iPad Air 4 vs iPad Pro 2020/2018 // Performance Test! - Is the Air MORE Powerful? By Noah Herman

Today we're going to be doing an in-depth performance test between the brand new iPad Air 4 and the iPad Pro 11 inches. In order to answer the widely asked question: is the new iPad Air, with a newer processor, technically more powerful than the iPad Pro with an older processor? But of course, before we answer this question, I'd appreciate it. If you leave a like on this video, of course, if it warrants a like I'll leave a comment as well and if you are subscribed be sure to click the bell icon, as it does help the channel out a lot, so before we jump into any real world testing. I first want to go over some synthetic benchmarks between these two tablets and their respective processors or socs so uh. Why not start off with geek bench five to go over single core and multi-core scores? And first up, let's compare single core. We have around 1100 with the iPad Pro and around 1600 with the iPad Air, and this makes perfect sense because these tablets have different processor architecture um.

So if you don't already know the iPad Pro packs, the a12z, which is based off the a12x, which is based off the a12, that is now two years old, so um. Obviously each single core is going to be less powerful than a newer core introduced with the new a14, which has a new five nanometer architecture, meaning that you know the individual transistors are smaller and denser on the die. Basically, what I'm saying is each core is more powerful, so um, you know, there's a difference in score here, and this means, like you know, everyday tasks might feel a little snappier. For example, I've had the iPhone 12 Pro and 12 for a day, and I can already notice that you know opening apps and just you know, whizzing through things it's just a little snappier compared to that of my iPhone 10s and iPhone 11 Pro um. So I mean it's not that big of a deal I would say both of these tablets have a high enough score to where you're not going to notice a huge difference.

But you know this tablet is generally going to feel a little snappier. Sometimes that's what I found between this and my actual daily driver 12.9-inch iPad Pro, which is of course, the bigger version of this. However, even though each individual single core with the a12z is less powerful, there are more of them, meaning you get a higher multi-core score of nearly 4700 compared to the iPad. Air is 4200 is hum. Basically, the a12z is an eight core processor.

The a14 is a six core processor and, of course, Apple will probably release or will absolutely release an a14x which will be eight cores or who knows maybe even more, but that will be designated for a pro tablet or a laptop, or something like that. So we have a more consumer grade like phone oriented chip within this iPad. So, even though, once again, the single core scores are higher, because it's a newer, processor um. This tablet is still more pro because there are more cores which will you know, help you render video faster and maybe game better and from what I can understand. The GPU in here is superior as well, which we could go over with an an tutu benchmark.

So here we have an tutu open on here, and the first thing we can see is a grand score here, so 651 000 with the iPad Air and 700 6000 with the iPad Pro there's a definite lead here, but it's not like a huge amount. I would say here which is interesting. This is a very interesting nuanced test as I'll show you, if you go into this, you know score breakdown. So in the CPU category it's actually pretty close here we have a score of 186 400 with the a12z and a score of 183 000 with the a14. So pretty close, especially considering that this is a six core processor compared to an eight core.

You know older gen, processor, um, then with GPU here. This is what I mentioned before: there's definitely a better GPU within the iPad Pro, because there's a significant gain here: 365 000 over 250 000, so even if CPU is similar GPU once again is not, and we might see that reflected in like gaming, but I don't know I kind of doubt that, but we'll see here's something. Interesting though, and this might be wrong- this might be a fluke. So I'm going to retest this as I'm editing my videos, so I might have like a little correction. If I'm wrong in what I'm saying, but even though the iPad Air is 4 gigs of ram compared to the iPad Pro 6 gigs, it gets a superior memory score of around 112 000 compared to 77 000.

So I mean you would think that the iPad Pro could keep more apps open and there'd be more memory to spare. But apparently this tablet performs better in that regard. Maybe not I'll, let you know, but that's just something I wanted to note here and then with the UX um. This makes sense here, like I said, with these single core scores. Being higher UX just means the overall user interface experience is smoother with this device, even though it doesn't have 120, hertz or anything, but once again, single core scores do allow you to open apps quicker and maybe have you know better, animations and stuff like that.

