In Praise of the Apple iPad Air (Premium)

Some will be amused by this, and I suppose some will even be outraged. But there is just something special about the new iPad Air.

I wasn’t planning to write about the iPad Air. I mentioned it last week in New Year, New Travel Tech (Premium), in which I described a few of the travel and tech items that I recently purchased now that my wife and I are vaccinated and travel can happen again. And it will pop up in future “What I Use” columns, of course. But what can I possibly add to this discussion? I use the iPad only for entertainment (or “content consumption”) purposes, meaning reading and watching videos, mostly. So, much of the magic of this device, from its ability to replace a laptop, sort of, to its Apple Pencil 2 support, is just not of much interest to me day-to-day.

The iPad Air was one of two tech gadgets I purchased this past week in anticipation of future air travel, the other being a pair of Bose QuietComfort Earbuds. Both were replacements for products I had used previously that were each becoming problematic in their own way. My previous iPad, a 9.7-inch version that has gotten quite beaten up and has entered a death spiral of reliability issues, has long needed replacing, but it wasn’t an emergency when I was just using it around the house. And my previous Bose noise-canceling headphones were long overdue for a wireless replacement too. But I obviously haven’t needed noise-canceling anything while staying home for the past year or more. Well, now I do.

Anyway, if you look at Apple’s current iPad lineup and have followed the rumors about which of these devices will soon be updated, you can make a few generalizations. Two iPad models, the iPad mini and the iPad 10.2, both feature the old-fashioned iPad design with their large forehead and chin bezels, their round Touch ID buttons, and their Lightning connectors. And three, the iPad Air, iPad Pro 11, and iPad Pro 12.9, feature more modern designs with smaller bezels and USB-C connectivity. The iPad Pros use Face ID for signing-in, which I’d prefer, while the iPad Air has Touch ID built-in to a unique, small power button on the top edge of the device.

Were Apple planning to upgrade the iPad mini to the newer design style, which is shared with the iPhone 12 and SE handsets, I might have waited. But all the rumors are pointing to the same tired design, so no thank you.

That left a decision between an iPad Air and an iPad Pro, and given my entertainment focus and the high likelihood (OK, literal certainty) that I will not be switching to an iPad for my day-to-day productivity work, it made sense to save a bit of money and just go with the iPad Air. My theory was that it would be roughly the same size/weight as the iPad I was already using, but with several improvements that would hopefully help it feel like a good upgrade.

The iPad Air is less expensive than the 11-inch iPad Pro, but it’s still expensive. This newest generation Air was rele...

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