Best iPad for students

Wondering which iPad is best for school, college or university? Read on to find out. Macworld staff report

2021-09-17 -

Life as a student is great, but it’s not all about partying; you’ll also have to do some work. To make that easier, you will be looking for the best tech. Over the following pages we’ll help you select the best iPad for student life, seeking out the devices that offer the perfect combination of portability, power, ease of use and value for money.

Before you decide which iPad to buy, there are a few things to note. The biggest is the fact that if you are a student, a teacher or are employed by an educational institution, you can get money off a new Apple product by shopping in Apple’s education store. You can read all about how to get an Apple Student Discount on page 53.

BEST FOR BARGAIN HUNTERS:

10.2IN iPAD (2020)

Price: £329 from fave.co/3zJ WxeF Since we expect that students are likely to be looking for a bargain we’d suggest that the 10.2in iPad is the closest you can get to a bargain iPad – especially once you apply the student discount – see page 53.

The 2020 iPad was comprehensively outshone by the updated iPad Air at last year’s Time Flies event, offering only a dull (albeit significant) spec bump while its costlier sibling got a redesign and raft of new features.

What Apple is calling the eighthgeneration iPad is in almost every respect the same as the 10.2in iPad Apple launched in 2019. It differs only in having a processor that’s two generations newer – thereby promising a handy boost in speed – and being very slightly heavier. Is that enough to justify the cost?

Almost certainly not if you’re thinking of upgrading from the 2019 to 2020 models. But it’s important to note that the things tech journalists find appealing (such as differences from the last generation) are not always the things that make a useful,

value-for-money product for the average consumer – especially if they haven’t bought a new iPad in years, if at all.

So I’m going to do my best to review this tablet as a thing in its own right, with only occasional mentions of the similar model released last year. Our review of the iPad (2020) tests its speed and battery life, evaluates the design and feature set, and helps you decide if this is the right tablet for you.

Price

32GB: £329

128GB: £429

32GB, cellular: £459

128GB, cellular: £559

If the above prices leave room in your budget, you can supplement your purchase with an accessory or two. The new iPad is compatible with the first-generation Apple Pencil stylus (which adds £89 to the cost), and the Smart Keyboard (£159).

Design

The eighth-gen iPad has the same design as last year’s model. But to most people that doesn’t matter: instead, we’ll simply say that this is a slim, attractive tablet that’s lightweight to pick up while offering a display comfortably big enough (10.2in, corner to corner) for gaming and watching films and TV. It’s 490g (or 495g, if you go for the cellular model) and just 7.5mm thick.

Apple’s engineers love to find contrast between gloss and matte surfaces, like the precise, angled brushed-metal chamfer around the edge of the glossy screen, or the shiny Apple logo in the middle of the matte back. You keep finding these kinds of small, thoughtful touches – details that are pleasing to the eye or finger.

These elements have been around a long time, but it’s an elegant, one might say classic, design. The screen-to-body ratio, however, is starting to look a little dated: the inclusion of a Home button on the front, and comparatively thick bezels – about 8mm at left and right, and a positively chunky 20mm at the top and bottom – means you’re not getting as much screen ‘real estate’ for the size of the chassis as you would with an all-screen design like on the last two generations of iPad Pro and the most recent iPad Air.

The back edges of the iPad are curved whereas the front ones are sharp; this has the same ‘pick me up’ effect, when the device is laid down with screen facing up, that Apple used on the iPad 2 back in 2011. Again, it’s

a well-worn design language, but I personally find it more welcoming, not to mention easier to pick up, than the uniformly squared-off edges of the newfangled Pro line.

We’ll finish with two old-fashioned elements of the design that we think almost everyone will applaud. The eighth-gen iPad has a headphone port, and its rear-facing camera doesn’t stick out from the main body at all: it’s totally flush.

Display

We’ve established that the iPad does not have an all-screen design. But the screen still dominates the front of the device, and will monopolize your use of it. Is it any good?

You get a 10.2in display with a resolution of 2,160x1,620 at 264ppi (pixels per inch). That’s absolutely standard for Apple, roughly matching the iPad Air 1 from 2013 on the one hand, and the iPad Pro 11in (2020) on the other. But again, the lack of progress doesn’t matter if it gets the job done, and it does.

It’s a decent-quality screen, certainly good enough for most uses even if hardly envelope-pushing in terms of specs. It’s sharp, bright and colourful, and while there are better tablets out there in those departments (the Pros offer 600 nits brightness to this device’s 500, for instance, and a superior colour gamut), the iPad doesn’t suffer much in comparison.

The size is in my opinion a good compromise point. iPad mini screens can be a touch cramped for movies and working on the go, while the largest Pro falls down on portability; this is the best of both worlds... although it would

be better still if Apple could trim back those bezels.

The touchscreen function is slick and seamless. You don’t get the higher refresh rate and ProMotion dynamic switching of the iPad Pro line, but in most situations you won’t be conscious that you’re getting a ‘lesser’ experience. The combination of the screen tech and iPadOS 14 are enough to preserve the fundamental illusion behind all tablets: that you’re literally moving elements around on the screen with your finger.