So that does make sense here, but yeah overall, a nuanced test. I thought I would share with you, but maybe you're thinking to hell with benchmarks, and maybe you're right. Let's do some real world testing. Now, let's open up apps. First, let's see what app opens first here, let's start off with Spotify, it was like a tad a bit quicker with the iPad error 4, because once again, each individual core is a bit quicker.

So let's close this, how about we open app store? This is kind of a harder app to open, sometimes same thing here, just a bit quicker with the iPad Air 4, and I hope you know that both these tablets are connected to the same network. So there's no difference here. I have really decent internet as well. Let's open up how about um settings. I think this is going to be about the same yeah, because this is a pretty light app.

I mean nothing to really flex um your processor's muscles doing um, let's open up the camera real, quick same thing here, just a bit quicker with the a14 um and how about? Let's try one more here's something a little heavier, how about um pub g? So, as you can see here, um this app opened just a tad bit quicker. Even though there are more cores here, I think fewer cores were needed to open this app and since they're faster, it opened up first tier. So there you go. The iPad Air 4 does win app opening speeds, but despite the iPad Air for being a bit snappier in everyday tasks, the iPad Pro does feel you know smoother with its higher refresh rate and personally, you know, being the sweaty tech nerd that I am. I would take the high refresh rate any day over the slightly more snappy nature of the iPad 4.

But, of course, don't spend more money. If you don't have to I mean this is 200 bucks cheaper off the bat. So I don't think it's necessarily worth that and since it's faster I mean that's just another reason to buy this. If you don't care about high refresh rate to begin with, so now that I have like a normal amount of apps opens in the background I want to see which tablet handles. You know background tasks better.

So let's go to the settings app first here both did not have to refresh that's good um, let's again go to another app PUBG mobile both had so no actually, both didn't really have to refresh they're just at a different stage in the opening process. So that's good. Let's try Spotify, no refreshing there uh what else here? Let's do camera nope, nothing there. Let's try suffusion, no refreshing, so um. Of course, if you have more and more apps, I would assume that the two gigs of ram will come in clutch or will make a slight difference, but I mean like having this amount of apps open in the background, I would say, is pretty typical, and I'm not noticing really any difference in refreshing.

So, even though this tablet has two gigs less of overall memory, um, it's still performing equally well, and maybe the better memory performance in an tutu reflects that another real world task we can compare, is note-taking or just drawing in general, with the Apple Pencil. So I have two here, and we can just kind of do that. Ambidextrously, that's not even a word, so we can do that and even though the iPad Pro has a higher refresh rate display, as you can see here I mean I'm looking at a monitor in front of me, which is 60 hertz. I don't see any difference in terms of the latency or anything and yes, I'm scribbling. I can't write and think and talk.

At the same time I will have a stroke on camera, but anyway yeah I mean, despite the fact that the iPad Pro does feel a bit more lifelike in that regard. When you're writing, because you know higher refresh rate- does make animation or any movement more fluid. The latency or just the overall smoothness is identical between these two tablets, so I wouldn't buy one over the other. If you're worried about latency or something it's the exact same, the Apple Pencil second gen performs beautifully with both, but of course it does look a little more lifelike with the iPad Pro. I also want to quickly demo multitasking with these two tablets here.

So I can, you know, swipe up on the dock here equally quickly. As you can see, and then I can drag over an app like Spotify, for example, over to the right. It's the same experience, I'm not noticing any lag or any noticeable difference between these two once again, even though the iPad Air might be a little more snappy in single core oriented tasks, I mean I'm not noticing any difference here in terms of the overall smoothness and resizing of the windows. I can even open up another instance of safari here and drag it right in the middle and um. As you can see.

If I can do this um there's just no difference, I mean they look like they just snap to each corner or a corner equally quickly. Like yeah, I can't notice a difference here. So if you are big on this, no difference between these two tablets, but now, let's begin to flex some of our creative muscles with Lightroom. Here I took this photo today with the iPhone 12 Pro by the way, with the new 52 millimeter telephoto lenses, so very happy with the performance so far, but anyway, let's do some minor adjustments here, I'll first start off with the iPad Air. We can, you know, maybe adjust exposure.

