The iPad Air is an odd device when you pick it up for the first time. When you hear all the numbers being bandied about you’d rightly assume that you’d feel something that was almost ghost-like in the hand, a tablet that could almost get blown away.
And we’re utterly not disputing that - the iPad Air is the most balanced tablet on the market, with great precision going into the engineering throughout. However, if you’ve touched an iPad mini or just haven’t held an older iPad for a while ( and with some people we tested with, even those that had) you won’t feel as much of a step up as you’d be expecting.
We’ve added that caveat to brace you should you be excited to purchase the new iPad, as it’s not something that affects the general usage in any way, with one-handed holding very easy, and something that puts the Air into a new product category.
The design of the iPad Air is, as we’ve mentioned, very impressive. Yes, it’s totally based on the iPad mini, and the smooth aluminium back is really great to feel in the hand. It’s a shame that most people feel the need to slap a cover on an iPad as soon as it’s bought - while we get the notion of protection, it hides away some cracking design.
That said, at least it keeps the fingers away from the chassis, and the iPad Air is a real magnet for prints. The back cover isn’t too bad, but the mirrored Apple logo sucks down finger oil and is loathe to give it back even with hard scrubbing with a cloth.
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It might not sound like a big deal, but it makes your premium new tablet look a bit unkempt right from the start.
But in actual operation, the design of the iPad Air complements the impressive innards superbly. It’s unsurprisingly not possible to hold your hand the entire way around the edge of the Air, but then again it’s so light ( and comes with the ability to disregard erroneous thumbs entering the screen, again like the iPad mini) that it doesn’t really make a big difference.
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The rest of the buttonry - the top-mounted power key and the silencing rocker switch and volume buttons at the side - haven’t moved far, but protrude nicely to make them very easy to hit no matter when you’re holding the device - being able to find such things without looking is often sacrificed in the quest to make tablets look sleeker, so we’re happy Apple has gone the other way here.
There is one note of criticism in terms of design for such a decent ( and still expensive, despite costing the same as many of its peers) piece of kit: the screen has a plastic thud to it when tapping, thanks to the smaller and lighter innards.
It’s most noticeable when grazed with a fingernail, although in a case the effect is lessened. We’re surprised Apple let this feature go unchallenged, but it seems in making the design thinner and removing part of the inner cage the overall strength of the chassis is somewhat reduced.
It’s not a major issue by any means, and certainly one that you’ll only pick up on sporadically, but it’s still enough to irk at times when you’re expecting a truly premium experience.
Many of you will also be wondering why there’s no TouchID onboard the iPad AIr when it’s such a large selling point for the iPhone 5S.
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We’re in the same boat. The architecture is there. It surely can’t be an issue of space seeing as the technology fitted into the iPhone 5S.
So what could it be? Apple surely isn’t holding it back as the ’big upgrade’ for the iPad Air 2, is it? That would be such an anti-climax. plus we’re waiting for the bendable iPad in 2014 anyway.