iPad Air 5 – TEST: Few Can Match

For the average consumer it might not have been Apple’s Peek Performance Event The most interesting launch. iPhone SE – Eight-Year-Old Design, Mac Studio – Not for Everyone – Plus Studio Display, Which seems to cost more than it tastesIt made a lot of people look forward to the next reveal from Apple.

In fact, it was the new iPad, the fifth generation iPad Air as it’s officially called, which was the most exciting consumer product during Peek Performance.

And we have to be honest: We rarely get caught up in launching a tablet, which probably tells us more about the iPhone SE than the iPad Air 5.

Prices and configurations

Apple has chosen to offer a limited set of configurations for the iPad Air 5, and the two questions you need to answer are: do you just want WiFi or WiFi + 4G / 5G, and 64 or 256 GB of storage?

The WiFi version starts at NOK 6990, but you have to pay at least NOK 8790 if you want the version that also supports SIM cards. The 256 GB iPad Air 5 costs 10,590 kroner, so neither a pencil nor a keyboard are included.

If you want the full package with 256 GB of storage, a pencil and a Magic Keyboard, you have to pay over 15,000 kroner. Then it’s as if we’d recommend an iPad Pro 11 with 128GB of storage instead. It has a 120Hz screen and Face ID which is cheaper, and do you really need 256GB of storage?

Maybe it’s a good idea to recharge with movies and series before a vacation trip, but you have room for many, many episodes on the 128GB model.

iPad Air 5

If you have an iPad Air 4 today and are wondering if it’s worth the upgrade, the answer is probably no. The main difference between them is that the newcomer has more powerful chipset in the M1. Do you notice it in practice? Mostly not. If you use your iPad to browse, read/answer emails, play music and video, or play games, you may have to make an effort to notice some difference in speed, but you’ll likely save a few seconds on more demanding tasks like photo and video editing.

Another difference is that the iPad Air 5 has a better front camera, which also supports Apple Center Stage technology where it pans and zooms in to the user during video calls. This works very well.

In terms of design, the Air 4 and 5 are more or identical, and it may be difficult to separate them if they are both in front of you, with a design somewhat similar to the iPad Pro models. One thing we’re missing from the iPad Pro is Face ID, because we’re not testing Touch ID as an equally seamless solution.

Other than that, there’s a lot more to the screen — which is still 60Hz which doesn’t give a smooth picture like the iPad Pro when navigating iPadOS or scrolling up and down on web pages — and battery life, which is still 10 hours of video streaming.

There’s really nothing to say about the iPad’s battery life, which we feel has been on the same level since the first battery was launched in 2010. The box includes a 20-watt USB-C charger that charges the iPad from 0 to 100 percent in about an hour and a half.

iPadOS 15.4

The iPad Air 5 launched with the new iPadOS 15.4, and the biggest news for the iPad is Universal Control. This is a smart feature that allows you to control your Mac and iPad using the same mouse/trackpad and keyboard, and easily transfer files between devices.

Universal Control is, to put it mildly, an impressive feat from Apple, and it’s almost surprising to see how smoothly it works when you move your cursor from a Mac window to the iPad and drag and drop the file again.

At the same time, I’d prefer this to be a niche function, because while Universal Control is impressive in every possible way, I find it hard to see my own uses for it. However, if you often work with your Mac and iPad side by side, you can probably get a lot of use out of it.

iPadOS is by and large an excellent tablet operating system that performs almost as well as it gets, with superior support for apps and enhanced solutions that just work. At the same time, we are more and more concerned about setting up different services every time we format a new iPad.

You can’t say no to setting up Apple Pay, but the option is yes, “configure later in settings” so that the alert appears again there. If you connect a SIM card, you will also be asked to set up iMessage and Facetime.

Pencil and Magic Keyboard

Although neither the Apple Pencil nor the Magic Keyboard are included in the box – they are sold separately for a total price of 5,000 kronor – this accessory is included in the Apple test package. This is to show that the iPad Air 5 is capable of official related accessories.

Which makes sense, because both the Pencil and Magic Keyboard are powerful iPad accessories that increase the experience a few notches, but also the expense.

The keyboard, despite its size, is a joy to type on. It’s actually a bit like Microsoft’s Writing Cover for the Surface Pro, which is fine, with the reduced travel. At the same time, the Magic Keyboard is quieter, but we lose the backlight and the top row of keys with shortcuts for volume, brightness, media buttons, and the like.

The thing that annoys us a bit with the keyboard is that it can suddenly switch to English, so that the characters appear when you really want to type æ, ø, and å.

We’ve written a lot about the Pencil before and there’s nothing new in this edition of the best digital stylus on the market. If not the best. However, the typing experience is not on par with Custom writing boards like Remarkable 2Which gives you a real feeling of writing on paper. However, there are third-party screen protectors that are also rougher and therefore give a greater feel of pen on paper.

Conclusion

Apple continues to like its solid tablets, because the new iPad Air 5 is generally a pleasure to use. In pure performance, there are few others in the industry who can measure, and no one else who can boast of an equally powerful app library.

The iPad is still the best for entertainment, and here the iPad Air beats most of the others, because a tablet is probably the best thing you can pack in your bag.

At the same time, the combination of the camera, speakers and microphone means that the iPad Air can also be an excellent tool for a business trip.

However, the iPad Air 5 is not without its objections. It’s no surprise to mention the high prices of an Apple product, and that goes for both better configurations and accessories, and then it gets a little tricky about setting up Apple Pay and other Apple services, which we would have been without.