(upbeat music)
- This is the new iPad Air and the big surprise for me is
that it now has an M1 chip.
So that's got a lot of people curious about,
whether it's worth upgrading to (message notification).
Oh, like my friend Nicole here.
Well, let's fly out for her.
And what I learned in doing so is that,
there's actually an iPad performance tier list.
And if you are in the B tier
this may or may not be worth upgrading too.
(upbeat music)
When I reviewed the $800 M1 powered iPad Pro last summer
I felt that its price and its power
were higher than its utility, even for professionals
because iPad OS is still quite limited
and it's really easy to run into workflow walls.
In fact, I called it a luxury device.
(upbeat music)
It really is one.
So I don't think that the iPad Air needs all that power.
The upgrade from the Pro that I think would best trickle
down to this is the high refresh-rate ProMotion screen.
An M1 processor might make your device faster
but ProMotion makes your device appear faster.
(upbeat music)
But I don't work at Apple
and besides Nicole's iPad Pro already has ProMotion.
(upbeat music)
So why'd you reach out to me?
- I reached out to you because I have the 2018 iPad Pro
and it's the 11 inch.
The 2022 iPad Air is the similar form factor.
It is also more reasonably priced.
It has the M1 processor and it has more RAM.
So on paper (giggles) looking at those-
- Should be better, right?
- Yeah, I was like, ooh.
- So you're just using your iPad really intense?
- I guess so for an average casual user,
just using it to browse and for-
- I think you're more than an average casual user.
- Really (laughs).
- From what you've told me.
I thought like, I'm like,
oh I'm an average casual user.
And then hearing how you use it I'm like,
"Oh, maybe some people are using it more intensely
"than I thought originally."
- Well, I came from a MacBook
so I wanted to use it for everything I did on the MacBook.
- Okay, so I want you to show me how you use your iPad.
- Okay.
- Ah, but first how's your battery?
- It's not looking too good.
We are- - Oh, 3%.
- 3%
- Well, that's perfect because Anker's sponsoring this video
with their Nano Pro charger.
We can get in purple to match the iPad.
- Oh, I love it.
- Check out Anker's new 40-watt Nano Pro 521 dual charger
and their 511 charger fitted with Anker's
renowned management and safety technology
and available in four or more colors
they can charge your M1 powered Apple devices
like this iPad at full speed.
Check it out with our link in the description below.
Oh, perfect. - Oh awesome.
Thanks Jamie. - Thanks Jamie.
- Welcome, no problem.
- Wow.
- Nicole's A12X powered iPad Pro
from 2018 has always confused me.
It's in the A12 processor generation, which is old.
But if you look at the processor itself
it looks an awful lot like an M1.
In fact, the Apple Silicon Developer Transition Kit
was essentially powered by one of these.
And so if there were an iPad performance tier list
I wouldn't know where this would go.
So how many apps do you run at at the same time?
'Cause like, do you sometimes have two apps open,
the YouTube app video playing slide of over?
- Yeah, okay so YouTube is playing.
You can open up the comments as well.
Ooh, I'll usually open up like something like my journal.
I open up Instagram which is pretty gross on this app.
- The amount of space. - Zuckerberg,
let Instagram make an iPad app.
- It's not random, so many levels.
- Okay.
- Yeah, so then I end up to like.
- Slide- - Back, back.
- Back and forth, yeah.
- Yeah, and then I'll usually open up something like Reddit.
Oh, and then there. - Reddit, it's reloading.
It was playing before?
- It was playing before.
- Okay.
- Oh, now it won't even-
- Oh, we had just...
This was just open a second ago.
- It was. - And now it's...
But that is annoying. - Can't see.
- Can't se the cute cat anymore.
And then this will just kind of like, oh, okay, well
how am I gonna see the cats now?
How am I gonna find this post again if I reopen this?
- I think that RAM might be the biggest issue here.
The way iPad OS manages RAM is that it purges apps
that you haven't used in a while from memory
as you open more, this prevents slowdowns in open apps.
But it also means that when you do go back
you're gonna have to wait for those apps to reload.
- This is not the same video.
- Yeah, it isn't.
Oh no.
- And now-
- It stopped playing and you can't get into play again.
So I just-
- It changed the progress bar.
- Oh, it did change the progress bar.
- But it's the wrong video.
It is and then I'll have to disconnect it.
- You have to disconnect.
- And then I have to reconnect it.
And we are-
- Oh, now it's resetting the whole app.
- Yes, that's what happens.
- This is what can happen if you fill your iPad's RAM.
Nicole's iPad Pro only has four gigabytes.
So there's a chance that the eight in the iPad Air
might make the difference.
- They do (laughs).
I like (mumbles).
(soft music)
- It looks so fast.
- It's so much faster, right?
