Apple iPad Air

Published on 25 Feb 2019 1 min reading time Categories: Tablets

The Air comes in gold, gray, or silver. A 64GB model costs $499 and a 256GB model costs $649. Adding 4G LTE cellular to either adds $130. The Apple Pencil costs $99, and Apple’s keyboard case costs $159.

Sticking with the 64GB model and the keyboard case, that gets you an “Apple laptop” for $658. The 11-inch iPad Pro and the MacBook Air, the least expensive Mac laptop, both cost at least $300 more.

The tablet’s design is a lot like the 2017 10.5-inch iPad Pro. It measures 9.8 by 6.8 by 0.2 inches (HWD) and weighs exactly one pound. There are dual speakers on the bottom, a Lightning (not USB-C) port, and a traditional home button with Touch ID. The Air doesn’t support Face ID, but Touch ID was very accurate and easy in testing.

The 2,224-by-1,668, 10.5-inch screen, meanwhile, is similar to the new iPad mini screen. The colors are quite accurate. Apple’s TrueTone technology changes the screen’s white point based on ambient light. We tested the screens with SpectraCal’s CalMAN for Business software and a Klein K-80 colorimeter, and found that both the iPad Air and iPad mini are about equally bright with TrueTone turned on, at 432 to 440 nits, but that the mini is brighter with TrueTone turned off, at 480 nits to the Air’s 451. Both are brighter than most smartphone screens.

Battery life is good, for an iPad. The Air lasted 6 hours, 13 minutes streaming a YouTube video with the screen set to full brightness over Wi-Fi, which is noticeably better than the fifth- and sixth-gen iPads, which lasted 5 hours, 40 minutes each. That translates to about eleven hours of use at half brightness.

The iPad Air also has the same networking capabilities as the iPad mini. That means a perfectly good 802.11ac Wi-Fi setup and an optional LTE modem that supports all US and most foreign networks. The Air has both an eSIM and a physical SIM card slot. Using the eSIM, you can sign up for plans on AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile, or various roaming carriers; you can use a physical SIM with Verizon or any other carrier.