iPad Air is here, but what iPad should you buy? By CNET

Here's, the good news, I think I found the best iPad. Here's the bad news, it's the end of October, the new iPad Air is here, but Apple's iPad lineup has staggered across the entire 2020 year. In the spring, there was the iPad Pro in September. There was the 8th generation iPad. Now, there's the iPad Air. It can get really confusing shopping for iPads, especially since you probably already bought one for your kid or for somebody else for back to school or whatever the iPad Air is a replacement to the air that came out last year.

It's the mid-range model. Let's keep you sane and figure out which iPad you should buy. Let's start with the air, the air is right in between the entry level iPad and the pro models, and it's closer to the pro models. It has a lot of the same design, a nice larger display with less bezel, and it also has a faster processor. It has an a14 processor, which is the same as the one.

That's on the iPhone, 12 and 12 pro. It also has support for all of apple's. Second generation accessories, the Apple Pencil 2, the magic keyboard, which is a fantastic keyboard and trackpad and all the stuff that fit the iPad Pro going back to 2018. It also has USB, which allows it to connect to a lot more dongles charge faster and have faster throughput for data. That's pretty fantastic.

What it doesn't have compared to the pro are a couple of things: one there's no face ID. Instead, there's touch ID there's a little button here. The power button now has touch ID, which is the first time apple's done that. But a lot of other manufacturers have already done that on their phones and tablets. Putting a fingerprint sensor there.

Apple works just perfectly fine. The only thing is, you have to know where the orientation is. I found that registering both my left and my right finger allowed me to easily scan when I was in landscape or in portrait mode. The other thing this doesn't have is the new LIDAR scanner, that's on the iPad Pro and the iPhone 12 Pro models, that's something that you'd really only use if you're going to be thinking about scanning a space and turning it into a cad model or something like that everyday people. I don't think you'd use that this also has slightly slower data throughput, but at five gigabits per second, it's still pretty fast.

Also, the cameras on this aren't quite as good as the pro model, but in my use they seem perfectly fine and technically the iPad Pro model has higher quality, microphones and quad speakers versus the dual speakers on this, but the display looks fantastic. The speakers seem fine, and the whole experience seemed close enough to an iPad Pro that I didn't miss the iPad Pro. So I used this as my go-to device and I love the 11-inch iPad Pro size, which is what this is. This feels like the perfect size tablet to carry around with you. Now, let's get to price.

That's the thing here. The iPad Air starts at six hundred dollars. That's a lot more money than the 329 that the eighth generation iPad, which is the basic iPad costs now, admittedly, on that basic iPad you're going to want to bump up to 120 gigabytes storage, which is 430 still this one with 64 gigs of storage at the 600 configuration doesn't feel ideal either. You'd probably want to go up to the next level, which, unfortunately, is 256 gigabytes, which should be more than ample. It costs you 750 dollars, then you're talking accessories, you'd, probably want a pencil to be able to do some nice sketches on this iPad.

That's 130! You also would want to type on this. I would think, if you're going to use it as a general laptop replacement or laptop alternative apple's accessories are expensive there in the new magic keyboard, which has a great trackpad. That's a 300 accessory which is half the price of the starting price of the iPad Air. There are other alternatives out there, but you could be pushing a thousand dollars on this iPad Air easily. If you think about getting all those extras.

I still think the iPad Air is the best iPad for just about anyone who's. Looking for a fancy iPad. The iPad Pro now is something that I would consider waiting on until apple, possibly updates it next year with features like maybe an OLED display and a faster, maybe a14z processor. That would be even beefier speed wise. This iPad Air is faster in single core tasks than the iPad Pro from the spring, but it's slower in multi-core tasks, kind of confusing and really what are you using an iPad for if you're using it for things like reading email browsing the web, the entry level 8th generation iPad, which has an a12 processor, is great.

That's actually pretty much the internal components of what we're in the 2019 iPad Air, which had a much more throwback style with a home button that was touch ID and more bezels. So this new bump up version while more expensive is nicer. You could really consider the entry-level iPad as last year's iPad Air, and you get a lot of bang for the buck. So in that sense, I am kind of pushing you to consider the 8th generation iPad, but if you really want to get yourself a nice iPad that would last you a bunch of years and get all the pro features more or less, without spending quite as much this iPad Air is that it's pretty fantastic, but it could also get pretty pricey.

Source : CNET