Dan Pražák Apple today introduced the new iPad Air with a 10,5-inch display and the fifth-generation iPad mini with Apple Pencil support. The new additions to the iPad family also received several other improvements. Both tablets can already be purchased on Apple's website.
10,5″ iPad Air
The new iPad Air boasts a larger 10,5-inch display with True Tone support and a resolution of 2224×1668. In fact, it is a direct successor to the 10,5″ iPad Pro, which Apple has stopped selling today. In addition to the aforementioned, the tablet boasts a narrower body, an A12 Bionic processor and support for the first-generation Apple Pencil. However, Touch ID, Lightning port and headphone jack remained.
According to Apple, the new iPad Air is up to 70% more powerful and offers up to twice the graphics performance of its predecessor. The wide color gamut (P3) laminated display is almost 20% larger and boasts more than half a million pixels. In addition to the aforementioned, there is also Bluetooth 5.0 or gigabit LTE.
The novelty is available in three colors - Silver, Gold and Space Gray. There are 64 GB and 256 GB variants to choose from, as well as Wi-Fi and Wi-Fi + Cellular versions. The cheapest model costs CZK 14, while the most expensive costs CZK 490. Along with the iPad Air, Apple also started selling the new Smart Keyboard, which is tailor-made for the tablet. The keyboard, which also serves as a cover, will cost the customer 4 CZK.
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iPad mini 5
Along with the new iPad Air, the fifth generation iPad mini also went on sale. Apple's smallest tablet now has an A12 Bionic processor and boasts Apple Pencil support. However, the dimensions, the size of the display and the menu of ports and the home button remain identical to the previous generation. As a result, it is only a small but necessary update – the iPad mini 4 was already introduced in 2015.
The new iPad mini has really improved in terms of performance. Compared to its predecessor, the fifth generation offers up to three times higher performance and up to 9 times faster graphics processing. The improved fully laminated Retina display with True Tone function is 3 times brighter thanks to the support of the P25 wide color gamut and has the highest fineness (326 ppi) of all current tablets from Apple. Even in the case of the smallest iPad, Bluetooth 5.0, gigabit LTE or an improved Wi-Fi module that handles two bands at the same time (2,4 GHz and 5 GHz) are not missing.
Also, the new iPad mini is available in three colors (Silver, Gold and Space Gray) and in two capacity variants (64 GB and 256 GB). There are again Wi-Fi and Wi-Fi + Cellular models to choose from. The novelty starts at 11 crowns, while the most expensive model starts at 490 CZK.
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Well, at these prices, I don't think I'll buy new iPads in front of stores. Apple is raising prices again.
Well, the improvements are there, aren't they. But I have an iPad 2018 128GB. It cost 10 in the event. In addition, a backlit ZAGG keyboard for 2800. So far, great satisfaction. There is probably no point in thinking about the upgrade yet. But the tablets are of good quality. The price is not excessive. Look at how much Samsung sells the S series for. A tablet is bought for a longer period of time than, for example, a phone. There are a lot of us who happily use iPad Air 2 or even Air 1.
In the age of flexible displays, this is absolutely nothing. Just a bunch of promises about awesome things, how they've been working on them for years and then these products from prehistoric times come again, which also look prehistoric. He is not talking about a truncated system. Come on, the money will flow again to the competition. That's the reality.
iPad Pro 10,5 as a replacement for iPad Pro is fine. The price is almost (as far as I can remember) half of what the Pro cost me two years ago. On the other hand, the iPad mini as a cheaper device for a "mom on the go" is 4 thousand more expensive than I expected.
That desire to resell and squeeze existing parts and production processes to death will one day take its toll on Apple. The stumbling block is in the widely muddled portfolio, where there are three generations next to each other, devices from the last 3 or more years. My naivety that I expected the new product to be really new and not a hybrid made from discarded old spare parts. Releasing an upgrade of a 4-year-old machine to a machine with 2-year-old or more components as a super novelty is a pig typical only of Apple. For example, the incompatibility of the two Apple pencils is a terrible feature. And I say this as someone who is really considering buying an iPad mini. So these are the new, fantastic products that Kuk has been talking about for years?
You always have the best processor in Apple devices, pencil support. The little mini works perfectly for me (what about some other design), now I have a Pro 10,5 and since I bought a new mini, only the developer Serif, which develops Affinity Photo and Designer, has betrayed me. Apparently, that company feels that the mini has too small a screen for the aforementioned applications.