We can do contrast. Furthermore, we can do you know uh saturation temperature, all that stuff, just you know like I'm, gonna, go crazy. Just you know doing some adjustments here just to see how fast the uh tablet can cope. Texture, too, you know I can. You know, drag that around here detail I can do sharpening, so I mean it acclimates very quickly to that any adjustments here, let's also do the same with my iPad Pro, so we can do that here.

We can do contrast. We can do highlights. Furthermore, we can do you know saturation, we can do texture and how about sharpness as well. So I mean I'm not seeing really any difference in terms of how quickly these two tablets can you know edit your photo like there's no delay, I mean you can also preview. The changes here, as you can see here, both render the differences equally quickly.

As far as I can tell maybe one's a tiny bit slower. Maybe the iPad Pro is a tiny bit slower, because I know that photo editing is more of a single core oriented task, but from what I can tell identical performance here, so you don't have to buy the iPad Pro to have a better. You know a photo editing experience. I would say next up: let's do some 4k editing within suffusion. I have some iPad Air 4 clips that I airdropped from my Mac.

Actually I haven't touched them yet, but we can play them back and of course, both of these tablets are going to play them beautifully. You know like no delay, no lagging it's going to play it at you know the same frame rate or the original frame rate 30 fps here no problems. I can scrub through no problem here. Let me add some effects to both or a couple of these. You know clips here, and then we're going to render and see which tablet performs better, because, generally speaking, I don't- or I haven't noticed like a major difference or any difference in terms of just editing stuff, and you know resizing and adding effects, but we're going to do it anyway, so I'm going to go into the effects' menu.

Let's do like how about contrast with both here just to spice things up. Maybe I might bring the brightness up with both here. Both react very quickly, if not immediately to that, and I'm making this look like crap, but I am just adding effects just to make these tablets work a little harder um. So let's do that. Let's also go to the other clip here.

Maybe we can regime it that's possible, so I'll regime we can do like 80 percent or 8.8 x, 0.8 x, here as well, and then how about we, you know, add you know, contrast once again and then uh you know bring up the brightness or lower. It may be. How about that um? You know increase contrast, yes, sure saturation as well, and then we can go back to the third clip and then do something else as well. Maybe like speed it up, although I would probably never do this um right. Rarely do this, we can, you know, bring it up, so I don't know like 2x, maybe- and I think there might be like a zooming effect that you can do so.

How about I do like zoom in on here too, and then we can go back, and then we can kind of scrub through that. So like this zooms in nice. So now that we have these edited timelines, we can do an export test to see which one will finish, rendering this project first. So we can, you know, do movie and then choose you know, photos here and then make sure it's in 4k how about we increase the quality to ultra. Why not um, I mean the wrong Apple Pencil here, and then we can do h.264 um both are like a similar size, 3.4 gigabytes and um yeah. Let the races be in here.

So, as you can see here, the iPad Pro is pulling ahead by a bit because again it has more cores, even though they are individually poor performing compared to that of the six core a14. So, even though, once again, the processor architecture is way better or significantly better, with the newer processor, if you have less chorus, you just have less performance. I basically said the same thing twice, but, as you can see it is you know coming to fruition here with this rendering test, but that is not to say that the iPad Air isn't something you should consider. If you want to start doing iPad video editing with suffusion, I mean everything else like the general performance, the scrubbing the playback is the same as far as I can tell, but you know if rendering speeds are important to you, and if time is money, then the iPad Pro might be the right choice for you. And finally, let's do some gaming here, let's first start off with Minecraft, which is like a pretty lighting game, I would say not the hardest to run.

