performance of the a14 bionic chip. I already had some experience with it with the new iPhone 12 and 12 pro, but I don't ever feel like.

I push my iPhones as hard as I push my iPads, so this was me really putting it to the test. Let's get to it. To start off, I learned my lesson with the iPad 8, where I first tried to use it without a keyboard and then, after 30 minutes had to drive back to the store to pick one up, because the iPad Air 4 is compatible with the magic keyboard. I picked up one of those right off the bat for me if I'm replying to a quick email or if I'm searching for something on the web. The on-screen keyboard is fine, but with the amount of typing that I do even just replying to comments, just doesn't work and forget things like scripting videos or taking notes or doing research.

I need a real keyboard. I even think that typing on my iPhone is faster than on an iPad, because it's a smaller device and I can just use both my thumbs and I seem to just be able to type faster, but when doing work, I'm always going to opt for an external keyboard. Furthermore, I just love the ergonomics of having my fingers rest against actual keys and there's no question that I type faster, and then I make fewer mistakes than I do when I'm using the on-screen keyboard. Furthermore, I also love having the ability to work in a more traditional and organic way with things like copying and pasting having arrow keys and using keyboard shortcuts, like command tab to quickly switch between my open apps. These are the types of things that I'm used to with my desktop and laptop workflow, and now I can do them with the iPad Air 4.

Back to the magic keyboard. I like that it communicates with the iPad Air 4 using the smart connector on the side, because it doesn't require any pairing, and it immediately worked unlike Bluetooth, keyboards, which you do need to pair. I also like that it has an USB pass-through port on the bottom, so that when I'm working on my desk, the power cable is not hanging from the iPad, and it's flat against the desk. One thing that I did activate for the magic keyboard is the tap to click, so I don't have to actually press the trackpad. I can just simply tap it, and I've said before that.

I'm not a huge fan of touchpads when using laptops and that's true, but I did find myself using this touchpad. More and more, I ended up switching between using the touchscreen and the touchpad on the magic keyboard. Depending on what I was doing, I have to admit that I kind of enjoyed it. One other reason that I like having the magic keyboard is that it helps protect the iPad Air 4. With my iPad 8, I ended up getting the Logitech slim folio, because the apple smart keyboard for that model doesn't have a back with the magic keyboard.

You don't need to worry about it, the front and the back are protected. You still have access to all the ports in the buttons, and you can still charge the second generation Apple Pencil which I'll get to in a minute. I'm still trying out some other boards and different cases which I'll tell you about at the end of this video but like with the iPad 8 and the pro for me without a keyboard. The whole idea of using an iPad as a main device or as a laptop replacement for work or school is a non-starter without a keyboard. There is just too large a gap in terms of functionality, and it wouldn't replace a laptop for me for casual use like browsing the web or watching YouTube reading books playing games.

Things like that sure. That's not a problem, but if you plan on typing, add some type of keyboard and remember to factor that into the price when you're doing a comparison with the laptop. As an aside, if I wasn't planning on typing, so I didn't bring the magic keyboard. I would still use a case to protect the iPad Air for because it's a device that I plan on keeping for years, because it's so powerful, and I didn't want to risk anything happen to it right now, I'm using this case from ESR. I think it's called the sentry case, I'm not really sure.

And basically what happens. Are you open this up, and you can see there is this little flap on the back, and there are seven spots here, so you can set that up at whatever height you want, and this magnet these two little magnets right here are extremely strong? So once you pick a level, and it fits in their like that's, not going anywhere, unlike some other cases that I used, they also have this spot here for the Apple Pencil. So when the iPad Air 4 is in there, this is actually a magnet, so you can put and then like it'll, attach and charge this second generation Apple Pencil. But if you're traveling, one of the things that I found about the magic keyboard is that the pencil can still snap off. So when you're traveling, if you don't need to charge it, you can actually put this in this little sleeve, and then you're all set.

The corners on this are extremely strong. It's like a hard plastic on all four corners, and, like I said I, I'm not super careful. So that's why I was using this one all right back to my experience with the iPad Air 4, an area where I definitely enjoyed using this over my Dell XPS 13 or my Mac air is the touch screen. This screen on the iPad Air 4 is fully laminated, meaning that the display panel, the touch layer and in the cover glass, are laminated into one single piece of display and glass, and this makes the screen thinner. There is no air gap and the image looks like it's painted on the screen, rather than appearing to be under a sheet of glass.

