iPad Air 2
It's
even thinner and lighter than last time around and to a noticeable extent. The
screen is better, with more vibrant colours, it's more powerful thanks to its
A8X processor and the battery life holds up just as well. It even benefits from
Touch ID and Apple Pay and while these features aren't as exciting here as they
are on phones they're still nice to have.
In
short the iPad Air 2 really is the complete package and while you can always
find things to niggle about there are no significant flaws. In the time since the
original iPad Air launched everything else is still struggling to match it and
yet Apple has managed to raise the benchmark higher still. Everyone else really
has their work cut out if the iPad Air 2 is going to be unseated from the
number one spot. The new iPad Air gets an improved A8X processor, better
rear and front-facing cameras, an even thinner and lighter design, an
anti-reflective screen, a Touch ID fingerprint sensor, and more built-in
storage at higher configurations than last year.
But The Air 2 isn't a big change from last year's iPad in terms of
overall function; battery life remains the same, although its battery life is
already pretty good. Audio playback via speakers makes the thin metal body
resonate more than before. The
Bottom Line The iPad Air 2 is a nice refinement and finesse of last year's
model, with a bevy of tweaks, enhancements, a much faster processor, and the
welcome addition of Touch ID. Simply put: it's still the gold standard for
tablets.
Weight: 437g | Dimensions: 240 x 169.5 x 6.1mm | OS: iOS 8.1 | Screen size: 9.7-inch | Resolution: 1536 x 2048 | CPU: Triple-core 1.5 GHz | RAM: 2GB | Storage: 16/64/128GB | Battery: 7340mAh | Rear camera: 8MP | Front camera: 1.2MP
Lenovo Miix
The
Lenovo Miix, a 10-inch Windows 8 tablet with its own keyboard case, is like the
consumer version of the ThinkPad Tablet 2, with slightly different accessory
hardware.The Lenovo Miix is smart, light, reasonably well-made and comes with
an excellent keyboard to help you to use it like a laptop. The potential is
here for it to be a great mobile work machine, provided you don't need to run
anything too intensive.The 10.1-inch, 1,366x768-pixel-resolution, 16:9 IPS
display supports five-finger multitouch, and the 10.1-millimeter-thin,
1.27-pound design resembles that of other thin and lower-power Windows 8
tablets.The Lenovo Miix uses the Intel Atom Z2760 processor, which is a 1.8GHz
dual-core chip, though it does feature Hyper-Threading, so can act as four
virtual cores..This is all backed up with 2GB of RAM, which is very favourable
compared to other tablets.64GB of eMMC storage, a microSD card slot that can
support an additional 32GB of memory, a front-facing 1.3-megapixel camera, a
Micro-USB 2.0 connector, a Micro-HDMI port, and Bluetooth 4.0 plus 802.11n
Wi-Fi. The front-facing camera's only 1 megapixel, suitable for Web chat but
not much else. There's an optional 3G micro-SIM port, too.Battery life is
respectable, but not outstanding. We got
just over 6.5 hours (400mins) of streaming video out of the Miix, and you could
probably stretch that closer to eight hours for lighter work, but that’s not
particularly impressive when larger Haswell laptops can now offer 10 or more
hours between charges.
Price:$550
VS Apple
iPad Air The
Air is a tangible upgrade over the previous, fourth-generation iPad, no longer
in production and so banished to the annals of history. The new iPad slots
right in where its predecessor left off, priced at $499 for a lowly 16GB, $599
for 32GB, $699 for 64GB, and $799 for the maximum 128GB configuration. The iPad
Air delivers more performance and comparable battery life in an attractive and
impossibly thin-and-light package. An improved front-facing camera makes
FaceTiming look better, and the Retina Display still looks great.
But, The Touch ID
fingerprint scanner, introduced on the iPhone 5S, is sadly absent here, meaning
you’ll still have to type in a passcode with every unlock and a password with
every purchase. Starting at $499 for 16GB, it’s still expensive compared with
the competition.
Performance:
The
iPad Air shares the same processor with Apple’s flagship phone, albeit with a
slight bump in clock speed. While the 5S runs at 1.3GHz the Air runs at
1.39GHz. It can achieve this because of the increased space and improved heat
dissipation of the Air compared to the much smaller iPhone 5S.
Indeed, before we go
into the detail about performance it’s worth noting that the iPad Air manages
to keep its cool with consummate ease. Even when running intensive 3D games and
apps for hours it barely breaks a sweat and, therefore, neither do your hands.
In practice, the iPad
Air is blisteringly fast. Apps open instantly and games like Infinity Blade 3
look sumptuous and run smoothly. The benefits of having a SoC means that the
GPU can be used to tackle compute tasks, which makes video editing and compute
intensive apps, like AutoCAD, show no hint of slowdown.
The iPad Air performs
59% faster than the iPad 4 in the 3D Mark Ice Storm Unlimited CPU and GPU test
and 91% faster in Geekbench 3 tests. The Peacekeeper browser test, which
assesses web browsing performance, shows that the Air trounces its predecessor
by being more than twice as fast. It's also faster than the stonking Snapdragon
800 processor on the likes of the Sony Xperia Z Ultra and Google Nexus 5. We're
talking matter of degrees here, but the difference is there all the same.
Battery life:
Battery
life on the iPad Air is quoted at "Up to 10 hours of surfing the web on
Wi-Fi, watching video, or listening to music". We would say that's actually
not a bad estimate, although the drain was closer to 2% every 10 minutes in
general use, which equates to around nine hours' use.
Standby time is much,
much better though. We found that we could stick the iPad Air in a bag, taking
it out for the commute and messing about with on the sofa at home, for at least
three days before it began to get low on battery.
In fact, the only
real task that killed it was connecting to our amplifier via Wi-Fi while
simultaneously streaming music to the same device through Bluetooth. It's doing
things like this that make you realise that this is the kind of thing that we
envisaged at the turn of the century, a tablet that has the brains and
connectivity to do all the tasks we could want.In terms of connectivity, we've
already mentioned the excellent Wi-Fi performance (in terms of distance from
router, rather than improved speed) through the Multiple In, Multiple Out
(MIMO) technology.
4G bands are now
covered throughout the globe, and low power Bluetooth is also on board as well,
making it an incredibly well-connected device.
The bottom line:
Functionally, the iPad Air is nearly identical to last year’s model, offering
only faster performance and better video chatting. But factor in design and
aesthetics, and the iPad Air is on another planet. It’s the best full-size
consumer tablet on the market.
Specifications
Release date11/1/13
Display type9.7 in
OSApple iOS
ProcessorApple
Wireless
connectivityWi-Fi
Dimensions (WxDxH)6.6
in x 0.29 in x 9.4 in
Weight1 lbs
Price:$479.00
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