I mean even my iPod touch with the a4 could run this okay, so we'll make a new creative world here, um, and we'll continue, and we will create, and we'll see which one you know renders first, of course, each Minecraft world is different, so this is not the most accurate test ever, but still you know, generally speaking, I would assume that Minecraft worlds are similar in size and whatever I'm just going to stop talking, because I'm not qualified, but, as you can see, it rendered a bit quicker here with the iPad Air, maybe because the world was, you know easier to render. Maybe this seat is more difficult, but maybe the a14 is just more geared towards gaming, but anyway, let's do some. You know walking around here very smooth. As you can see, we can, you know, fly and pan down, and sometimes apple tablets or Apple devices in general, just are not smooth with certain games. For some reason, I've seen like my iPad pros be like acting different, like my 11 inch, and my 12.9 inch would like be weird and not be the same in terms of smoothness, but I don't know with this: I'm not noticing it at all. It's very, very smooth, and let's see if this is the same case here I can, you know, fly around here and as we saw in an tutu, the GPU is better here, but I don't know like it's a little more stutter.

That's weird, like I said, like interesting performance between the two, but I mean very smooth here as well. I would assume this is maybe more of a CPU intensive game. It seems to be the case at least on PC, and this game has evolved more and more to be or to resemble more of you know like that of java. So I mean maybe the Minecraft performance is a bit better with the iPad Air. You tell me, but I mean either way.

You're going to have a great gaming experience with both here, although I will say, I'm noticing some lag with the iPad Pro. Maybe it's just a fluke, maybe it's just like my app, I don't know, but like seems so far, the iPad Air 4 might be a little better in this game and finally, let's play something more heavy like PUBG mobile, which you know, of course, relies on the GPU and CPU and also the internet connectivity. So we can like to run around here. Let's also look at the settings that we have on here, so we can turn on graphics. Let's do ultra HD um or let's just do HDR here, because I can't do ultra HD.

We can do ultra graphics here, maybe um. We can do realistic as well. Let's do that here. Okay, new settings have been so pretty smooth frame rates with the air 4. We can run around here as well.

I might even be in the same lobby, maybe a little less smooth with the iPad Air, as I did crank up the know, graphics, settings and, as we saw in an tutu, the GPU within the air or the pro is, you know, definitely better, but we'll see here, I'm going to try to or attempt to play pub g um simultaneously on two iPads, so I've never done that before I'm going to unfollow this person decent performance on both I mean I really enjoyed my time gaming with the um iPad Air, but I mean from what I can sell. I think the iPad Pro might be a little smoother. You tell me, of course I can be wrong. My eyes might be deceiving me, but again it wouldn't make sense, as the GPU, as I keep saying, is better within the iPad Pro which has a know. You know more beefy higher core count with the a12z, even though the architecture is older, so um I'll just continue to repeat talking points as tech YouTubers do, but here we are falling towards the earth.

This is the exact same map I think or very similar, maybe I'm going to like. Could I maybe fight myself? I wonder what if I landed like right next to like my other self here, wait. Is that me now can't be I'm not noticing really any huge difference again, maybe smoother with the iPad Pro. I don't know you guys. Let me know here but yeah from what I can tell not a big enough difference to like justify buying the pro or the air over the other, like I wouldn't be like.

If you want a game with both these tablets, and you have a preference for one or the other, I think your experience is going to be really decent with both here but yeah. Once again, you be the judge. You tell me if you can notice a difference here. They have identical settings once again, you know HDR and I think ultra graphics, not like the actual ultra resolution or anything but yeah, and that about wraps up this performance test. I know it wasn't perfect, but hopefully I've.

Given you an idea of how these tablets perform synthetically and realistically, and hopefully that helps you decide which one is right for you, that's sort of the central theme of what I do in this channel. I want you to make an informed tech buying decision, and you know, obviously, both these tablets are great. They are meant for different. You know consumers, I would say you know, of course, the iPad Air is a bit cheaper and I plan on you know comparing these two in a full, proper comparison, either tomorrow or coming soon, so I'll go more into that, but yeah I mean fantastic performance on both and just seeing the sheer power with a14 makes me super excited to see what's coming with a14x or any variants of the a14 that we might see in silicon max and iPads etc. , and that about wraps things up here.

Once again, I hope this video was helpful and, of course, leave a like if you want to comment and subscribe for more content like this expect some iPhone 12 content coming from me very soon. I just got these today, and I'm going to be testing them and comparing them to older, gen phones and hopefully reviewing them as well and as always, I'm Noah, and I will catch you all in the next one. You.

Source : Noah Herman