This is one of the advantage that the iPad Air 4 and the iPad Pro share over the iPad 8. The screen itself is absolutely beautiful. It's a DCI p3 display, which is a wider color gamut, meaning that there are more options or variations of each color, and it's able to reproduce color more accurately. This is a big plus when I'm editing photos and videos where I know that I can really trust what I see on the screen. It also has an anti-reflective coating, which definitely makes a difference when compared to something like the iPad 8.

Now in terms of overall image quality, I would definitely choose the iPad Air 4 over my Dell XPS 13 or my Mac air, conceding that both are older models. The image quality on the iPad Air 4 is just it's so crisp. On top of that, we got the whole touch functionality, which, in and of itself, is an advantage for an iPad over a non-touch screen laptop. Now this isn't true for every activity. It's not always going to matter.

So if you're sitting there watching a two-hour movie or if you're typing a lot, it may not be a big deal but, like I said before, I'm not always a huge fan of trackpad, so in general, having touch functionality is an easy win for the iPad Air 4. When I work on my desk, I still attach my iPad to my Logitech MX master s2, which I use with both my main workstation and my laptop. It's great that we now have full mouse functionality with right click, selecting text using the scroll wheel, pretty much every functionality that I'm used to is now available with the iPad Air 4. For me that eliminates one of the advantages that I always felt a laptop or a desktop had over any iPad. Since I'm comparing.

I also want to bring up multitasking. This is another relatively new upgrade to iPadOS, and it's great that you can now multitask with a split screen plus have an additional app open in a slide in window on the right. This is super helpful when I'm doing research in safari, while typing in Google Docs or, if I'm watching a video and taking notes or if I want to have YouTube playing while I surf the web. Of course, these are things that I can do on a laptop, but the way the iPadOS automatically manages the screen real estate is actually really intuitive, like with other iPads, an area where the iPad Air 4 is definitely still lacking. In my opinion, is file management.

It continues to get better with time, but it's still not quite where I'd like for it to be, and I'll just sit back and wait patiently for apple to continue to make improvements. Now, moving on to another big advantage for the iPad Air 4 over a laptop or a desktop, the Apple Pencil, I do a lot of photo editing and for a couple of years I've been thinking about getting a dedicated drawing tablet or a pen display from Wacom. If you don't do a lot of photo editing, and you don't know why that's important, there are tasks like trying to trace an outline or to make more precise selections that you can do with a mouse, but the Apple Pencil makes life so much easier and, like I said there are more advanced, dedicated pen displays which definitely have their advantages. But for most of what I do, I love having the flexibility of doing this at my desktop. If I want, or literally anywhere else and for me overall, it's a better value because I would have an iPad or another tablet regardless.

So this saves me from having to buy and then learn how to use another device. Now that I've been using the Apple Pencil for a few months, I just can't see going back like when I go back and use Photoshop on my desktop, and I'm trying to do those specific things that I was talking about. It's really a pain point. Now the iPad Air 4 uses the second generation pencil, which is just better all around. I, like the flat edge that it has because it feels like I have more control over the pencil, and I also like the fact that I can assign functionality to the double tap on the flat edge which, by default switches between my current tool and the eraser and then, of course, it's great that it charges and pairs wirelessly rather than having to be plugged into the lightning port.

Now. Finally- and this goes back to the fully laminated screen, because the image appears to be painted on the screen when you write or draw on the screen, the tip of the pencil feels like it's touching the image rather than being offset a little so for the average user. This is probably not going to matter, but if you plan on doing a lot of drawing, then you're really going to like this user experience before I move on to one of the things that really frustrated me about the iPad 8, but not with the iPad Air 4. If you like what you've seen so far and have gotten value from this video, let me know by giving it a thumbs up. Let me know what kind of content you like so that I can make more of it and if it's your first time here, hit to subscribe and notification buttons, so you can stay up to date on all the latest gear and tutorials okay.

