Apple iPad Air 2 review

What is an iPad? When Steve Jobs introduced Apple’s tablet in January 2010, he delivered an unequivocal answer. “The iPad, if you were to sum it up, is our most advanced technology in a magical and revolutionary device at an unbelievable price,” he said. The words appeared on the screen behind him as he said it, and then he repeated the line. Magical and revolutionary. It became one of Jobs’ most iconic phrases. What he was really saying was even simpler: the iPad is the future.

It’s hard to believe that it’s been nearly five years since Jobs introduced that first iPad, and even harder to believe how completely the iPad changed the way computers fit into our lives. The iPad brought tablets into the mainstream, upended the entire PC business, and for several years looked like a runaway success on par with the iPhone. The question wasn’t whether tablets would replace laptops for most people, but how quickly.

But pendulums tend to swing back, and the iPad’s rocket ride into the future seems to have slowed. Sales have flattened out and missed expectations, Apple’s Mac sales have held their ground, and phones themselves have gotten larger and larger — the iPhone 6 Plus is creeping right into iPad mini territory.

And now, just one month after releasing that larger iPhone 6 Plus, Apple is back with the iPad Air 2, an even-thinner reworking of last year’s iPad Air. It has a faster processor, a better camera, and a fingerprint sensor. You can get it in gold. It costs anywhere from $499 for a base model with a paltry 16GB storage to $829 for the top-end model with 128GB of space and a cellular radio. It is an iPad. It is the latest iPad.

What is an iPad?

At the most basic level, the iPad Air 2 is a monumental achievement in the field of iterative improvement.

From a distance, it’s almost impossible to tell the iPad Air and iPad Air 2 apart. The basics of the design are exactly the same: the same proportions, the same polished chamfered edges, the same layout of ports and speakers and buttons. All that’s missing is the side switch, which was extremely useful as a rotation lock or mute switch. Locking rotation is now done with the control that appears by swiping up the Control Center from the bottom of the display; you can mute by holding to down volume button. None of this is easier or better than a switch, but so it goes with Apple’s ongoing quest for thinness.

Pick up an iPad Air 2 and you’ll immediately understand why Apple pursues that thinness with such single-minded zeal. It’s so, so thin: 18 percent thinner than the older Air, and even slightly lighter. It’s hard to believe that there’s a computer back there, let alone a computer as powerful as the laptop computers of just a few years ago. If there is anything magical about this new iPad it is this, this feeling of impossibility. The Air 2 makes the original iPad look and feel archaic, like a horrible monster from a long-forgotten past

That thinness is primarily achieved from a new optically-bonded display that virtually eliminates the air gap between the LCD and the top glass, making it seem like you’re touching the pixels directly. Apple’s making a big deal out of this, but it’s actually fairly late in bringing the technology to the iPad — every iPhone since the iPhone 4 has had a bonded display, the iMac has had one for a while now, and several competing high-end tablets have one as well. All for good reason: bonded displays look terrific. The Air 2 has a vibrant, sharp display that looks almost painted on. Apple says the new antireflective coating on the Air 2 reduces glare by 56 percent, but I didn’t really notice it making a huge difference; you definitely can’t use it in bright sunlight. My only issue was a pinkish cast on one of our review units when viewed off-axis; iPads have usually had near-perfect viewing angles and any inaccuracy is probably worth an exchange.

Just below the display you’ll find Apple’s Touch ID fingerprint sensor, which works as seamlessly as it does on the iPhone to unlock the iPad and pay for things using Apple Pay in apps. (There’s no NFC chip in the iPad Air 2, so waving it at credit card terminals is sadly not possible. Next time.)

Inside the iPad Air 2 lies Apple’s new A8X chip, which is a variant of the A8 found in the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus with additional graphics capabilities. It’s ridiculously fast — noticeably faster to load web pages and launch apps than my iPad Air, and it has so much graphics headroom that I’m eager to see how game developers take advantage of it. But that might take a while: Apple still sells a full lineup of iPads with A7 chips (and the original iPad mini with an A5!), and it’s hard to see the incentive for developers to optimize iPad apps for the A8X until the installed base of Air 2s makes it worthwhile.

You’d expect a thinner device with a more powerful chip to take a hit on battery life, but the Air 2 lasted just as long as any of my other iPads — I went a full weekend of using it on LTE and Wi-Fi without charging it, finally plugging it in at 34 percent.