(upbeat music) - This is the new iPad Air
and the big surprise for me is that it now has an M1 chip. So that's got a lot of
people curious about, whether it's worth upgrading
to (message notification). Oh, like my friend Nicole here. Well, let's fly out for her. And what I learned in doing so is that, there's actually an iPad
performance tier list. And if you are in the B tier this may or may not be
worth upgrading too. (upbeat music) When I reviewed the $800 M1
powered iPad Pro last summer I felt that its price and its power were higher than its utility,
even for professionals because iPad OS is still quite limited and it's really easy to
run into workflow walls. In fact, I called it a luxury device. (upbeat music) It really is one. So I don't think that the
iPad Air needs all that power. The upgrade from the Pro that
I think would best trickle down to this is the high
refresh-rate ProMotion screen. An M1 processor might
make your device faster but ProMotion makes your
device appear faster. (upbeat music) But I don't work at Apple and besides Nicole's iPad
Pro already has ProMotion. (upbeat music) So why'd you reach out to me? - I reached out to you because
I have the 2018 iPad Pro and it's the 11 inch. The 2022 iPad Air is
the similar form factor. It is also more reasonably priced. It has the M1 processor
and it has more RAM. So on paper (giggles) looking at those- - Should be better, right? - Yeah, I was like, ooh. - So you're just using
your iPad really intense? - I guess so for an average casual user, just using it to browse and for- - I think you're more than
an average casual user. - Really (laughs). - From what you've told me. I thought like, I'm like, oh I'm an average casual user. And then hearing how you use it I'm like, "Oh, maybe some people are
using it more intensely "than I thought originally." - Well, I came from a MacBook so I wanted to use it for
everything I did on the MacBook. - Okay, so I want you to show
me how you use your iPad. - Okay. - Ah, but first how's your battery? - It's not looking too good. We are-
- Oh, 3%. - 3% - Well, that's perfect because
Anker's sponsoring this video with their Nano Pro charger. We can get in purple to match the iPad. - Oh, I love it. - Check out Anker's new 40-watt
Nano Pro 521 dual charger and their 511 charger fitted with Anker's renowned management and safety technology and available in four or more colors they can charge your M1
powered Apple devices like this iPad at full speed. Check it out with our link
in the description below. Oh, perfect.
- Oh awesome. Thanks Jamie.
- Thanks Jamie. - Welcome, no problem. - Wow. - Nicole's A12X powered iPad Pro from 2018 has always confused me. It's in the A12 processor
generation, which is old. But if you look at the processor itself it looks an awful lot like an M1. In fact, the Apple Silicon
Developer Transition Kit was essentially powered by one of these. And so if there were an
iPad performance tier list I wouldn't know where this would go. So how many apps do you
run at at the same time? 'Cause like, do you
sometimes have two apps open, the YouTube app video
playing slide of over? - Yeah, okay so YouTube is playing. You can open up the comments as well. Ooh, I'll usually open up like
something like my journal. I open up Instagram which
is pretty gross on this app. - The amount of space.
- Zuckerberg, let Instagram make an iPad app. - It's not random, so many levels. - Okay. - Yeah, so then I end up to like. - Slide-
- Back, back. - Back and forth, yeah. - Yeah, and then I'll usually
open up something like Reddit. Oh, and then there.
- Reddit, it's reloading. It was playing before? - It was playing before. - Okay. - Oh, now it won't even- - Oh, we had just... This was just open a second ago. - It was.
- And now it's... But that is annoying.