So one of the biggest decisions when buying an iPad or an iPhone is how much storage you're going to need the iPad Air 4 comes in two sizes, 64 gigabytes and 256 gigabytes. For me, this came down to having the ability to use an external SSD. One of the issues that I ran into with the iPad 8 was that my largest SSD, the one terabyte SanDisk extreme pro, which I love, wouldn't work, even when I was using the camera adapter with the lightning cable for power. So even though I was plugged in I kept getting an error about how the accessory requires too much power, I did find two other SSDs that would work the Samsung t7 and a really inexpensive pioneer, but no matter what I did. The iPad 8 wouldn't work with the SanDisk.

Well, the iPad Air 4 has no issues, and it worked beautifully with a one terabyte SanDisk. It worked both when I supplied power and even without meaning it was just plugged into the USB port. That means that the drive was able to get all the power that it needed directly from the iPad. To me, that's a big advantage to the iPad Air 4, because, first, I don't need to bring or carry another dongle and second, I could actually still power the iPad airflow through the magic keyboard while using the one terabyte SSD, if I needed to now when it comes to using an external SSD. I do want to mention that you need to check that the types of things that you want to do will actually work with external files.

For example, I have a ton of external image files, but when I want to work on them in Lightroom, the iPad will first import all the files, which means they're using up local storage. So, of course I can edit them on the iPad, export them and then remove them from local storage. But that's something to remember because at this point you can't reference those files if they're on the SSD and another example, is video files. So in suffusion you can connect the SSD, and you can see all your files. You can preview them, you can play them, and it's fine they're not on the iPad.

But as soon as you drag one onto the timeline, the iPad will then first take that file import. If Is got into local storage and then whether you use three seconds or five minutes of that file, it copies the entire file. There is a workaround for that. So I'll create another video, but it requires a specific type of external drive to me if you're someone who does photo or video editing go ahead and get to 256 gigabytes, you'll, always appreciate having that extra flexibility and not having to worry about offloading files. As often another area where I felt like the iPad Air 4 crushed, my laptops is with video calls.

There are so many more zoom google meet and Skype calls and the camera on the iPad Air 4 just crushes both of my laptops, the FaceTime camera is a much higher resolution and just all around it's a better sensor and the image is much cleaner. It's not as good as the iPhone 12, but it's clearly better than my laptops. Also, the stereo speakers on the iPad Air 4 are surprisingly good and worked really well for both video calls and when viewing content and finally, the better microphone and the ability to have the iPad in both portrait and landscape modes, just made it a more versatile option for video calls, depending on the type of look that I was going for next, I wanted to talk about the size, portability and just general everyday use which didn't really fit into any other category now, starting with size. The iPad Air 4 is about the same size as the iPad 8, but it has a larger screen because of the smaller bezels. It's definitely smaller, thinner and lighter than both of my laptops, whether I just take the iPad Air 4 by itself, which is really never other than when I shoot videos, but it's still smaller, even if I include the magic keyboard now for me.

As far as everyday use, I found that I didn't miss using my laptops and even after I ended my trial period. I still didn't feel like I was reaching for my laptops and I think that's because the iPad Air 4 can do everything that I do on a laptop and more and when I actually need a real workstation with multiple monitors. If I'm doing video editing or web work, then I still sit down at my main desk. I would never do that on a laptop then to have with me around the house or take with me when I leave the iPad. Air 4 has a smaller form factor, even when I needed a keyboard and then definitely when I didn't when I was just hanging out if I was just watching YouTube or Netflix or surfing the web or reading, it's a lot more convenient.

If you look at my main, desktop you'll notice that I have two vertical monitors in the middle and that's because reading or surfing the web, I rarely need more with the screen. I'd rather have a longer screen that requires less scrolling, not something that's super easy to do on the iPad Air for any iPad right. You just turn it, and now it's in portrait mode, and it's not something that I can do on my laptop. So I feel like I have to do a lot of scrolling and that in and of itself, I think, gives the iPad Air 4 a major boost in this comparison. Now next, having the touch screen for everyday use is just a better user experience and the fact that I now have a trackpad if I want it again the gates and advantage that the laptop may have had in the past, I find myself using it the most when I'm typing, so my hands are already off of the screen and I really think we're going to see an apple laptop with a touch screen pretty soon.

