When we picked up last year's iPad Air, the first thing that we noticed was just how incredibly thin and light it was. Before the current launch event, the big question was, where could Apple go from here? Surely, the company couldn't go thinner, could it?
Well, turns out that it could make thinner. A lot thinner, in fact. At just 6.1mm thin, the iPad Air 2 is 1.4mm thinner than the iPad Air; that's even thinner than the iPhone 6 at 6.9mm. It's also lighter than the original iPad Air (437g vs 469g).
Picking up the tablet, it's fair to say that it feels incredible in the hand. While it has the same footprint as the previous model, the reduced weight and thinner body make it even more comfortable to hold. Given that the iPad Mini 3 still uses the same body as last year's model, the new thinner iPad 3 feels as though it should be the tablet of choice for most people.
Aside from the thinner body, the other changes are mostly cosmetic. The volume buttons are now slightly recessed, while the rotation lock/mute switch has been removed. Given that the rotation lock is now part of Control Centre in iOS, the switch's disappearance isn't a bad thing.
Apple's also upgraded the display. While it has the same size (9.7in) and resolution (2,048x1,536), the screen has now combined the previous three layers (cover glass, touch sensor and LCD) into one. As well as making the tablet thinner, it eliminates gaps between the layers, reducing internal reflections, increasing contrast and colours. Combined with the anti-reflective coating, the tablet should be a lot easier to view in any condition, with Apple claiming that glare has been reduced by 56%.
We used the tablet in a brightly lit room with spotlights. To us, the screen seemed easier to view and picked up less reflections, making it easier to photograph, with only the direct light of the spots impossible to eliminate. We're looking forward to getting the tablet in for review, so that we can measure how good it really is.
Internally the tablet has been upgraded with an Apple A8X SoC. We weren't told exactly that the difference was between this and the A8 used in the iPhone 6, but we can infer some of the differences. For example, Apple has said that the A8X is 40 per cent faster than the A7 in the previous model; given that the A8 is 25 per cent faster than the A7, the dual-core A8X must be running at a faster clock speed.
Apple is also promising 2.5 times the graphics performance over the previous generation. This kind of increase could come from an increase in clock speed, but previous 'X' versions of Apple's chips have added in more cores. We'll have to wait until there's better information to find out for sure what's changed.
A better camera has been installed, upping the resolution from 5 megapixels to 8 megapixels. It's a different sensor to the one used in the iPhone 6, which has 1.5 micro pixels, with 1.12 micron pixels on the iPad Air 2. It now supports the same shooting modes as the iPhone 5S (but not the iPhone 6), with panoramas up to 43 megapixels in size, 120fps slo-mo and a burst mode. We couldn't test the camera out in our short time with it, but it's good to see the tablet get an upgrade. For full specs, release date and pricing information, check out our iPad Air 2 specs and features article.