The last thing to say about the screen is that it’s unlaminated. What does that mean? There’s a tiny gap between the glass and the display tech underneath, and this means that when you press down with a finger or stylus it ‘gives’ very slightly: it flexes downwards a microscopic amount. On a laminated screen (which you’ll find on any iPad Pro, the iPad mini 4 and later, and all Airs except the first one) there’s no gap, and consequently no give.

It’s a subtle effect, so please don’t imagine any kind of visible bending. Rather, the effect manifests itself

in a slight sense of cheapness, of ‘plastickyness’. It’s not reassuring, when most iPad usage involves touching the screen, to have this sense, but it certainly isn’t intolerable.

Indeed, we could go further and ask whether the average consumer will notice the effect at all.

I use and review iPads all the time; my most commonly used tablet is a 2018 Pro. I’m used to laminated screens. So when I pick up the iPad 10.2in, it feels weird. But will it feel weird to you? That depends on what you’re used to.

My sense is that one laminated screen will ruin unlaminated ones for you, forever, and that you will always remember the way screens should feel. But I may be wrong about that, because I was wrong once before.

A few years back I reviewed the iPad 9.7in (2017) and criticised its use of an unlaminated screen, which I saw as a throwback to the iPad Air 1 from 2013 and called “an economy too far”. And then everyone in the universe bought one, and I felt like a fool.

So you’ll have to go your own way on this one, but try to get your hands on the new iPad before buying if you can. If you’ve ever used a laminated iPad, which means most of them and certainly all the expensive ones, then this one will feel strange and a little cheap. If you haven’t, then you probably won’t know what you’re missing.

Photography

The iPad has an 8Mp camera on the rear and 1.2Mp on the front, with just a single lens in each case. Neither of these will challenge a good phone camera for quality, but photography tends not to be a priority for tablets.

Rear-facing camera performance was solid, with good colour reproduction and detail. I was particularly impressed by its ability to handle mixed-lighting conditions, with bright sun at the top of the shot (not overexposed) but more shady undergrowth at the bottom (crisp and colourful).

In the official specs list Apple says this model offers HDR rather than the exposure-blending Smart HDR of the iPad Pro or Next-Generation Smart HDR of current iPhones, but a glance in Settings shows that Smart HDR is enabled by default; regardless of the terminology, the A12 processor seems to be helping out behind the scenes in some capacity.

The front camera is more basic. A selfie in good lighting came out with slightly soft edges and noticeable pixellation when looked at closely.

I suspect that the front camera will primarily be used for FaceTime and other video calls, particularly given the state of the world as I write this. Your face would certainly be rendered more accurately by a higher-specced camera, but I (and the caller at the other end) actually found it fine for FaceTime.

The iPad has no flash on the rear camera, and only Retina Flash (a rudimentary and unflattering flash performed by lighting up the screen) on the front; you don’t get Night Mode, either. It’s therefore no use at all in very low light. There’s also no Portrait Mode.

Performance

Subjectively, the new iPad performed every task we threw at it with aplomb. It’s easily fast enough for gaming, image editing and everyday tasks, and in real-world use we never managed to find a ceiling to its processing power.

But that’s true of almost all brand-new iPads, and a more relevant question is this: how future-proof is it? Will it be able to run the most demanding apps of 2021, and 2022? To gauge that we need to look deeper.

The headline spec is the A12 Bionic processor, a big update on last year’s A10. It won’t surprise you to hear that the A12 is two generations newer than the A10; more specifically, Apple claims it’s 40 per cent faster for CPU performance and twice the speed for graphics. We’ll test those claims in a moment.

Note that the A12, while new for the standard iPad line, is by no means the latest thing in Apple processor world. The 2020 iPad Pros, for instance, have the A12Z, a souped-up version of the A12, while the new iPad Air for 2020 gets the A14.

You also get 3GB of RAM – that’s the same allocation as last year, and at the low end of what you’d expect from even a budget tablet. Apple tends to achieve better performance than its devices’ specs would lead you to expect, however, thanks to clever optimization with iPadOS.

Sure enough, performance in our speed benchmarks was impressive.

The new iPad scored 2,588 in the multi-core segment of Geekbench

5, up 82 per cent from last year’s 1,424. Single-core performance was up a more modest 44 per cent, from 771 to 1,114, suggesting that the biggest gains will be seen in the most demanding tasks.

Note too that the standard iPad still isn’t close to rivalling the Pro models in multi-core; even the 2018 Pro was able to score 4,521 in the same test.

