The display on the iPad Air is nothing overly new – but it's still amazing. It uses some clever tech to ensure it doesn't drain power too heavily, which is as much to do with mitigating the overall battery pain as it is about making sure we don't see a repeat of the ultra-warm tablets of previous years.
But in reality, things look very nice indeed, with the Retina standard already a mainstay of Apple's larger tablet for years now.
I still think it's a touch too reflective for watching video (and that's something that's been changed in the iPad Air 2). According to DisplayMate it's not that bad, but a couple of the iPad Air's contemporaries were found to be more impressive overall when it comes to web browsing and movie watching.
Ray Soneira of that same laboratory testing facility has found that things are actually pretty good for Apple's tablet on that front, with less than 10% of the light hitting the screen surface actually reflecting back into your peepers.
However, Apple didn't make the best large-screen tablet display of its generation for the iPad Air, according to DisplayMate. While the Air performs fairly well in most scenarios, it's bested by the direct competition – namely the Amazon Kindle Fire HDX 8.9. Separate tests on the Samsung Galaxy Tab S range have since revealed that it too is better than the iPad Air in most key areas.
Credit: Republished with permission from DisplayMate Technologies
It's clear that the iPad Air is much better than the Nexus 10, though, which is predictable given that the Nexus is a device that's well past the end of its life.
The PPI numbers for the iPad Air may have you thinking its display isn't as sharp as those of the competition, but in reality it makes no difference given the distance you'll be holding it from your eyes.
There's no doubt the iPad Air isn't as good as the Amazon Kindle Fire HDX, which has dynamic contrast to make pictures look simply stunning on the screen. But the Air is plenty powerful enough, and won't let you down on the display front in any way.
Credit: Republished with permission from DisplayMate Technologies
As you can see above, the iPad Air is much like the competition when it comes to flipping the tablet around in your hands – the brightness and color will quickly shift away from perfection when you begin to tilt the device.
This wasn't a problem in most scenarios, as you'll be the only one using the device in day-to-day use. However, if you've got it set up on a stand in the kitchen while cooking, for instance, it will irk a little. It's nothing major, but I noted that the Kindle Fire HDX was superior here in that example.
As I mentioned, the reflectivity of the iPad Air isn't the best on the market, and might irritate lightly at times. The Nexus 10 still looks like an awful tablet, but given that Google has put it out to pasture since our initial review of the iPad Air, we can't castigate it too much.
You can head over to the DisplayMate report to see the full findings of the tablet test, but the upshot is that while the Amazon tablet was the best in all tests – and the best the laboratory had ever seen at the time, apparently – the iPad has made some significant gains here too, offering a more power-efficient display.
Crucially, it's larger too, meaning you're getting more of a viewing experience – I don't think the 8.9-inch screen of Amazon's offering is the best for an extended movie marathon.
Of course, while this is an instructive slice of comparative data from around the time of the iPad Air's launch, things have moved on since, and you can now get better displays from all parties concerned, including Apple – indeed, the iPad Mini 4 screen is widely held to be one of the best in the business.
camera and video:
The iPad Air's camera was a bit of a disappointment even at the time of its release. Apple kept the same 5MP iSight camera from previous iterations of the tablet, which at least boasts half-decent backside illumination and half-way acceptable low-light performance.
I'm not sure what Apple is doing with the camera interface though – it's like a completely bare version of that seen on the iPhone 6 or iPhone 6S, with fewer options to choose from. Want to take a photo or video? That's fine. You can even take a square snap for those moments when you need a portrait pic too.
However, there's no filter option in sight, nor the ability to change to a Slo-Mo camera as we've seen on other recent Apple hardware. Given that the Air is running the necessary A7 64-bit chip to enable the enhanced video mode, I've no idea why you can't do the same here.
Even the filters would make sense, as the iPhone 5C can use these, and that's hardly as powerful a beast. This is probably the biggest criticism of the iPad Air I could throw at the tablet at launch, as the decision is slightly perplexing.
But in a way, that's wonderful. You might have noticed that I'm hardly a fan of the cameras on tablets at the best of times, and if there was one thing that I'd happily sacrifice for a thinner tablet, it's this functionality. But then, the iPad Air 2 comes with a Slo-Mo function in a much skinnier frame, so the two evidently weren't mutually exclusive.
Still, the iPad Air's camera does the job just fine. While the performance isn't that good (although shutter speed was impressive, as I'd expected) it's more than adequate for something that shouldn't be replacing a smartphone or dedicated camera anyway.
battery life and apps:
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". I 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. I found that I could stick the iPad Air in a bag, taking it out for the commute and messing about with it 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 an 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.
When it comes to playing games – another famously power-sapping task – I found that the iPad Air coped reasonably well. Playing Freeblade – one of the most graphically demanding games on the App Store – for 10 minutes drained 7% of the Air's battery.
In running the techradar battery test recently, which involves running a 90-minute 720p looping video with the screen brightness cranked right up, the battery depleted by a consistent 22%. That's just a single percentage point worse than the iPad Air 2, which was a much newer device and (obviously) a new an improved model.
It's not as good as the Samsung Galaxy Tab S2 (16%) or the Nexus 9 (18%), but again, those are newer tablets. It might be worth noting if a primary task for your tablet is watching lots of movies when you don't have access to a charge point.
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.
Apps
Apple has thrown on reams of free software with the iPad Air (and other iOS 7, 8 and 9 devices too), so you now get access to the likes of Pages, Numbers and Keynote from the iWork tribe as well as Photos (which integrates a lot of the old iPhoto functionality), iMovie and Garageband for free.
These are incredibly powerful tools for what is still essentially a cut-down mobile device – I can't say that I'd recommend using them regularly without a keyboard (in the case of iWork, or the newer Office for iPad) but elements such as Photos and Garageband really give you the chance to express yourself fluidly.
Having such accomplished software right out of the box (well, you do have to download much of it actually, and it's a fairly hefty download) is a big plus for a shiny new toy, and it's a major part of the appeal of joining Apple's ecosystem.
On top of that, I still feel the need to laud the Apple App Store for its ability to offer the best apps around. We're talking about things like BBC iPlayer and Sky Go, both of which offer improved user interfaces and allowed downloads first before the Android hop came.
The gap between Apple and Google's app portals is narrowing, but there's no doubt that users will still feel far more secure in the app experience they'll get on an Apple tablet compared to an Android one for now, and that's a big reason to purchase.
Maps should also gain something of a special mention, as while it was a PR disaster for Apple, it's slowly clawing its way back to usable thanks to constant upgrades.
It's still far from the best out there, and we'd recommend you download the excellent Google Maps as soon as possible, but we rarely find that Apple Maps is offering an inaccurate course for us to navigate down to the shops – just don't ask it to find obscure towns whose names appear in multiple places.
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