iPad Air 4 In-Depth Review | The best iPad Money Can Buy in 2021
So many reviews out there for the iPad Air 4, impressions, one week reviews, 2 weeks reviews , fortnight reviews and I was thinking to see how could I make mine bit different without repeating the same but yet convey my strong view on how amazing this new products from Apple really is.
Then I looked at the devices in hand and thought I would not touch my iPad Pro for the full month and just use the iPad Air 4 as my main tablet. At the end of this time period, I will review and note down every time I felt the absence of my iPad Pro, as the iPad Pro is my go to device and my most favourite iPad that I have ever owned. I use it extensively for social media, edit 4K videos, photo editing, write all my scripts on it and also watch Netflix & chill.
So I thought the best way to review the iPad Air 4 will be to not use my most favourite and the most important tablet in my life and see how the Air 4 stacks up.
See I was always an iPad person right from that very first one, it was the perfect device for me and I do remember the times where the iPad changed things drastically offering that bit more, that bit extra.
First, it was the iPad 2 which I still have it with me. It did something different by adding cameras and opened up the whole would of video chat. All of a sudden parents started attending our virtual birthdays, the distance between the seven seas became less relevant. People living abroad or away from home will know the true value of FaceTime. And then the next iPad to offer that but extra was the original iPad Air .. which again I have it here .. shaving nearly half of the weight pushed this into a different league altogether .. it was soo much more easier in hands and the thinness made it truly revolutionary than just being evolutionary.
And then was the time of the Pro. The iPad no longer was that device just to watch videos or read your emails whilst you are on the potty, it became a true powerhouse and you can actually replace your laptop with this if you carefully tread around the ever expanding boundaries of its Operating System.
And that where the iPad Air 4 comes in proving that to get those Pro features, you do not have to go all the way to the top tier. The middle is going to be perfectly fine this time.
Lets look at the Air 4 in a bit more detail, starting with that all screen display, which no wonder looks something out of a sci-fi movie. Just this thin slab of metal and glass offering colours which satisfy not only your eyes but also your senses. Then that fluid touchscreen making it a breeze to navigate the device and that perfect size which can easily fit into every nook and corner of your daily requirement, feeling not too big or not too small but just right. This ticks all the boxes for a perfect media consumption device belonging to the next decade.
The iPad Air 4 does satisfy your daily’s social and leisure needs with its ease of use and a wealth of vast APP Ecosystem. For everything you do as soon as you connect online, the iPad Air 4 covers you for everything and then some.
Movies can be personal with the screen giving you some amazing and vibrant colours, videos can be communal with its decent stereo speakers and that all-day battery just keeps the device going even until the wee hours of the night. The iPad Air 4 perfectly covers all grounds.
And even when you run out of juice, the included 20 Watts fast charger now makes it a 2 to 3 hours plugged-in thing instead of it being an all nighter!
And then the next league of users who want to be productive with the iPad, who want to push its boundaries, who just want to create, the A14 bionic processor under the hood makes sure that you have power more than that Magic Sword From Castle Greyskull!
Seriously it broke benchmarks and geek scores but usually numbers are one thing and real world usage is another and in this case the two add up. There is currently nothing you can throw at the Air 4 which is cannot handle. My Windows Core i7 laptop does crash but on the Air 4, I have yet have to encounter an APP that crashed or a program that it could not handle.
Jump onto Lumafusion for a lengthy session of 4K video editing OR get into Adobe Lightroom so you can add the right amount of tint to your favourite picture OR get onto Keynote for crunching the numbers OR dive into the amazing templates of Pages to make that perfect presentation. There is no lack of power or efficiency when you churn through all these resource intensive tasks.
The iPad has come a long long way from that device which Steve Jobs wanted so he could check emails from his toilet seat. The iPad has become a true powerhouse and there is soo much you could do with it now.
And then, lets consider another leagues of exciting users — Gamers! And with them comes the need for more graphical power and higher refresh rates. Honestly everything works soo smoothly here that the lack of the 120hz refresh rate does not cause huge damage to your gaming experience. And with console grade games making their way to the iPad, you could happing sit back, relax and game-on to your hearts content.
And then with it comes to integrating with various useful add-ons in your life, the iPad Air 4 has got you covered there as well. From an amazingly integrated stylus which aids productivity to a cool keyboard dock that makes your iPad float .. well, almost .. to plugging in additional storage or wireless printing or NFC file transfer — the iPad Air 4 tries its best to tick all the boxes here.
And then it today’s dreadful world of virtual classrooms, online meeting and distant cosplay parties, the cameras do a decent job to portray your image without being grainy or fuzzy.
And finally if you are worried if about your security, then the Air 4 covers you here as well. With that all new implementation of TouchID in the power button, the first for any Apple device, your content is perfectly secure . I tried my best to see if it fails but every time it simply worked despite it being on a smaller surface area compared to the previous TouchID implementations.
So everything was just a pleasant experience with the iPad Air 4 and the way it softly blends into your lifestyle is simply amazing. And to answer that question of whether I missed my favourite iPad Pro all the time whilst I was using the Air 4? Well the answer is NO!
Even I thought I would miss the 120hz promotion screen of the iPad Pro, but honestly the way iPadOS smoothly optimises the user experience, higher refresh rate is not an absolute requirement.
But if I have to pick out a few negatives about the device as we need to keep this review fair then I would say first its the price increase, that too coming to us at the worst possible time in the history of our existence. The iPad Air was reintroduced in 2019 to be that perfect middle child, which sat in the Goldilocks zone of being not to expensive or not too cheap giving you best features for your money. But now the price increase slightly pushed it away from that Goldie Locks zone towards that Pro pricing zone.
Next is that 64GB base storage, on my iPad Pro, the base 128GB storage space felt more comfortable as I didn’t have to be cautious on what I was storing on my iPad. But 64GB on the iPad Air 4 in 2020 is barely acceptable and there is no option to pay like 50 or 60 bucks more and opt for the 128GB storage option. And the only other option is 256GB which sky-rockets the price to 750$.
And then the quad speaker setup on the iPad Pro sounded just a bit better compared to the dual stereo speaker setup on the iPad Air 4
But apart from that, everything else was simply amazing on the iPad Air 4. It’s got everything that you need on a tablet belonging to the next decade and enough oomph to last for at least 4–5 years.
So, in conclusion, the iPad Air 4 is my tablet of choice for 2021.