Geekbench 5 (single-core)

iPad (2020): 1,114

iPad (2019): 771

iPad Air (2019): 1,110

11in iPad Pro (2018): 1,125

Geekbench 5 (multi-core)

iPad (2020): 2,588

iPad (2019): 1,424

iPad Air (2019): 2,673

11in iPad Pro (2018): 4,521

Our US colleagues set the 2020 iPad against the 2019 iPad Air (which is also based on the A12) and found that as far as CPU performance goes the two are essentially identical. They recorded scores of 1,109 and 2,634 (single and multi) with the 2020 iPad, and 1,110 and 2,673 with the 2019 Air. Gains in graphical performance were similarly pleasing. The iPad managed a playable 25fps in even the most taxing of GFXBench’s on-screen tests (‘Aztec Open High’), a test where many tablets languish in the single digits. Our US colleagues found year-on-year improvements of between 60 per cent and 85 per cent in 3DMark’s Sling Shot Extreme test.

We list the iPad’s specifications in full on page 30. Aside from the performance-related specs discussed above, it’s worth highlighting the storage options: 32GB remains the baseline, and that really isn’t very much. If you take lots of photos, for instance, consider plumping for the costlier 128GB model (or paying for more iCloud storage).

Battery life

The iPad 2020 has the same battery capacity as last year’s model, at 32.4Wh, but improvements in other areas – presumably the processor’s greater efficiency – enable it to noticeably outperform its predecessor. This is despite Apple making the same

claims for both devices: up to 10 hours of surfing the web on Wi-Fi.

We put the Air through a punishing day of Netflix, gaming, speed benchmarks and photography – far more demanding than a typical day’s usage – and it died after 7 hours and 45 minutes. Our US colleagues, under similarly taxing conditions, managed just over 8 hours.

These numbers might sound disappointing, given the published claims. But bear in mind a) that this is an improvement of around a fifth on the 2019 model and b) the average consumer, mixing video, email and web surfing with the occasional break, will get far longer life than this.

Indeed, in the Geekbench 4 battery test, which we’d still rate as a more taxing assignment than everyday tablet life, the iPad managed 10 hours and 34 minutes.

Audio

If you’re looking for the consummate surround-sound multimedia experience, this is not the tablet for you. It has twin speakers but they are close together on the Home button edge so you don’t get a stereo effect. For that you should be looking at quad-speaker iPads, such as the Pro.

Sound is fairly warm and detailed at lower volumes but can get a little tinny as you push close to maximum – which isn’t massively powerful in any case.

Software

The iPad (2020) comes with iPadOS 14 pre-installed (it will also be able to install future iPadOS updates for free for around five or six years).

As a 2020 device the eighth-gen iPad gets access to pretty much all of the upgrades in iPadOS 14. It doesn’t have a LiDAR scanner, however, so misses out on some augmentedreality features.

iPadOS is in general a very slick, secure and easy-to-use operating system, and you can download a huge number of reasonably well-vetted apps tailored to the iPad screen size(s) from the App Store, one of the biggest software ecosystems on the planet.

The rival Android OS has even more apps available, granted, as well as offering more customization options. But the apps are less well vetted and the overall experience weaker: indeed there are no Android tablets on the market right now that come close to the quality of an iPad.

Verdict

If you’ve never owned an iPad before, or you own an iPad from a few years back – the iPad Air 2, say, or the fifthgen iPad from 2017 – then this is a great tablet to pick up for general use. It’s light, portable, comfortably quick enough for any app you throw at it right now and affordably priced. And you still get a headphone port, which is a dying luxury these days. Just bear in mind that this is very much at the bargain-basement end of what Apple’s iPads have to offer, and there are inevitably compromises.

Storage, for a start: it’s disappointing that Apple continues to offer just 32GB at the entry level, which will prove restrictive for those who want to store lots of music, photos and videos on their device, or intend to run a large library of games and other bulky apps. Cloud-based services such as Apple Music and iCloud Drive may help in some of these areas.

In terms of performance, if you can stretch to the new Air or one of the Pros then you’ll have a device that’s faster still – which might not matter much right now but will ensure it’s able to tackle the most demanding apps years into the future.

The design too, while a classic for a reason – it’s attractive and feels good in the hand – is starting to look dated in comparison with the models Apple sells without a Home button. By removing that detail those devices are able to offer more screen space for the chassis size and a generally more modern-looking appearance.

Finally, do try to get your hands on the screen before making a decision. The unlaminated screen may not bother you at all, but if you’ve tried a laminated version in the past it’s likely to feel plasticky and cheap. David Price

Specifications

• 10.2in (2,160x1,620; 264ppi) Retina IPS LCD capacitive touchscreen

• iPadOS 14

• Apple A12 Bionic (7nm) processor

• Hexa-core (2x 2.5GHz Vortex, 4 x1.6GHz Tempest) CPU

• Apple (4-core graphics) GPU

• 3GB RAM

• 32GB/128GB storage

• Rear-facing camera: 8Mp, f/2.4, 31mm (standard), 1.12μm, AF

• Selfie camera: 1.2Mp, f/2.2, 31mm (standard)

• Wi-Fi 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac, dual-band, hotspot

• Bluetooth 4.2, A2DP, EDR, LE

• GPS with A-GPS, GLONASS (Wi-Fi + Cellular model only)

• USB Type-C; magnetic connector

• Fingerprint scanner (front mounted)

• Non-removable 32.4Wh lithiumpolymer battery

• 250.6x174.1x7.5mm

• Wi-Fi, 490g; cellular, 495g

MOST AFFORDABLE iPAD: iPAD MINI (2019)

Price: £369 from fave.co/2YmXY4Q This wasn’t meant to happen. The iPad mini hadn’t been updated since 2015 and was left out in the cold, costing more than the larger 9.7in iPads that were released since. We thought Apple had left it for dead.