- Like that was crazy.
How that fast.
- Look at this.
Wow, see?
See, do you get what I mean by like, it feels snappier.
It does feel snappier.
- Okay, let's rotate it.
So this is how I'd usually use it.
- Yeah.
- Okay, so.
Okay, yeah, it is snappier.
- So how does it compare to your iPad?
- Well, if I were to have multiple apps open
and I'm just scrolling through them
it will still like give it a little moment to reload.
- Yeah.
- But it'll be much snappier I felt.
One difference that I noticed
but I don't think it would be as emphasized
is the 120 Hertz refresh rate.
Personally, I don't watch a lot.
- Yeah.
- On my iPad but the area I did notice the most
is switching between apps.
- It seems that the M1's extra RAM doesn't seem
to be making all that much of a difference here.
So what is?
I did a bunch of testing to compare all the recent iPads
to each other and that's how I came up,
with the iPad performance tier list.
They're weirdly grouped together
and not according to processor number.
F tier is easy.
It's all those iPads that don't support the latest iOS.
Above it in the E tier is those powered by an A8X chip, A9,
A9X chip and A10 chips
because of the similar result in Geekbench.
D is anything powered by an A10 X chip or A12 chip.
C tier which is quite close to D is the A13 powered iPad.
The reason for this was
when I did my Lightroom RO export test
the new iPad was around two minutes faster than the D tier.
And those numbers showed what was most interesting.
The B tier it contains Nicole's iPad Pro
the 2020 model of the same.
The outgoing A14 powered iPad Air
and the A15 powered iPad mini.
If you look at all their Geekbench scores
you can see that they're quite close.
Single cores are slower in the older devices
but multi-core and graphics are virtually the same.
And when exporting RAWs
they're all within 15 seconds of each other.
So what's in the A tier?
Well, it's this iPad Air.
And yeah, while I made these tier up,
it explains why Nicole might not be compelled to upgrade.
This is only one tier away from her iPad
despite being almost four years newer.
Now this list focuses mainly on processing power
but we could reorganize the list
with an emphasis on RAM it's different but not by much.
Because of the way iPad OS works,
it's hard to feel the impact RAM capacity makes.
So I think the performance tier list is probably,
more pertinent for more people.
All right, so what's in the S tier though?
It's the M1 powered iPad Pro if you get one terabyte
of storage or more because those models
get 16 gigabytes of RAM.
So S means stupid expensive.
(upbeat music)
Now, while the iPad Air is in the A tier in performance,
it's really a B plus compared to the iPad Pro
all things considered.
It's $600 price tag is very close to the iPad Pros
which for about $150 more differentiates itself
with exclusive luxury features like face ID
instead of touch ID, which is more convenient,
two rear cameras with flash and lighter, thunderbolt support
and the high speed ProMotion screen.
That's a really nice feature.
On the flip side, the basic iPad is almost half the price
with less than half the performance.
And that's become a much bigger gap
with nothing in between.
Otherwise, apart from the M1 chip
the iPad Air gets very little in additional improvements.
Storage tier stay stubbornly at 64
and 256 gigabytes the front cameras.
Now in all ultra wide unit with center stage.
Cellular models have 5G radios
and there are different colors with the abandonment of green
and the new darker blue, and the addition of this purple
which I do kind of like.
What would you.
I guess, what would you recommend then
to perhaps iPad users?
- I feel like if you are currently on a 2018 iPad Pro
and you're looking for a step up in performance
for example, if you are a professional user
and using this for a main device to create things
then it would be beneficial maybe
to look in into the new line of iPad Pros.
Whereas if you are a new user in the world of iPads
and you're looking to go into using iPad OS
then I would highly recommend
looking at the fifth gen iPad Air lineup.
- So would you upgrade
- If I didn't already have an iPad
I would definitely get the 2022 iPad Air.
(upbeat music)
(Nicole laughs)
- There are two things that surprise me
when evaluating this new iPad Air.
The first is that I'm finding an emerging group
of people who are switching to the iPad
as their mobile computing device.
And back on the day I picked this up,
I talked with a guy who switched completely away
from his MacBook to two iPads.
A mini and a big Pro.
And then of course, there's Nicole too.
This means that despite iPad OS's limitations,
these people are finding ways to push their tablets.
The other surprise is how close
and how clear the performance tier list is.
I was not expecting to see four completely different models
released over four years virtually perform identically.
It's good to know because you can see how much of an upgrade
you'll be getting between the models.
The iPad Air then is a buy
for people in the D tier or below.
Thanks for ranking this Mac address.
If you think this video is A tier, give it a like
and if you think this is S tier, then why not subscribe?
Then in the comments, you can do a tier list
of all Mac address videos, F tier, S tier.
I hope there's a lot on the top, right?