Gadgetory

hey what is up guys I'm Kim PhD here and this is the iPad air 2 now this can be a pretty simple relatively easy review video because we saw the iPad air one did a review video of it last year and overall as a category these iPads and basically any large tablet have sort of slowed down into this iteration year by year we see them get a little bit better but there aren't that many drastic changes made so really the easiest way to show this is to give you a list of the ways it's changed versus the iPad air one so these are all the changes made to create the iPad air 2 so number one is the iPad air 2 is thinner and lighter than the first iPad air so the first one was already really thin and light but this new air 2 is just 0.96 pounds so lighter and 6.1 millimeters thin so thinner than any other tablet out there and believe me that translates really well from paper and just numbers to actual hardware and holding in the hand so the build of this thing is almost surreal it's completely made of metal all around which is great and it has rounded sides and chamfered edges all the way around too and it kind of just feels like the display is attached to almost nothing as at this point I mean this is kind of the reason why I say it feels like large tablets are hitting their stride right now if you show this iPad air to someone 10 years ago or even five years ago you'd probably flip out and think it's impossibly thin there's no way that's real but it's not just about fitness the fact that it's also lighter means it's just as easy as any other tablet to hold in the hand and while it's definitely not a one-handed tablet it's much easier to hold with one hand and type and poke with the other hand when this habit is so light like this so the side bezels are thinned out a little but there's still plenty of room to rest your thumb so overall it's really well thought out I mean the design we've seen it before and it's sort of set a standard for build quality and it's pretty deserving of the name the only quirks with this new thinner and lighter hardware is that the mute switch that's been on the side of every single iPad and iPhone since the beginning is now gone it's been replaced with a software toggle in the quick settings of iOS 8 and I don't even think that the tablet is too thin for this it's just a I guess a design decision by Apple a conscious choice to not have it but the other downside of going so fin and light is the space inside is a little bit smaller and that means you have a smaller battery but the thing is it's still a great battery life for a tablet I didn't even notice having to charge it more versus any other iPad it has great stamina that's basically all day with any use and has a classic iPad ridiculous standby time where you can leave it at 85% not use it for a week and pick it up to use it and it'll be right ready I'd like 82% so technically yes it is a smaller battery it's a 15% smaller cell coming in at seven thousand three hundred forty million powers and yes I should be mad at them for sacrificing battery just to make it thinner again but it's at the point where I haven't actually yet noticed a difference in battery life so I guess that's something iOS on a tablet has going for it now one of the biggest and best improvements of the iPad air 2 is its new display it's still a Retina display and it still has the same 4 by 3 aspect ratio and 2048 by 1536 resolution still the same great colors and color reproduction brightness levels and everything like that but it's now a fully laminated display which actually ironically means less air between the glass and the panel so this and the anti-reflective coating is supposed to give the new screen a much more glare-free look like the image is closer to the surface of the glass and I actually thought it pretty much seemed like I was touching the pixels like the image was floating right on top of the iPad as I touched it and the Retina display looks great except I already thought that about the old iPad screens so maybe they all look great honestly you probably won't be able to tell the difference until you see them side-by-side actually think time AUSA's speed test video accidentally does a really good job of showing a difference between the display on the iPad air 2 and the original air I'll link that below if you want to watch it but besides that I did notice a little bit of a black gap around the edges of the display just a little bit of a gap it's something I've noticed other laminated displays have too and it would be a little distracting sometimes but a lot of times I just didn't even notice and it would be less noticeable on the gray iPad which has black front bezels instead of white another improvement with the air 2 is the specs inside so the air 2 is rocking Apple's new a8x chip which is their best mobile chip yet by a long shot and without getting too technical it's essentially a triple core three core processor and you also now finally for the first time in Apple tablet history get two gigabytes of RAM now the a8x is chip it's incredible it's super powerful it's really thermally efficient this tablet basically never heats up on me and it powers iOS 8 as smoothly as you'd expect I mean this no hiccups here this is iOS 8 at its finest there's not a whole lot of extra stuff going on obviously it's just a grid of icons but it better be this smooth in 2014 with specs like this but on a tablet I've said this before everything feels like a blown-up version of the phone interface here on the iPad it's not really taking much advantage of all those pixels and all that power and with 2 gigabytes of RAM you would think Apple would find some awesome seriously advanced iPad multitasking stuff to throw in there but it's still the same interface as any other granted I'm sure apps will stay open in the background longer without having to refresh but honestly unless you're doing some heavy gaming or messing with some 3d graphics apps or something really intensive like that you're probably not going to notice the spec difference between the air 2 and the original air even though it is a lot better so that brings us to the little things there are just a couple of other little things sprinkled in there to make this iPad air 2 a really compelling tablet for a lot of people that they'll hopefully try to get them to spend their money on they upgraded the camera now yes I know it's rocking an even better 8 megapixel camera it's essentially the exact same optics as the iPhone 5s and sure I'll give credit to Apple you're right the iPad is probably the best camera viewfinder out there technically that's true and as beautiful as it might be to look in front of your face it still doesn't mean you should take pictures all the time or video with your tablet but hey the f-15s took pretty good pictures so now so does the iPad you also get touch ID now the thing print sensor over the home button that you can use to unlock the tablet but it kind of stops short of a lot of potential I mean there's no NFC so you can't use it for Apple pay but there are no multiple account sign ins on iOS for example so you can't sign in to a different profile with a different fingerprint stuff like that's missing I guess it's still the early stages of touch ID technically but basically it's just for unlocking right now but it's there and also got to mention that super reflective Apple logo which was a fingerprint magnet like crazy but when the tablets clean that thing is a serious eye catcher and the speaker on the iPad which was very very very loud so it's actually so loud that it vibrates the entire tablet at its loudest volume and then when you put it down on a sort of a vibrating surface like a wooden table the chassis makes it even louder so it resonates through whatever surface you put it on so it's kind of funny it's not the best quality in the world and it's still sideways facing but the loudness was impressive so overall as a whole package you gotta admit the iPad air 2 is pretty sweet even though I'm more into smaller tablets at the moment like the Nexus 9 and the iPad Mini and speaking of the iPad Mini the iPad Mini 3 which has come out recently I didn't even want to touch it or talk about it at all but essentially just for those of you who are curious it is the same exact product as the iPad Mini 2 with Retina display just added a gold version and touch ID so what this essentially means is the previous version which dropped $100 is now a really good deal and if you want to continue spending full price to get touch ID and gold that's up to you but I wouldn't recommend it I would recommend specifically buying the iPad Mini 2 if you're into a smaller iPad but I'm also going to be reviewing another smaller tablet coming up soon the Nexus 9 and a whole bunch of other things I like I said November is a pretty busy month for tech but has been my impressions of all the stuff that's new in the iPad air 2 and you can choose for yourself if you think that's worth upgrading I personally would say hmm for some people but again it's up to you so that's been it thank you for watching and I'll talk to you guys in the next one peace you