The introduction of the new 2019 iPad mini came as a complete surprise – it’s barely different on first glance and yes, those bezels sure look huge after the past six years of consumer technology working towards bezel-less displays. But I’ve been pleasantly surprised by the iPad mini, finding that I pick it up way more often than I do with a larger iPad.

Using devices more is sometimes a bad thing, but this iPad lends itself to reading far more than it does scrolling through endless timelines. It’s not an iPad for Instagram or Twitter. At its heart it’s a great eReader, news app displayer and Netflix enabler.

Unlike Apple’s other iPads it’s not striving to replace your laptop, but instead does some things better than one. If you don’t mind the ageing design, the smallest iPad could be a better option for you than any other.

Petit power

There are two things that make the 2019 iPad mini a great iPad. One is its portability, and one is its sheer processing power.

Yes, we know this is basically the same design as the first iPad mini in 2012, but wait.

Ever since the 12.9in iPad Pro was introduced in 2015, Apple has concentrated on larger tablet displays. With the 10.5in screens joining the

standard 9.7in iPad sizes, we’ve been led to believe bigger is better.

It’s no surprise given Apple, and everyone else, has done the same with their smartphones. But when I started using the iPad mini it reminded me of the pure convenience of a small tablet – something around the size of a book (and definitely thinner) that you can carry about unnoticed. It’s only 300g and displays most content better than your phone can.

With those phones getting bigger and better, you may have found your tablet use declining. But I found the iPad mini was irresistible because of its size and I used it in meetings, at home and on the bus far more than the larger iPads that I’ve reviewed over the years. It measures 203.2x134.8x6.1mm, thinner than an iPhone XS.

On the bottom are two stereo speakers which sound clear and have enough bass for a tablet this small but will get covered up naturally when held, particularly for landscape games. The iPad mini is very powerful thanks to the A12 Bionic chip. This is the same processor found in the iPhone XS and XR, meaning the iPad mini is the cheapest Apple hardware with this extremely fast silicon inside.

By this point there’s not even much point in comparing it to the A8 processor in the iPad mini 4 that this new model replaces – the new one is so, so much better. At the time of release, it is practically the most powerful mobile chip money can buy.

But if you really must know, here you go:

Geekbench 4 (multi-core) iPad mini (2019): 11,639 iPad Air (2019): 11,369

11in iPad Pro (2018): 18,381 9.7in iPad mini (2018): 5,917 iPad mini 4 (2015): 2,989

GFX Manhattan 3.1

iPad mini (2019): 55fps

iPad Air (2019): 54fps

11in iPad Pro (2018): 84fps

9.7in iPad mini (2018): 27fps

iPad mini 4 (2015): 6fps

Geekbench clocks the CPU speed and GFXBench measures the GPU – the latter shows the iPad Pro’s 120Hz frame rates at play, but note how much more powerful the 2019 iPad mini is than 2018’s larger, regular iPad.

We also compared it to the iPad Air announced on the same day as the iPad mini. The mini is excellent value for the performance you’re getting here. The most expensive version (256GB with 4G) costs £669 – £100 cheaper than the cheapest iPad Pro.

Apple’s claim of 10 hours of battery life when ‘surfing the web on Wi-Fi, watching video or listening to music’ proved accurate in our testing, though as expected I found it drained much faster when on 4G or video calling. I had to charge it about once every three days, but I also personally never let my tech get down into the red.

iO-Yes

Inside the iPad mini’s frame, the A12 drives a ferociously fast operating system. iOS 12 undergoes more scrutiny when it’s on an iPad Pro and said to be able to replace a laptop, but when it’s running on the smallest iPad it’s undoubtedly the best software on a casual-use tablet.

I’ve reviewed many consumer Android tablets – none of them are preferable to the convenience and polish of an iPad.

On the iPad mini apps open and close instantly and games flow unhindered, even high-end demanding titles such as Fortnite. It’s by far the best software experience on a tablet this small and is as smooth as the iPhone XS that costs around £600 more if we are talking base mode pricing.

The LCD display is well calibrated and laminated so it does not have a gap between the surface and the screen like the cheapest 9.7in iPad does. You also get True Tone for the first time on an iPad mini, so the screen (optionally) adjusts the white balance depending on the ambient light.

And while it supports the firstgeneration Apple Pencil and the requisite apps, the screen doesn’t

have Apple’s 120Hz ProMotion tech found in the iPad Pro models that makes scrolling even smoother.

Apple has admitted that it took ages to update the iPad mini because it assumed tablet buying would veer towards larger displays. In the tech world we knew that the ageing 2015 hardware of the iPad mini 4 wasn’t the best buy, but that didn’t deter people from still buying it because of the size.

