iPad Air 2020: The Real iPad Pro Killer!

[Music] hey what's up mkbhd here okay finally a month after it was announced at that september event the new ipad air is finally here and it turns out if anything out there is actually an ipad pro killer it's this i mean i've talked at length about how the ipad pro is my favorite tablet by a mile right you've seen the videos and i've also talked about how other tablets might be better at the ipad pro at like one thing like maybe a better overall display or a better speaker setup but overall the whole package for best tablet for me keeps going to ipad pro but the thing is most people don't need an ipad pro and that thing still starts at 800 bucks but now with all the updates to this 4th gen ipad air there's almost no reason for people to go spend that because this thing starts at 5.99 and it gets pretty much everything most people care about from the ipad pro except one thing so the new design of the ipad air matches the ipad pro in basically every way the boxy all-aluminum shape feels rock solid it's got these grippable flat sides the buttons are in the same place it's nice it has the smart connector at the back so you can drop it in a smart folio or even a magic keyboard case just like an ipad pro you wanna know why because it is the magic keyboard case for the ipad pro and it just fits in the same case because it has the same dimensions so there's your trackpad there's your usbc passthrough because guess what ipad air also now gets usb type c see apple it's okay to put usbc in products without the pro in the name it's good for everybody the quad speaker setup that surrounds the display also sounds phenomenal for a tablet and you have basically the exact same bezel thickness all the way around thin enough to not be a problem and still look good but thick enough to actually hold the ipad from any angle and not have accidental screen touches but then one difference about that bezel is inside it you won't find face id there's just a regular 7 megapixel front-facing camera up there and instead of face id touch id is back and it's built into that power button up top so kind of like pixel 5 they've technically gone backwards as far as biometric authentication methods goes but in this world of masks that we live in uh fingerprint reader is just as convenient as face id sometimes more so although with an ipad you use at home a lot where you're not really out and wearing a mask as much so maybe the the fingerprint reader is just at the same level as face id either way not a problem it's pretty easy and quick to get used to basically the pro tip is register multiple fingerprints actually that's not even a pro tip that's just common sense but a lot of people don't do it but for me both index fingers work great so no matter which orientation the ipad is in the finger i press the power button with also unlocks it for me so that's great and apple's done fingerprint readers well for a while now this one is also fast and accurate the only little bit of friction i had personally was i'm so used to ipad pro that my unlock is typically touch to wake and then swipe up and it reads my face but of course i have to remember on this to touch the power button which is such a minor thing but also most people getting ipad air aren't coming from an ipad pro so this is a total non-issue for on the back ipad air literally gets the same 12 megapixel primary camera as the ipad pro but you'll note it's just a single camera by itself and a mic no flash no ultra wide no lidar but i mean if you think about it how often do you need an ultra wide or a lidar sensor or even a flash for your tablet photography i'd say pretty much never so all of these things missing mean almost nothing to most people i maintain that the most common use of ipad cameras should be document scanning and facetime calls and these cameras here are more than good enough for that and then the ipad air has the new apple pencil support it snaps onto the side of the ipad to charge and pair the same way as the pro so that's pretty sweet and then inside ipad air actually has the even newer five nanometer a14 bionic chip instead of the a12z currently in the pro so you can actually expect very similar sometimes even better benchmark numbers on paper but the point is despite its slightly lower four gigs of ram it's gonna perform great i've had no performance issues and i don't expect the typical user will run into any performance limits for a long time so on the surface level everything ipad pro does ipad air basically also does except refresh rate so ipad air is of course at the standard 60 hertz that we're used to on every other apple device except the ones with pro motion like ipad pro which are at 120 hertz now if you've never seen 120 hertz which if we're being honest most apple users never have then 60hz is gonna look great but it's like every time i review an ipad i always can't help but have these thoughts on like the state of tablets in general and how the entire android tablet ecosystem rose to such great heights and then fell so far like there used to be so much conjecture and thoughts and interesting videos about what the tablet os should look like and how it should multitask and what it should do but now with like four out of the top five tablets available being ipads they're all kind of just the same performance is fine as expected through ipad os 14 there's plenty of ipad optimized apps and games which is great and it's just kind of the status quo now the ipad pro is 120 hertz of course speaks to people like me because i'm personally a fan of high refresh rate the more pixels the better but i've always said in the past and it's still true here apple also makes some of the smoothest 60hz devices and smoothness of course is not a problem at all here it's standard and actually battery life is also potentially even better on this ipad air because it never has to hit 120 hertz it's just chilling at 60 and it's using the more efficient 5 nanometer a14 chip also it happens to come with a slightly faster 20 watt fast charger in the box instead of the old 18 that comes with the ipad pro so okay i've done a lot of comparing in this video so i'm just going to go ahead and name every single significant thing that you could notice as a difference between ipad pro and ipad air and i'm not going to get into like the extra 2 gigs of ram on the pro or the slightly higher peak brightness i'm going to stick to the main real bullet points of why you'd pick one or the other so you should pick the ipad pro over the air if you want the ultra wide camera or lidar if you want high refresh rate 120 hertz promotion or a bigger ipad because the the bigger 13 inch ipad pro is available the ipad air only comes in the 11 inch size or 10.9 inch but that's it for everyone else you should get the ipad air it's it's all the tablet you need for way less money uh that almost seems too simple are there any downsides yes but they're small obviously no bigger size is a bit of a downside for some people like i mentioned there's only 10.9 uh but also i'm not a fan of these colors at all they're all super pale pastel-ish kind of colors but i mean this green only shows up on camera as green because i've made a conscious effort through this video to put it up against things that don't overwhelm the green it really isn't green most of the time so i'd just get space gray this new ipad to me more represents apple's more interesting strategy of attacking a wider range of prices and offering more things at more prices we saw it with the iphone anywhere from 399 at the sc all the way up to 1299 at the 12 pro max and now we see it with the ipad with the 329 ipad straight all the way up to 14.99 for the one terabyte 13 inch ipad pro with cellular so this new ipad takes a lot of great stuff from the pro brings it down in price and that's why you could call it an ipad pro killer but really it's just living alongside it for a lot of people so that's pretty much it let me know which one you would pick are you a promotion type of person like me would you go for the ipad pro or are you one of those ipad air people because there's about to be a lot of them either way thanks for watching catch you guys in the next one peace

Channel: Marques Brownlee

Views: 6,188,796

Rating: 4.947289 out of 5

Keywords: iPad Air, iPad Air vs, iPad Air vs Pro, iPad Air review, iPad Air vs iPad Pro, iPad Air 4, iPad Air 2020, MKBHD

Id: nDy32xoXM4o

Length: 8min 26sec (506 seconds)

Published: Wed Oct 21 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/Beristain25]

The one thing that really stood out to me is how he can casually palm an iPad

[u/doggydoobee]

I realise it should be “reviews” without an apostrophe - sorry!

[u/drugitroll]

I wish they started with 128gb disk size.. I can see the future and next year they gonna start with 128gb and me like a sucker gonna get now for the same price the 64gb ._.

[u/Godly_Toaster]

has anyone's shipped yet? mine says will arrive friday but it hasn't even shipped. bit antsy cuz midterms start in two weeks and i really want to start transferring/rewriting my notes and i hope it doesnt take a week to get here

[u/snaithbert]

It has a smaller battery than the air 3? That kinda blows just a tad.

[u/dukwrth]

Just came here to say fuck Jon Prosser.

[u/PTfan]

What about battery?

[u/BobTheMartian007]

🤠🤠🤠Why all the reviews were posted in the exact same hour and day????