iPad Air Reviews from Some Bigwigs!

Rafia Shaikh

Following some reports that iPad Air is already being offered by some major outlets in United States, we thought to put together some reviews of iPad Air done by tech bigwigs or international media websites. This will help you read the needed iPad Air reviews at one place to decide if you should go for this new Apple full-sized tablet.

Our favorite - TechCrunch:

Having used primarily an iPad mini for the past year, there’s no question that coming back to the 9.7-inch Retina display was an uplifting experience. It felt a little like getting your prescription adjusted and realizing you’ve been seeing everything poorly for a long time. Video shines on the iPad Air, as does image-rich content like comic books and photos.

The Smart Case makes the iPad Air feel quite a bit more bulky, in my opinion, and is fairly difficult to get off once its on. On the other hand, it’s definitely more protective than the Smart Case, and it’s still relatively svelte. Apple has also nailed its leather case designs in terms of putting out a product that feels very high quality, and that’s what they’ve done here, too.

Read the complete review here.

iPad Air Reviews - Engadget:

Despite its petite size and lightweight build, it doesn’t feel at all flimsy. The unibody aluminum chassis is just as solid as on older iPads. The sides have a blunter edge this time around, so you get more of a grip than the gradually sloping edges on previous models; and Apple has added chamfered, diamond-cut edges that form a boundary between the bezel and the rest of the tablet’s body, which gives it a premium look. In our experience, however, the downside to chamfered edges is that they’re often susceptible to dings and scratches.

For more, visit Engadget!

CNET:

If you found yourself tuning out the last few generations of iPad thanks to their extreme familiarity, it’s time to get yourself dialed back in. The iPad Air is worth getting excited about. Though it brings no new functionality to the table, and we can’t help being disappointed about the lack of Touch ID, the performance increase and solid battery life show that progress is still being made on the inside. It’s the new exterior design, however, that really impresses. The iPad Air is thinner than any tablet this size deserves to be, and lighter, too. The old iPad always felt surprisingly hefty. This one, compellingly lithe.

However, there is one tablet that’s thinner and lighter still, yet holds the promise of great performance and build quality: the upcoming iPad Mini with Retina Display. At $100 cheaper, that slate could prove the stiffest competition the full-size iPad has yet seen. Time will tell on that front (the new Mini won’t ship for a few weeks), so we’ll withhold judgment for now. If you’re willing to consider a smaller tablet, hold off clicking “buy” for just a little while longer. If you’re looking for a full-size tablet and don’t mind paying a premium to get the best, this is it.

iPad Air Reviews - LoopInsight:

When I first picked up the iPad Air, I noticed how light it was. I mean really light. In reality, Apple shaved about half a pound of weight off the new iPad compared to the previous generations. That may not seem like much, but when the old iPad only weighed approximately 1.5 pounds, knocking off half a pound is significant.

It’s very hard to describe how good the iPad Air feels in your hand without actually picking one up. It’s kind of like the first time you saw a Retina display for the first time—shock.

Mashable - iPad Air Reviews:

Though many of Apple’s tools focus on photos and videos, Apple has not exactly advanced the state of the art in digital imagers. The iPad Air features Apple’s previous generation 5MP iSight camera. This means no panorama photo or slo-mo video options. The FaceTime camera, though, appears to have gotten the same update applied to the iPhone 5C: It has much better low-light performance. In FaceTime calls with my wife, she could clearly see my face, even under dim lighting.

Read the iPad Air review from Lance Ulanoff from this link.

AllThingsD:

In my tests, the iPad Air far exceeded Apple’s claim of 10 hours of battery life. For over 12 hours, it played high-definition videos, nonstop, with the screen at 75% brightness, with Wi-Fi on and emails pouring in. That’s the best battery life I’ve ever recorded for any tablet.

iPad Air Reviews - AnandTech: 

Apple’s decision to unify silicon across the iPhone 5s, iPad Air and iPad mini with Retina Display is an interesting one, but ultimately it doesn’t come with any real tradeoffs for iPad owners. Apple’s own 64-bit Cyclone cores are incredibly powerful, even more so than I originally expected when I reviewed the iPhone 5s. Apple seems to have built a bigger, higher performance CPU architecture than any other ARM player, including ARM itself. The design isn’t perfect, but it’s a completely different caliber performer than anything else it competes against. As such, Apple was completely justified in putting the A7 in both the iPhone 5s and the iPad Air. If anything, I’d argue that it might be overkill for the 5s given the device’s smaller battery, but my sensibilities soon get the best of me and remind me that more performance on tap is never a bad thing.

Pocket Lint:

Despite the boost in power, in day-to-day use we've noticed no real speed enhancements compared to the previous full-sized iPad. And that's based on tests using an array of apps and playing all the resource-heavy games we can - Infinity Blade III, Need for Speed Most Wanted, Real Racing 3, Dead Trigger 2 and others. For today, the Air is as fast as any Apple tablet has ever been: we've experienced zero lag and zero performance issues. Not once have we thought anything took too long to load, even if, in most cases, the iPad Air did win out compared to the iPad 4 in load times, but only by a whisker.

The importance of 64-bit is huge, though. It is very much an improvement that you'll see tomorrow rather than today, which makes it really hard to tell you that it's amazing, because on release day you'll look at the iPad Air and say: "this is no different to the iPad 4". Compared to the original iPad, though, and it's light years ahead.

iPad Air Reviews from Time:

The Air sports the same screen as the old model, so it’s obvious what Apple shrunk to squeeze it into the narrower case: the borders. As with both variants of the iPad Mini, the bezels along the left- and right-hand sides of the display (when held in portrait orientation) are now slender rails. At first, that made me nervous — I worried that my palms would intrude on the screen real estate, covering vital information and possibly even triggering features which I didn’t intend to trigger. In reality, that wasn’t an issue, in part because iOS is designed to reject such accidental input.

Some relevant links:

Apple iPad Air Coming to Various Regional Telcos – GCI, Bluegrass Cellular & C Spire Wireless

Hidden iOS 7 Features II – Because the Surprises Never End!

Apple iPad Air vs Microsoft Surface 2

iPad Air reviews - Some Features of Apple iPad Air!

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