There’s clearly still demand for the 7.9in display. Turns out most people don’t care about the large bezels.

You also get second-gen Touch ID which is excellently responsive. I didn’t miss Face ID all that much, though that might be different when it comes to an iPhone. The things I do on the iPad mini don’t really require it.

Middle ground

What I found more than anything (and this might not apply to you) is that the iPad mini managed to take me away from my phone and bring me down from my computer. It sits in the middle in size, but also in use case. This is why I like it so much.

What I mean is that I did not feel compelled to load up Twitter or Instagram on it because of the size. Instead I found myself opening the NewYorkTimes, Apple News or Feedly apps to read the morning headlines on the bus on a display that has room to breathe.

While doing this I pinged over to Pocket Casts and got a podcast on the go (yes, there’s a headphone jack!). Sure, I could have done these things on a phone but without the constant message notifications rolling in and

a larger 16:9 display to enjoy newspaper style content on, I was personally chuffed.

My use of the iPad mini took me away from the mental burn out of social media and WhatsApp and provided me with a device that let me read and didn’t distract.

This was accentuated even more by the 4G review unit Apple provided me with (the cheapest iPad mini is WiFi only). I put my second SIM in it and it meant that I could watch YouTube on the bus, check personal emails and research a holiday – again, things that we all do on our phones but is easier on a larger screen, but not a screen so large that I felt like an idiot for using it on the number 30.

Pencil me in

One thing I personally did not use much was the Apple Pencil, which the 2019 iPad mini now supports. Apple’s suggestion that the iPad mini would make a great digital notebook is cute, and you may be someone who would genuinely use the tablet as a way to back up handwritten notes, and the advantage of cloud-stored notes is evident.

Apple would of course like you to own multiple iPads and flit between sizes as task dictates, but then again with two Apple Pencils that support different models, this is user hostile. If you wanted the iPad mini and a 2018 iPad Pro, you’d need both models of Pencil.

And sure, the second-generation Apple Pencil is ‘better’ but the firstgen Pencil is absolutely fine, and paired with the base iPad mini it’s the cheapest way to use one. I remain sceptical that many artists will opt for the iPad mini over the iPad Pro with its better display and larger digital canvas, but there might be a niche. It probably didn’t cost much for Apple

to add the support to the mini and eke out a few more Pencil purchases from curious customers.

And yes, the iPad mini has a camera on the back. If you really want to be that person holding it at head height to take a picture of the Eiffel Tower then I’ll try not to judge you. The 8Mp lens is nowhere near as good as something on any recent iPhone, but it’ll do.

Better used is the front-facing 7Mp 1080p FaceTime camera. I used the iPad mini for a fair few video calls and it was a great experience. But any close inspection on still images from either camera shows these are not great quality photos, with a lot of noise when zoomed in.

Verdict

The iPad mini lives on in a very capable package that includes the blazingly fast A12 chip. It’s the cheapest hardware with Apple’s latest processor. The ageing design is a downside, but this iPad design is a certified classic and we don’t think it’ll put many people off – it doesn’t us.

With a headphone jack, outstanding performance, Pencil support and unrivalled portability in the tablet market, the iPad mini is a surprisingly excellent upgrade on a product we thought was about to bow out. Henry Burrell

Specifications

• 7.9in (2,048x1,536; 326ppi) Retina IPS LCD capacitive touchscreen

• iPadOS 14

• Apple A12 Bionic (7nm) processor

• Hexa-core (2x 2.5GHz Vortex, 4x 1.6GHz Tempest) CPU

• Apple (4-core graphics) GPU

• 3GB RAM

• 64GB/256GB storage

• Rear-facing camera: 8Mp, f/2.4, 32mm (standard), 1.12μm, AF

• Selfie camera: 7Mp, f/2.2, 31mm (standard)

• Wi-Fi 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac, dual-band, hotspot

• Bluetooth 5.0, A2DP, EDR

• GPS with A-GPS, GLONASS (Wi-Fi + Cellular model only)

• Lightning, USB 2.0

• Fingerprint scanner (front mounted)

• Non-removable 19.1Wh lithium-ion battery

• 203.1x134.8x6.1mm

• Wi-Fi, 300.5g; cellular, 308.2g

BEST FOR FUTURE-PROOF FEATURES: iPAD AIR (2020)

Price: £578 from fave.co/3n2hE8y Visually, you have to look very carefully to notice that the latest

iPad Air isn’t an iPad Pro: the angular, nearly all-screen case design was previously reserved for the more expensive tablets, but Apple has found room for an Air in that exclusive club.

This isn’t the only area where this release sees the Pro and Air lines come closer together – in terms of CPU, in fact, the Air model is technically two generations ahead. But let’s take things one step at a time.

Over the following pages, we test and evaluate the tablet’s design, new features, performance, battery life and tech specs, and help you decide if this is the iPad for you.