Now. Moving on, I like the fact that the iPad Air 4 uses an USB c port instead of a lightning port. In addition to the enhanced external storage capabilities that I mentioned earlier, I was able to use a single USB hub to really expand the functionality without needing multiple dongles and to switch them depending on what I needed. Next, let's talk a little about gaming, which is something that I found myself coming back too once. I started using this year's iPad lineup.

First, the a14 bionic chip is a beast. So even going from the a12 on the iPad 8 to the a14, I'm noticing a significant increase in speed when opening something like PUBG, like with the iPad 8, I had a ton of fun playing, and now I'm on a faster and even more responsive iPad. It's still a 60 hertz display. So it's not the 120 hertz refresh rate that we're getting on the iPad Pro. So, if that's something that you need to have, but you like this form factor, you could check out the 11 11-inch iPad Pro, which comes with promotion, and again it's a very similar form factor.

I played the same types of games that I played on the iPad, 8 plus a few new ones and, like I said, I could definitely notice the additional processing power. I also used the iPad alone and with a controller for games that allowed it, there are even times when I added an external monitor just for fun. Overall, the a14 is an outstanding chip and for the price it probably delivers about as much power as you can get the graphics in every game that I tested were super crisp and clean. There was no lagging at all, and again I enjoyed the beautiful display and the anti-reflective coating, I'm working on a few follow-up videos where I get more into the detail for specific games and some comparisons, but I'm happy to report that, if you're looking for a super powerful mobile gaming iPad, this is definitely an option that I would check out and gaming was another area where I noticed the improved speakers over the iPad 8. , so playing PUBG definitely felt like the iPad Air 4 provided a more immersive audio experience.

It's not quite as good as the quad speaker system on the iPad Pro, but it's better than the iPad 8. Alright. So all together, I had a blast with the iPad Air 4. And as long as I get to add a keyboard, I'd have no problems replacing a laptop for what I do. If you're looking at the 256 gig model, then it's 150 less than the iPad Pro 11, and you'd really need to think about whether the additional features in the iPad Pro are worth the extra cash for what you do and don't worry I'll have a detailed comparison up soon.

I think that for most users this is the perfect mid to upper mid-range device, and it will do more than what you need when comparing with a laptop, definitely look at your keyboard options and the cost of additional storage. If you plan on getting some to make sure that you're making a fair comparison for what I do and how I used it, the iPad Air 4 has the advantage with the beautiful screen and the touch screen functionality. On top of that, you get the more advanced, gen, 2 Apple Pencil, with better charging and some additional functionality over the gen 1 model. Couple that, with a fully laminated display, and you're, getting an awesome tablet for drawing taking notes and photo editing. And personally, I don't feel like I need to get a dedicated pen display.

There was no game that I tried to play where I felt like the iPad. Air 4 was under powered, and it consistently delivered excellent, smooth graphics with no lagging moving on. It's really a no contest when it comes to video calls. The iPad Air 4 is just all around better than both of my laptops, with a much better camera, better microphone and better speakers, and again I want to mention that the speakers were very good for both gaming and consuming content. The downsides so far is similar to the other iPad models.

We have a much less sophisticated file management system, and we don't have the ability to expand internal storage now bonus in this area for the iPad Air 4 is that I was able to use every external SSD that I tried and to power it without any dongles. As of now, I can definitely see myself using the iPad Air 4 instead of a laptop, but I want to know what you think. Do you think this iPad is a good fit for what you plan on doing? Do you think you might go with the more advanced iPad Pro or do you think that it's more than what you need and the iPad 8 is plenty I'll put links in the description to where you can buy the iPad Air for as well as the accessories that I mentioned in this video? I really hope I was able to give you a good overall impression of what it was like to use the iPad Air 4 for 10 days. If I did please, let me know by giving this video a thumbs up, tweet it share it, and if you haven't yet join the community by hitting to subscribe and notification buttons, you can always find me on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook at techyeartalk. You know what I always say: buy it nice or buy it twice.

Good luck and see you soon, all right! So now, back to my experience with the iPad Air 4, an area where yeah an area where I just fling this right across the entire, don't do that don't do that to your poor apple, pencil.

Source : Tech Gear Talk