Review: Apple iPad Air (2020)

It’s taken me a long time to appreciate Apple’s iPad. In its early years it felt like a slate that was primarily good at being a slate, whether it was used as a prop, like some techno-futuristic vision of tablets in films, or as a portable screen for field workers, or the thing on which I scribbled a mushy signature at the coffee shop. It didn’t feel like a computer. I dug my heels in on a traditional clamshell laptop. (Well, not literally; that would surely break the keyboard.)

The iPad has changed a lot in the past few years. Its physical form is pretty much the same. But its software has evolved to support more desktop-like functions. It runs on insanely powerful chips. It works with a keyboard and mouse.

These things still don’t make it a great work tool, but at least it’s getting better at being one. For years I brought my laptop with me on vacations for fear of having to file something urgent for work; in the summer of 2019 I carried just an iPad. (Everything was fine!) This year, a fellow tech writer went as far as naming the iPad the “gadget of the pandemic.” When I carry the iPad to bed with me in the evening, to write “Sorry for the delay” emails and messages, and stream some Netflix series that will temporarily blot out the news of the day, I mostly agree with him.

So if someone asked me now, “Should I get an iPad?” I would say yes. The question is which one, because there are a lot of them, and if you’re looking to splurge on a high-end model, the differences between the 2020 iPad Air and the 2020 iPad Pro are about as thin as the tablets themselves. I’ve been using the new iPad Air for over a month now, and if you’re willing to sacrifice a few specs in speaker and camera quality, then I don’t see any reason why you wouldn’t buy the Air over the Pro.

The new iPad Air launched last month. It starts at $599 for a model with 64 gigabytes of internal storage, and $749 for 256 GB. If you opt to buy an iPad Air with both Wi-Fi and cellular capabilities, it will cost $130 more for either storage configuration.

The Air has a 10.9-inch “Liquid Retina” display, which is Apple’s name for a super-high-resolution liquid crystal display. It’s marketed as having an edge-to-edge display, because the iPad’s bezels have shrunk over the years, though they’re still at least half an inch wide. The body of the iPad Air is made of 100 percent recycled aluminum, and Apple has added a couple of new color finishes to its lineup. The loaner iPad I’ve been using is Green, which is really a seafoam hue.

The 10.9-inch iPad Air doesn’t look much different from the 11-inch iPad Pro—either the brand-new iPad Pro or the 2018 iPad Pro. The Air is just a few grams lighter than the Pro, though you’d have to be holding them both in hand to notice this, and even then you might not. On the back of the iPad Air are the same three small dots that the iPad Pro has, indicating that the tablet has Apple’s “smart connector” technology and will work with the company’s accessory keyboards.

The iPad Air works with Apple's latest accessories.

Photograph: Apple

The two tablets are different in important ways, however. First, there’s the price: The iPad Air starts at $599, and the iPad Pro starts at $799. Second, the new iPad Air has Touch ID integrated into the top sleep/wake button in place of the camera-based Face ID system on the iPad Pro.

This is the first time Apple has implemented Touch ID within this button; in the past, it was in home buttons on the chin of the iPhone or iPad. I was at first annoyed by Touch ID in the top button, but I got used to it. Face ID is overall more convenient than the Touch ID, but Touch ID at least gives you the illusion of slightly more control as you place your finger on the button. Neither of them are perfect, meaning they don't always work on the first try, and you might end up punching in your numeric passcode anyway.

The third big difference is the updated processor in the iPad Air. It runs on Apple's new A14 Bionic, a powerful multicore chipset. The iPad Pro runs on the older A12X chip. The iPad Pro may make up for the lost horsepower in RAM—Apple never shares RAM info, but tear-downs reveal that the Pro has 6 GB while the Air has 4 GB. Lastly, the Pro has better-sounding speakers, as well as an ultrawide camera on the back, which the Air lacks.

Over time the software on iPad has gotten more computer-like. iOS 11, introduced a few years ago, included some multitasking features and even an app dock just like the kind that appears on Macs. Last year, iOS was forked into its own software for iPads, called iPadOS. The latest version is iPadOS 14, which is what I’ve been running on the iPad Air. There are new widget views on the home screen and sidebars within Apple-made apps. But these changes feel small.

What makes the iPad Air feel more like a “computer,” to me, is support for trackpads and mice. In this case I used Apple’s Magic Keyboard ($299), which has a built-in trackpad. This keyboard, while expensive, is leaps and bounds better than the Smart Keyboard Folio that Apple first introduced with its Pro line of iPads. The cursor itself is a small bubble that appears on the iPad’s screen, a curious design choice (at first I thought it was a broken pixel), but it was nice having the option to either swipe and tap or use the trackpad and cursor. The iPad Air has also supported Apple’s stylus since last year, though I've used that for little more than marking up PDFs—which, if you are not a journalist, you may have little reason to do.

The latest iPadOS gives the device more laptop-like software features, but there are quirks.

Photograph: Apple

Still, split-screen features, sidebars, and pricey accessories do not a computer make. Apple touts the iPad Air’s ability to support high-res multimedia projects, because of its graphics core. But managing multimedia projects on an iPad is another story. I rely heavily on my laptop for this, creating desktop folders, storing files locally, and manipulating application and browser windows as I drag and drop files. iPad’s mobile UI may be improving, but it still limits you to working within app containers and its predetermined layout options.

Using Google Docs on iPad is still maddening, somehow. And then there’s video conferencing. At this point I believe there will likely be software that digitally corrects our eye gazes before Apple changes the position of the iPad’s camera. As it is now, if you use the iPad in landscape mode—which you would if you’re using Apple’s accessory keyboard—the FaceTime camera is off to the left, so it’s hard to not appear as though you’re looking off-screen as you chat. Zoom, an app that many of us are probably sick of at this point (and yet we cannot escape), is suboptimal on iPad. This may be the biggest argument against the iPad being the gadget of the pandemic.

The iPad Air review unit I’ve been using also has a visible spot of backlight bleed along the edge of its screen, something other users have complained about as well. Hopefully, Apple is generous with returns and exchanges if this is a pervasive problem.

Video calling and backlight bleeding aside, the iPad Air is the tablet to buy if you’re looking for more power and screen than what the basic, 10.2-inch iPad has to offer, but don’t want to spend more for the iPad Pro. The support for keyboard, trackpad, and Pencil means the Air essentially does what the Pro does, even if there are some technical variations. And while it can’t do the job of a full computer, it’s the computing device I most look forward to using after my actual computer. I guess that means I'm officially an iPad convert.