Price

The new Air starts at £579. It’s noticeably more expensive than the Air released last year, although as we will discover, it offers numerous upgrades to justify this. There are four configurations to choose from:

£579: 64GB, Wi-Fi

£729: 256GB, Wi-Fi

£709: 64GB, cellular

£859: 256GB, cellular

Storage

More storage is always better, and this statement is just as true for Apple’s tablets as it is for smartphones. Especially if you like to edit photos or videos on the big screen, which quickly racks up the gigabytes.

Nevertheless, when it comes to equipping the iPad Air with flash memory, Apple is sticking to its strategy: you either get a little, or you get a lot. You only have the choice between 64 or 256GB. This is a difference from the Pro models, which are available with 128 or 512GB, or even with 1TB.

A similar differentiation between the Air and Pro lines can be found with the RAM allocation. The new A14 Bionic chip is here supported by 4GB of RAM, whereas the A12Z Bionic in the Pro models has 6GB. You can tell that there are significant differences under the hood, which is why it’s perhaps better not to compare the iPad Air directly with the Pro models.

A better – and we’d say fairer – comparison would be with the direct predecessor, the iPad Air from 2019.

New display

At 10.9in, the display is a little larger than the 10.5in screen of the Air’s 2019 predecessor. The Home button has disappeared; you can now reach the home screen – as with the Pro models – by swiping up

from the lower edge of the screen.

The resolution is now slightly higher, while brightness remains the same at a maximum of 500 nits. We measured 404 nits under laboratory conditions in a dark room, which is a decent performance, and even outdoors you should rarely find that you can’t see what’s on the screen. Don’t forget to pick up a case for the Air 4 if you want to keep that display looking new for longer.

The contrast ratio, which we measured at around 1,300:1, is also a reasonable figure, but we are still a long way from the dream numbers of an OLED display. Whether OLED will ever make it into Apple’s tablets is hard to guess.

One consolation is that the Android competition is also proving frugal in this respect. Only a handful of manufacturers offer OLED tablets with screens larger than 10in.

Touch ID in the power button

No more Home button and no Face ID? How do you unlock the new iPad Air now? This brings us to a real innovation that Apple has never used in any other product: the fingerprint sensor moves to the power button on the upper edge of the iPad case.

This makes it significantly smaller, and considerably narrower. Can it still reliably recognize fingerprints? We were initially sceptical, and tested the function carefully.

Setting up fingerprints works in the same way as with the conventional round sensor. First, the iPad saves the middle area of the fingertip, then the edges. As before, you can save up to five fingertips – which really makes sense now, because if you operate the iPad Air with the Magic Keyboard (which it supports), the power switch is on the left. As a right-handed person, you definitely have to include your left index finger as an unlock option, otherwise there will be unpleasant

contortions in front of the iPad.

After an initial familiarization phase, unlocking with the narrow sensor worked fine in practice. Maybe we had a few more unsuccessful attempts than with the larger sensor, but all in all the narrow sensor worked surprisingly well.

It can be assumed Apple will use this type of unlocking in other devices in the future. Fingerprint sensors still have their advantages, especially when there’s a pandemic, because Face ID fails if you wear a mask. But Apple is keen to leave out the Home button, because this allows for larger screens.

Touch ID in the power button is a sensible compromise.

Staying connected

As we’ve seen with the Pro models, Apple is slowly saying goodbye to the beloved Lightning port, which is now getting on in years. The new iPad Air comes with USB-C.

This may mean chucking out a bunch of Lightning accessories you already own, which is always frustrating. But there are plenty of third-party chargers out there, and Apple bundles a 20-watt USB-C power adapter and cable. Using these accessories the iPad charged from zero to 100 per cent in just under twoand-a-half hours.

We’ll admit there are possible annoyances in switching from Lightning to a new connection standard, but you can do a lot more with USB-C. Mass storage media such as USB sticks or even external hard drives can

be connected directly and a large number of files can be opened immediately using the Files app or copied to internal storage. Other peripherals such as USB Ethernet adapters will also work. Simply plug it in and a new item ‘Ethernet’ appears in the Settings app.

We already alluded to this, but thanks to three contact points on the back and a couple of powerful magnets, the new iPad Air works with the Magic Keyboard. Apple sent us one to test, and it’s amazing how quickly you get used to using the keyboard and trackpad. In no time you can work with the iPad just like you’re using a MacBook.

Whether it is actually a real replacement for a notebook depends – as so often – on the software. There are still programs that you can’t get on an iPad, especially developer tools such as Xcode or professional software for audio/video editing. Even with a Magic Keyboard and trackpad, an iPad will not penetrate into these areas so quickly.

If you’re artistically inclined or like to work by hand, you will be happy to be able to use the 2ndgeneration Apple Pencil. In our tests, the handwriting recognition that Apple is introducing with iOS 14 worked well, although it struggled with umlauts when writing German. For most of us though, that’s not an issue.

Photography

Another big step forward compared to the Air’s direct predecessor is the built-in camera on the back, which now has a resolution of 12Mp.

We took a few test photos with the iPad Air in autumnal surroundings and compared them with the iPad mini 5, which has roughly the same camera as the previous Air. You can see that the iPad Air (2020) shoots sharper images and the colours come out looking a little crisper and more natural. In the macro area, however, the look of the iPad mini 5 is slightly ahead.