- Can't see. - Can't se the cute cat anymore. And then this will just
kind of like, oh, okay, well how am I gonna see the cats now? How am I gonna find this
post again if I reopen this? - I think that RAM might
be the biggest issue here. The way iPad OS manages
RAM is that it purges apps that you haven't used
in a while from memory as you open more, this prevents
slowdowns in open apps. But it also means that when you do go back you're gonna have to wait
for those apps to reload. - This is not the same video. - Yeah, it isn't. Oh no. - And now- - It stopped playing and you
can't get into play again. So I just- - It changed the progress bar. - Oh, it did change the progress bar. - But it's the wrong video. It is and then I'll have to disconnect it. - You have to disconnect. - And then I have to reconnect it. And we are- - Oh, now it's resetting the whole app. - Yes, that's what happens. - This is what can happen
if you fill your iPad's RAM. Nicole's iPad Pro only has four gigabytes. So there's a chance that
the eight in the iPad Air might make the difference. - They do (laughs). I like (mumbles). (soft music) - It looks so fast. - It's so much faster, right? - Like that was crazy. How that fast. - Look at this. Wow, see? See, do you get what I mean
by like, it feels snappier. It does feel snappier. - Okay, let's rotate it. So this is how I'd usually use it. - Yeah. - Okay, so. Okay, yeah, it is snappier. - So how does it compare to your iPad? - Well, if I were to
have multiple apps open and I'm just scrolling through them it will still like give it
a little moment to reload. - Yeah. - But it'll be much snappier I felt. One difference that I noticed but I don't think it
would be as emphasized is the 120 Hertz refresh rate. Personally, I don't watch a lot. - Yeah. - On my iPad but the area
I did notice the most is switching between apps. - It seems that the M1's
extra RAM doesn't seem to be making all that
much of a difference here. So what is? I did a bunch of testing to
compare all the recent iPads to each other and that's how I came up, with the iPad performance tier list. They're weirdly grouped together and not according to processor number. F tier is easy. It's all those iPads that
don't support the latest iOS. Above it in the E tier is those
powered by an A8X chip, A9, A9X chip and A10 chips because of the similar
result in Geekbench. D is anything powered by
an A10 X chip or A12 chip. C tier which is quite close
to D is the A13 powered iPad. The reason for this was when I did my Lightroom RO export test the new iPad was around two
minutes faster than the D tier. And those numbers showed
what was most interesting. The B tier it contains Nicole's iPad Pro the 2020 model of the same. The outgoing A14 powered iPad Air and the A15 powered iPad mini. If you look at all their Geekbench scores you can see that they're quite close. Single cores are slower
in the older devices but multi-core and graphics
are virtually the same. And when exporting RAWs they're all within 15
seconds of each other. So what's in the A tier? Well, it's this iPad Air. And yeah, while I made these tier up, it explains why Nicole might
not be compelled to upgrade. This is only one tier away from her iPad despite being almost four years newer. Now this list focuses
mainly on processing power but we could reorganize the list with an emphasis on RAM it's
different but not by much. Because of the way iPad OS works, it's hard to feel the
impact RAM capacity makes. So I think the performance
tier list is probably, more pertinent for more people. All right, so what's in the S tier though? It's the M1 powered iPad
Pro if you get one terabyte of storage or more because those models get 16 gigabytes of RAM. So S means stupid expensive. (upbeat music) Now, while the iPad Air is
in the A tier in performance, it's really a B plus
compared to the iPad Pro all things considered. It's $600 price tag is
very close to the iPad Pros which for about $150 more
differentiates itself with exclusive luxury
features like face ID instead of touch ID,
which is more convenient, two rear cameras with flash and
lighter, thunderbolt support and the high speed ProMotion screen. That's a really nice feature. On the flip side, the basic
iPad is almost half the price with less than half the performance. And that's become a much bigger gap with nothing in between. Otherwise, apart from the M1 chip the iPad Air gets very little
in additional improvements. Storage tier stay stubbornly at 64 and 256 gigabytes the front cameras. Now in all ultra wide
unit with center stage. Cellular models have 5G radios and there are different colors
with the abandonment of green and the new darker blue, and
the addition of this purple which I do kind of like. What would you. I guess, what would you recommend then to perhaps iPad users? - I feel like if you are
currently on a 2018 iPad Pro and you're looking for
a step up in performance for example, if you
are a professional user and using this for a main
device to create things then it would be beneficial maybe to look in into the new line of iPad Pros. Whereas if you are a new
user in the world of iPads and you're looking to
go into using iPad OS then I would highly recommend looking at the fifth gen iPad Air lineup. - So would you upgrade - If I didn't already have an iPad I would definitely get the 2022 iPad Air. (upbeat music) (Nicole laughs) - There are two things that surprise me when evaluating this new iPad Air. The first is that I'm
finding an emerging group of people who are switching to the iPad as their mobile computing device. And back on the day I picked this up, I talked with a guy who
switched completely away from his MacBook to two iPads. A mini and a big Pro. And then of course, there's Nicole too. This means that despite
iPad OS's limitations, these people are finding
ways to push their tablets. The other surprise is how close and how clear the
performance tier list is. I was not expecting to see four
completely different models released over four years
virtually perform identically. It's good to know because you
can see how much of an upgrade you'll be getting between the models. The iPad Air then is a buy for people in the D tier or below. Thanks for ranking this Mac address. If you think this video
is A tier, give it a like and if you think this is S
tier, then why not subscribe? Then in the comments,
you can do a tier list of all Mac address videos, F tier, S tier. I hope there's a lot on the top, right?
