welcome to max tech and this is our review of the ipad air 5.
i've been using the new ipad air 5 for two weeks now and i think i finally
gathered my thoughts on where it stands within the ipad lineup as well as how it
compares to other android tablets on the market so what i'm gonna do in this
review is talk about how good of an upgrade this year's ipad air truly is
the disappointments and frustrations that i have with it and finally my
thoughts on if you should hold off until the next update of the ipad air which
could actually come with an oled display for the first time ever but before i get
into all of those juicy leaks i've got to talk about the ipad air 5 and what i
honestly think about it so i'm just going to go ahead and call it what it is
a stopgap product yes of course it's an excellent update since the price is
still the same 599 dollars as before and you're getting
a bunch of spec upgrades and features but i've got to admit that it feels like
something major is missing and speaking of those upgrades the biggest one is of
course the new m1 chip which is the same one that's inside of the ipad pro and
it's much faster than the a14 in the previous ipad air 4.
for example the single core performance is 7 percent
higher which means that a lot of common tasks like web browsing or many
different apps will be a bit more snappy than before but then looking at the
multi-core performance we have a huge improvement of 69 percent which is gonna
matter for all the high-end productivity apps that require lots of multi-core
performance but the biggest difference is when we take a look at the graphics
performance with the m1 chip being 77 faster than the old a14 and this right
here is what matters the most because a lot of different apps and games depend
on the gpu performance so this means that it can essentially handle any app
or game out there without missing a beat no matter if his gentian impact or
anything else it's just gonna be solid and making things even better we tested
3dmark's wildlife extreme benchmark which is an actual gaming benchmark and
this time around we got basically double the performance going from the a14 to
the m1 and yes i'll admit that the performance is overkill for a lot of the
apps out there right now but this is actually a good thing for people who
want to buy an ipad and use it for the next five years knowing that five years
later the m1 is still gonna handle all the new apps and games that'll be coming
out now while the ipad air 5 still has the same 64 gigs of storage as before we
actually tested the speed of the storage and we were surprised to see the read
speeds being 88 faster than before but the write speeds were actually 3.3 times
faster which is absolutely insane and this is actually a big deal because it
means all of your apps are going to load up quicker than before and that in
itself will make it feel more snappy and to make things even better the usbc port
is now twice as fast 10 gigabits per second compared to 5 on the previous
model so as far as the performance aspect we're definitely getting a big
upgrade this time around but then when we look at the overall design it's
essentially unchanged with the same chassis size a completely identical
display no changes with the touch of the power button or anything else we even
tested the speakers and the microphones and found absolutely zero differences
between the new ipad air and the old one the rear camera on the back is identical
as well and for some weird reason it still doesn't come with a flash even
though the less expensive ipad mini 6 does now thankfully the selfie camera
has finally been updated to the 12 megapixel ultrawide camera that all of
the other ipads have been enjoying for at least the past few months and this
means that you get support for center stage as well as making face time videos
not look super zoomed in on your face like it did with the previous ipad air
and then finally the new model now gets support for optional 5g conductivity so
if you take all of those upgrades and consider the fact that the 600 price tag
for the new ipad air 5 has not changed i'd say that this is actually a pretty
good update and compared to an android tablet you can get this crazy powerful
m1 ipad air 5 with reliable ios and the jam-packed app store for 600 bucks
instead of paying 700 for the new galaxy tab s8 which features a two times slower
cpu so the new ipad air is making life pretty tough for the android tablet
market especially if you consider resale value which the ipads always excel at
but unfortunately it's not all sunshine and a daisies for this ipad air review
because it's now time to get into my frustrations and disappointments and the
first thing i want to begin with is the usbc port even though the new ipad air
shares the exact same m1 chip as the ipad pro it still only has a regular 10
gigabit per second usb c port compared to a 40 gigabit per second thunderbolt
port inside of the ipad pro and the annoying part about that is that the m1
chip technically comes packed with thunderbolt controllers so apple is
intentionally slowing down the port on this ipad air
just to make the ipad pro look better and what makes it even more annoying is
that we had some pretty exciting leaks and rumors about the new ipad air coming
with an updated dual camera system with a square camera bump including a flash
as well as quad stereo speakers and other improvements but apple decided to
take a completely different route by simply tossing in the m1 ship as well as
the new selfie camera and then calling it good which is why i'm calling this a
stop gap update so when we start comparing the ipad air 5 and the current
ipad pro we start to see just how much better the ipad pro is in terms of value