A14 Bionic processor

For the first time, Apple is using a processor, the A14 Bionic, that was created using the 5nm process. This chip makes its official debut in the iPad Air 4, although it has since reappeared in the iPhone 12.

A lot has been written about the A14 Bionic. Now we can measure ourselves for the first time.

CPU performance compared to the A12 in the iPad mini 5 and iPhone XS is between 12 per cent (Linpack) and a whopping 79 per cent (Geekbench 5 multi-core test) better. In graphics-sensitive tasks, it showed an improvement of 14 per cent (3DMark).

The A14 Bionic thus achieves desktop performance right from the start and even outperforms established Intel chips in the Geekbench single-core test. This is more than enough power for an iPad in all situations and it shows where Apple wants to go with the A14.

An A14, however optimized, in a MacBook or iMac should provide unprecedented computing power. Especially if you add active cooling, which is not available in the iPhone 12 or the iPad Air 4.

Battery life

Despite the improved computing and graphics performance, we found that battery life remained essentially the same as on the previous generation.

In our exceptionally demanding worst-case test, we played an MP4 video in an endless loop at 100 per cent screen brightness. Here the iPad Air ran out of juice after five hours and 42 minutes. The iPad 7 only ran slightly longer here.

In a more realistic but still demanding web-browsing test, we continually called up a variety of websites. Using this method the iPad Air 4 ran for 10 hours and 30 minutes – again, a very good performance.

In everyday life you should expect the iPad Air to last an entire working day without any problems. What more could you want?

Verdict

The iPad Air (2020) is a significant step forward – especially compared to its direct predecessor, which is just over a year old. The gap between the Air and Pro models is shrinking, but remains noticeable in certain areas. Still, if you’re thinking about buying a new tablet and don’t necessarily have professional ambitions for it, the new iPad Air is exactly the right companion that will bring joy for many years to come. André Martin

Specifications

• 10.9in (2,360x1,640; 264ppi) Liquid Retina IPS LCD capacitive touchscreen

• iPadOS 14

• Apple A14 Bionic (5nm) processor

• Hexa-core CPU

• Apple (4-core graphics) GPU

• 64GB/256GB storage

• Rear-facing camera: 12Mp, f/1.8, (wide), 1/3in, 1.22μm, dual pixel PDAF

• Selfie camera: 7Mp, f/2.0, 31mm (standard)

• Wi-Fi 8 02.11 a/b/g/n/ac/6, dualband, hotspot

• Bluetooth 5.0, A2DP, EDR

• GPS with A-GPS, GLONASS (cellular model only)

• USB Type-C; magnetic connector

• Fingerprint scanner (top mounted)

• Non-removable 28.6Wh lithiumpolymer battery

• 247.6x178.5x6.1mm

• Wi-Fi, 458g; cellular, 460g

THE BEST HIGH-POWER OPTION: 12.9IN iPAD PRO (2021)

Price: £999 from fave.co/3DOXXXHz The difference between the 2018 iPad Pro and last year’s upgrade was

so modest that the generation was largely overlooked with a yawn. But this year, Apple surprised us with such a dramatic upgrade that we thought we must have heard wrong.

The same lightning-fast processor as the Mac range? A mini-LED screen that even the Macs haven’t got? Is this finally the laptop replacement that Apple has spent years trying to convince us the iPad can be? Let’s find out.

Design

There are major upgrades on the inside, but very little has changed on the outside. The dimensions are the same (except that the new screen means the chassis is half a millimetre thicker). We still don’t get an iPad with screen bezels as narrow as those of the iPhone. Even the camera module on the back is the same.

This is not to say that the iPad Pro is a bad design. On the contrary, it is extremely solidly built, with confidence-inspiring material choices, which makes it feel like a quality product in the hand. We just wanted it to look new on the outside as well.

Models and accessories

As before, you can get the iPad Pro with an 11in or 12.9in screen. Other than size and battery capacity, the main difference between these options is that the larger model has a mini-LED screen

with higher brightness and thus even better contrast.

Both have identical storage options, which now go up to a (slightly crazy) 2TB. They also have more RAM: 8GB gigabytes as standard, and 16GB for the terabyte-plus models. Both are available either with Wi-Fi only, or with Wi-Fi and 5G.

The colour choices are silver or Space Grey. If you want a more colourful iPad, you’ll have to turn to the iPad Air.

A surprise was that the old USB-C port has been upgraded to Thunderbolt 3, with USB 4 support. This means you can connect lightningfast external SSD disks, which is probably necessary if you want to transfer movies and fill up those terabytes of storage space. But there’s also support for a 10Gb Ethernet connection. DisplayPort support allows you to connect it to a Pro Display XDR at full 6K resolution.

The Magic Keyboard (£329 from fave.co/3w3gGun) is starting to look more and more like a real laptop keyboard. The keys have good stroke length and are at least as comfortable to type on as the standard wireless Magic Keyboard for Mac. They are even backlit, so you can work in the dark.

