Thinking thin: Apple’s iPad Air 2 reviewed

Unless you were living in a digitally withdrawn hole, you’re probably aware that Apple recently released the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus, and while these are the first big phones from Apple, they have also seen a much needed upgrade in class, with faster chips and more solid graphics.

That’s the A8X processor, a slight deviation in the name from the regular A8 used in the iPhone 6 models, with that extra “X” telling you the graphics have been beefed up.

As a result of this change, it’s not hard to imagine the sort of upgrade the new iPad Air 2 has seen, with more or less identical updates, with the exception that the iPad Air 2 has more grunt going for it in the graphics department.

That means that any game you throw its way will handle its own and then some, loading quickly and providing good looks and sound to boot.

Also included this time around is Touch ID, Apple’s answer to beefed up security that is totally your call on whether or not you use.

For those caught unaware, it is the return of the fingerprint scanner, albeit one that uses a better implementation than those fiddly ones we had on products years before the iPhone and iPad rocked up.

As far as what it can lock, there isn’t much, though Apple is expanding it, with your fingerprint and the edges of its friction ridges working as lock and key to your data from a security standpoint, as well as to let you pay for apps, songs, and videos on the iTunes Store and App Store.

We’ve liked Touch ID in the past, and here on the iPad Air 2, it’s a nice inclusion, though it would be nice to see more support for this technology in other things, such as PayPal and other security connected applications.

Good news: the iPad Air 2 is compatible with some of the iPad Air cases, even though it's thinner. We've tested it with a Belkin case.

Finally, there’s the iOS 8 and Yosemite integration, and if you’re a Mac user, you will find more reason to love the iPad Air 2 than anyone else, with Apple’s handoff features making it possible to send Apple you’ve been working on straight to the Mac you normally work on at the desk, such as automatic note synchronisation, messages jumping from your phone to your iPad and even to your desktop, and an email you might have been writing or reading showing up on your desktop the moment you walk into the home or office.

If you are a Mac user, this is a seriously cool link up of technologies, and is the sort of thing that can keep a user in Apple’s system, providing quite a fair bit of versatility to a few devices.

Even the battery isn’t all that bad, providing either one to two days of life if you use it frequently, or a good four or five days if you can survive on the tablet for an hour or so a day.

Spend that time gaming, mind you, taking advantage of the A8X processor, and the battery life will drop significantly, requiring closer to a nightly charge, but all in all, it isn’t a bad effort.

As for what’s wrong with the iPad Air 2, there isn’t much. Nothing is perfect, but you have to give credit to Apple, because it really likes to make sure its gear is as close as it can be.

The negatives we’ve found are more likely to be seen as omissions, with one design feature going away, and another never appearing despite seeing it on others.

That design feature that has gone away is the mute switch, which many had come to rely on for, you know, muting the tablet in a heartbeat, just like they do on their phones, but not here.

No, for that, you’ll need to hold the volume keys down, which we imagine is just why Apple removed it, basically because it was superfluous in nature.

We miss it, mind you. Having that easy switch was nice, especially if you needed to shut your device up quickly and didn’t want to risk the tablet making a big noise in the middle of a meeting. But oh well, we guess.

One feature that has never arrived is still not here, and that is a flash for the camera on the back.

Now it needs to be said that Apple has, in fact, upgraded the camera back there. It’s not quite at iPhone 6 levels, but it’s still not bad. And yet, no flash. None at all.

Believe it or not, this is something we actually pulled up with Apple when we were first shown the product, looking at the tablet incredulously, mostly because other tablets include it, and really, the option should be provided. We can only imagine that the encouragement is there without the flash to buy the iPhone, but really, this is something we can imagine some people would probably want.

There’s also no Near-Field Communication, which is very typical Apple, but very annoying, too.

If you have taken photos on an NFC equipped camera or have an NFC set of speakers or headphones, the near perfection of the iPad would be greatly matched with the ease of use of nearly instantaneous pairing, but that’s the same issue on the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus, which both feature NFC, but neither can make use of due to ApplePay being the sole reason the technology has been implemented.

Oh, and one final thing: the cost and lack of upgrades. We’re used to both here, we really are, as are most customers keen on checking out the Apple products, but it’s useful to know that Apple’s iPad Air 2 follows a similar storage convention as its iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus, meaning there’s no 32GB model anymore, and no way of upgrading the storage yourself like you can on competing Android tablets.

That’s not a huge deal, and it’s certainly not a deal breaker, either, just something worth knowing.

Direct competitor: the Apple iPad Air 2 is thinner than the Samsung Galaxy Tab S, with the Air 2 on the left at 6.1mm and the Tab S on the right at 6.5mm.

Conclusion

There is no doubt that Apple’s reinvention of the tablet has been one of those game changers, lighting a fire under nearly every electronics manufacturer and making them, as Apple used to put it, “think different.”

And in this incarnation, the iPad Air 2, there is more of what you have come to expect, with a product that is built well, designed well, and engineered to feel and perform in a fashion befitting the very best.

That said, there are less reasons for many to upgrade, and there is a lot of competition out there, some of it very impressive, such as the Microsoft Surface 3 for content creation, and the Samsung Galaxy Tab S and Sony Xperia Tablet Z2, which the Air 2 competes directly with and even goes toe to toe with (both) when it comes to thickness, just narrowly edging it out and still keeping the product metal, something neither the Sony or Samsung manage.

The most staggering thing for us in this review was that we were able to type it on the iPad Air 2 completely without any problems, with the tablet able to adapt to our speedy fingers and produce the smallest amount of errors ever — perhaps one or two — and they might have been our misspellings, rather than a slip of the fingers.

That is amazing for us, because while we prefer tactile keyboards, one of the reasons why this preference was so high was the slowdowns and resulting inaccuracies that onscreen tablet typing would yield was just so high, and this one is pretty much spot on, providing a screen response time like no other tablet, and making note taking fast enough for most typists out there, even the fussy ones.

Take that, mix it with a sturdy design that still looks amazing, and finish it with an improvement to the display that is very impressive, and you have the iPad Air 2, a brilliant tablet, but one that is becoming harder and harder to upgrade to, especially if you’re already an owner of a previous model.

If you take notes on the tablet and want something as fast as you, this is a product you’ll want to have, and if you want an amazing tablet, this too is the tablet you’ll want to check out. Highly recommended.

Overall
Features
Value for money
Performance
Ease of Use
Design
Reader Rating0 Votes
Lovely clear screen; Display has much faster touch support, making typing just that much easier and more accurate when you're a fast typist; Still one of the prettiest tablet designs out there; Touch ID fingerprint unlocking included;
No flash on the rear camera; Mute and lock switch has disappeared; Still no expandable storage; No NFC;
4.6