Gadgetory

hi everybody I'm Tim Stevens and this is the fifth-generation iPad it's the biggest refresh to the iPad since the second generation came out in fact it's such a big change to the design that they've gone ahead and changed the name so meet the ipad air it still has the same 9.7 inch Retina Display up front that you've seen in the fourth generation and earlier generation is of the iPad but this generation is critically twenty percent thinner and forty percent lighter that may not sound like big numbers but actually it is a very noticeable difference when you pick up and hold this tablet it's incredibly light and incredibly thin much more so than before it really feels great much more close to the ipad mini than indeed to the fourth generation and the previous generation ipads that came before it has the a7 processor which we just saw introduced in the iphone 5s which is a 64-bit chip which gives really great performance we've actually seen noticeable improvements over the fourth-generation ipad which itself was quite a performer games will run really well especially new releases like the latest infinity blade and applications will load more quickly and web pages will launch more quickly as well however it's not a huge difference from the previous generation interestingly this is the same cpu is found in the iPhone 5s previous versions of the iPad have had upgraded versions of the chips but this is the same version benchmarks prove it to be about the same speed as the iPhone 5s that's not a bad thing by any means the 5s is indeed a very quick phone but if you're hoping for something even quicker you're not going to see that here now we've got the same selection of ports as before which is basically just one port the Lightning port on the bottom of the device we do now have stereo speakers which is great however they're both still located on the bottom of the tablet we would have liked to see one of the speakers situated on the top so that when you hold it sideways and watch a movie you'll get proper stereo separation the other thing that we would have liked to see would be touch ID that's something that Apple introduced with the iphone 5s so that you can just hold your finger on the home button and unlock the phone without having to type in your PIN code unfortunately that's not present here on the iPad air you'll still need to type in your PIN code to unlock the tablet now of course most iPads never leave the home so security isn't such a big deal but certainly when you're buying application is it does get a little bit annoying to have to type in your password especially if you've gotten used to doing things on the phone 5s with just a fingerprint overall we're really big fans of the new iPad air it's nothing really that drastically different over the fourth generation but the thinness and lightness do make it much more of a portable tablet than before you barely will even notice it in your bag in terms of the competition it certainly does stack up pretty well in terms of specs and performance however it's still a fairly expensive tablet starting at 499 for the 16 gigabyte version and going up one hundred dollars each as you go to 32 64 and 128 gigabytes if you like the 3G or LTE versions of the tablet you can give those for an additional one hundred thirty dollars each again pricing very similar to the fourth-generation iPad there are quite a few lower-cost tablets on the market but none offer the sort of quality of design that the ipad air has however there is some new competition for the ipad air and that is the ipad mini retina which apple also introduced the ipad mini retina doesn't come to the market until a little bit after the ipad air but with the retina display and also the a7 processor inside we think that apple's got more competition on the inside than it does on the outside of the market right now overall again we're really happy with the iPad air we think it's a great tablet if you've been waiting for an upgrade I think now is probably the time to do so but if you've got a fourth-generation iPad the performance difference isn't all that drastic unless you're really looking for something thinner and lighter we think you'll probably be happy to stick with that for at least another year again this is tim stevens and this is the apple ipad air you