The trackpad has a good feel and supports multitouch gestures. The floating design it gives the iPad is really nice and it’s smart that you can plug the charging cord into the keyboard when it’s connected.

Display

The iPad Pro has long had an excellent screen: it was an early trailblazer for features like a 120Hz refresh rate (which the iPhone is still waiting for), automatic adjustment to allow for changes in ambient lighting, and support for the extended P3 colour space. And now the iPad Pro pulls away from the MacBook even more by being the first with a mini-LED screen, which in Apple language is branded as Liquid Retina XDR.

Note that mini-LED is not a new screen technology: what it simply means is that the backlight on the screen now consists of thousands of tiny LEDs. This allows the screen to be divided into as many as 2,500 local dimming zones, so when part of the screen has to be black, those lights can be switched off completely. Apple says this provides a contrast of 1 million to 1, while the typical brightness has increased from 600cd/m2 to 1,000; it can increase to 1,600cd/m2 when needed. Now we’re talking HDR.

As far as we can ascertain, nothing special has happened to the sound. Then again, the iPad Pro already had the best speakers we’ve heard on a tablet. Apple clearly believes in the iPad Pro’s audio set-up, as it has now used the same technology in the new 24in iMac. The new iMacs also use a similar set of microphones.

Photography

The only noticeable change for the camera set-up is that the FaceTime

camera has been given a really smart new feature for video calls: Centre Stage. This zooms in on the person having the call, then pans to keep that person in the centre of the frame if they move; it can also pull back to fit in multiple subjects if someone else turns up.

This feature works so well and so smoothly that we wish it was available on the iPhone and particularly on the new 24in iMac.

On the back, the Pro retains its 12Mp wide-angle and 10Mp ultrawide-angle lenses. This lack of an upgrade doesn’t worry us because we believe that cameras on tablets are mostly a bonus for scanning receipts and the like. People who take iPads into museums and obscure the view of everyone behind them should be expelled.

The LiDAR scanner remains, of course, which helps with precise AR experiences.

Performance

We’ve deliberately saved the most spectacular revelation for last. Namely, that the iPad now has the same revolutionary Apple M1 processor that has appeared in the MacBook, Mac mini and most recently the 24in iMac. This means performance has made the biggest leap between two generations that we have seen in years.

Overall performance has increased by 46 per cent, based on the AnTuTu 8 speed test – and bear in mind that the previous generation, which now looks so slow in comparison, already ran circles around the competition.

Graphics performance has improved by 41 per cent, according to our test results in 3DMark Wild Life Extreme. We had to abandon our 3DMark Slingshot test because

the iPad Pro hit the performance ceiling!

Writing performance for storage has improved by 243 per cent, according to PassMark.

We will see what this means in the long run. Will we be able to run macOS software on the iPad, in the same way that you can technically run iOS apps on the Mac? Apple has dismissed speculation, but in the long term the company probably has some sort of plan to standardize the platform across its computers and tablets.

Can the new iPad Pro replace a laptop?

In short, no, it cannot. For three reasons. The iPad is primarily a device for consuming content on, not creating it. Of course, we’ve sometimes sat on trains or planes with an iPad and answered emails or even finished writing an article using the keyboard. We’ve sat in cafés and cut together a few video clips, or edited a photo at a press conference. It can be done. But when we sit at the desk and start working in earnest, then we use a Mac, because it makes us more productive. The argument that it is a smaller and more flexible device than a laptop does not hold either. The new 12.9in iPad Pro has become 41g heavier. Together with the keyboard, it weighs 1,382g, which is 92g more than the MacBook Air with the M1 processor, which has a larger screen and a better keyboard.

It’s not even cheaper. An iPad Pro 12.9in with 512GB of storage, 8GB of RAM and without 5G costs £1,299. And if we add the Magic Keyboard, that’s another £329. A total of £1,628.

A MacBook Air with 512GB of storage and 8GB of memory costs £1,249. Or if we want to match the

price, we can get a 13in MacBook Pro M1 with 16GB of memory and the same storage for £1,699.

Verdict

Apple incorporates the best, fastest and most delicious hardware in its new professional tablet. We have never seen this standard of performance or image quality on an iPad – but it is very expensive, and we’re starting to wonder why we have to wait for the corresponding progress on the MacBook range. Jonas Ekelund

Specifications

• 12.9in (2,732x2,048; 265ppi) Liquid Retina XDR mini-LED LCD

• iPadOS 14.5.1

• Apple M1 processor

• Octa-core CPU

• Apple GPU

• 8GB/16GB RAM

• 128GB/256GB/512GB/1TB/2TB storage

• Three rear-facing cameras: 12Mp, f/1.8, (wide), 1/3in, 1.22μm, dual pixel PDAF; 10Mp, f/2.4, 125-degree (ultra-wide); TOF 3D LiDAR scanner (depth)

• Selfie camera: 12Mp, f/2.4, 122-degree (ultra-wide)

• Wi-Fi 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac/6, dualband, hotspot

• Bluetooth 5.0, A2DP, LE, EDR