first of all the ipad pro costs 200 more but it gets double the storage so if 64
gigs isn't enough for you on the ipad air you've got to spend
750 dollars to get a 256 gig model which is coincidentally the current amazon
sale price for the base 11 inch ipad pro or better yet you can use the link in
the pinned comment below to get a renewed 256 gig ipad pro for 765
right now which is an excellent deal but going further than just the storage
differences the ipad pro has a long list of advantages for the extra cash like
the fact that it gets a much better quad stereo speaker system compared to just
dual stereo on this air [Applause]
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so as you just heard everything on the ipad pro is better including the volume
the bass the highs the vocals and the separation of frequencies but moving on
the ipad pro also has five studio quality microphones compared to just two
regular mics on the ipad air so listen to the difference yourself as you guys
can see the ipad air 5 has the new ultra wide selfie camera which does support
center stage and the difference between the
microphones is the ipad pro actually has studio quality microphones and it has
five of them compared to just two so hopefully you guys can hear a microphone
difference so let me switch over to the ipad pro here i am on the ipad pro let
me know if there is in fact a microphone quality difference or not because there
should be because apple advertises it so yeah also let me know if you see any
difference in the ultrawide cameras there honestly should not be but there
might so the ipad pro has a huge advantage in terms of the speakers and
microphone quality but the list does not end there the ipad pro's display has
thinner bezels and the display itself is a hundred nits brighter so videos and
movies look better it also comes with face id authentication which is a major
win compared to the power button touch id system on the ipad air that isn't
nearly as seamless or reliable and because of face id the ipad pro supports
portrait mode and memoji features with the selfie camera it also comes with an
extra ultrawide camera on the back a flash and the lidar scanner which is
useful for games and ar apps it of course comes with the thunderbolt port
which is four times faster and it comes with millimeter wave 5g support while
the air does not get that but the absolute most important feature of all
is actually the 120hz pro motion display technology which is exclusive to the
ipad pro and it basically doubles the refresh rate making swiping through the
ipad and scrolling through apps and websites look buttery smooth compared to
the choppy 60hz display on the ipad air now that right there is what i believe
is the most important feature of the ipad pro because it actually makes your
ipad feel significantly more snappy while you're using it and if you own the
new iphone 13 pro or you're planning on buying a pro model iphone in the future
you need to keep in mind that these iphones support 120 hertz promotion and
take it from me going from a pro motion iphone to a 60 hertz ipad air is
seriously jarring and you can notice the lower refresh rate instantly and it's
honestly so annoying and the even bigger deal is that the 120 hertz refresh rate
allows support for 120 fps gaming which means that you can actually take full
advantage of the m1 chip's performance with games like call of duty mobile
running at perfect 120fps which is by far the most important thing when it
comes to staying competitive in a shooter game and then other games like
league of legends wild rift and gentian impact ran at around 100 to 120 fps on
the ipad pro which is very impressive but on the new ipad air 5 with the same
m1 chip you're literally limited to 60 fps no matter what because the display
has a 60 hertz refresh rate so i honestly don't even see the point of the
m1 chip when it comes to gaming because the old a14 ship handled 60 fps just
fine but moving on to the other advantages of the ipad pro's 120 hertz
promotion support it actually allows the refresh rate to adapt to your content so
when you're watching a 24 fps movie the display slows down to 24 hertz which
helps save battery life compared to the ipad air which is always stuck at 60
hertz and then finally pro motion also significantly reduces the latency of the
apple pencil on the ipad pro compared to the ipad air so if you take all of those
advantages including doubling the storage then i'd say that if there is
any way you can possibly get your hands on another 150
to buy the ipad pro on sale instead of the new ipad air 5 then absolutely do it
because you will not regret it and you won't feel like your m1 ship is being
limited by the 60hz refresh rate of the ipad air but if you don't own a pro
model iphone and you don't really care about the 120hz refresh rate then sure
go ahead and save the cash and just buy the new ipad air 5 because it's still a
great deal compared to the previous ipad air but now the last thing i want to
mention is the future ipad air model which i think is coming in around a year
and a half in the fall of 2023 and i believe that the ipad air 6 will be the
first ipad to use a new oled display which has been leaked and rumored in
apple's supply chain for a while now so if you can wait until the end of 2023
then that will actually be a pretty nice upgrade in terms of display quality as
well as other upgrades like the m2 chip and more so with that said hopefully you
enjoyed this ipad air 5 review and if you did click that circle above to
subscribe for more videos like this one and definitely check out our comparisons
right over there thanks for watching and we'll see you in the next video
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