Pad in town & it’s the most affordable ‘full size’ tablet the company has ever produced. Unfortunately it also resides in one of Apple’s most confusing product families making it harder than it should be to lớn understand which model of i
Pad is best for you.
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So let’s break down what the tablet táo khuyết simply named ‘i
Pad’ brings to the table & how it compares lớn both the range it replaces (the i
Pad Air) & its smaller (i
Pad Mini) and more expensive (i
Pad Pro) stablemates…
Size - Familiar, But Fatter
The most obvious point of comparison for the new i
Pad is the i
Pad Air 2 which is being discontinued with the launch of the new 9.7-inch ‘i
Pad’:
i
Pad 9.7 (2017): 240 x 169.5 x 7.5 milimet (9.45 x 6.67 x 0.30 in) và 469 / 478g (1.03 / 1.05lbs) for cellular/non-cellular i
Pad Air 2, i
Pad Pro 9.7: 240 x 169.5 x 6.1mm (9.4 x 6.6 x 0.24 inches) and 444 / 437g (0.98 / 0.96lbs) for cellular/non-cellular i
Pad Pro 12.9: 305.7 x 220.6 x 6.9mm (12 x 8.86 x 0.27 inches) và 713 / 729g (1.57 / 1.59lbs) for cellular/non-cellular i
Pad mini 4: 203.2 x 134.8 x 6.1 milimet (8 x 5.3 x 0.24 inches) and 298.8 / 304g (0.65 / 0.67lbs) for cellular/non-cellular
Perhaps the most surprising stat here is that the i
Pad (2017) is notably wider and heavier than the 2014-released i
Pad Air 2 and (2016) i
Pad Pro 9.7 which is disappointing. Táo gave no reason for this & there is no obvious explanation (at least until someone is able khổng lồ crack mở cửa the new mã sản phẩm and see if any specific components have changed).
Aside from the weight gain, the new i
Pad looks almost identical khổng lồ the i
Pad Air 2 và i
Pad Pro 9.7. Lưu ý that lượt thích the i
Pad Air 2, the new i
Pad has dual external speakers rather than the powerful quad arrangement seen in the i
Pad Pro models.
Displays - Sharp, Bright, Reflective
Moving onto the display you’ll notice that at first glance all 9.7-inch models look identical:
iPad 9.7 (2017), i
Pad Air 2, i
Pad Pro 9.7: 9.7-inch (diagonal) LED‑backlit Multi‑Touch display, 2732‑by‑2048 resolution at 264 pixels per inch (ppi), oleophobic coating i
Pad Pro 12.9: 12.9‑inch (diagonal) LED‑backlit Multi‑Touch display, 2732‑by‑2048 resolution at 264 pixels per inch (ppi), oleophobic coating i
Pad Mini 4: 7.9‑inch (diagonal) LED‑backlit Multi‑Touch display, 2048‑by‑1536 resolution at 326 pixels per inch (ppi), oleophobic coating
That said, the new i
Pad does feature a downgrade compared lớn all other i
Pad models: táo khuyết has removed the anti-reflective display coating. This will be annoying if you regularly work under bright lights or outdoors and for some that will make it a giảm giá khuyến mãi breaker.
Less surprisingly, the new i
Pad also misses out on True Tone display seen in the premium i
Pad Pros. True tone measures the trắng balance of the display so that colours look correct no matter the lighting environment. Given the new i
Pad is budget friendly (more later) I’d argue this is a less significant omission than anti-reflective coating and Apple does say it has increased contrast & colour compared khổng lồ the older i
Pad Air 2.
Separately it is worth noting that 3 chiều Touch, the pressure sensitive screen giải pháp công nghệ seen on flagship i
Phones, is still absent from all i
Pad models. Though I’d expect the next generation of i
Pad Pro models to địa chỉ cửa hàng this if táo bị cắn wants khổng lồ warm the lukewarm response 3d touch has had so far.
Performance - A Speedy Step Back In Time
The next place you’ll find some cost cutting in the new i
Pad is its horsepower:
Pad 9.7 (2017): táo A9 with dual-core 1.84 GHz (Twister) CPU & Power
VR GT7600 (six-core) GPU, 2GB of RAM i
Pad Air 2: táo bị cắn dở A8X with Triple-core 1.5 GHz Typhoon CPU & Power
VR GXA6850 (octa-core graphics) CPU, 2GB of RAM i
Pad Pro 9.7: táo bị cắn dở A9X with dual-core 2.16 GHz (Twister) CPU & Power
VR Series 7 (12-core) GPU, 2GB of RAM i
Pad Pro 12.9: táo A9X with dual-core 2.26 GHz (Twister) CPU & Power
VR Series 7 (12-core) GPU, 4GB of RAM i
Pad mini 4: A8 second-generation chip with 64-bit architecture, CPU: 1.3x faster, Graphics: 1.6x faster compared lớn A7, M8 motion coprocessor
While the new i
Pad moves a generation on from the ageing (2014) A8 & A8X chipsets found in the i
Pad Mini 4 & i
Pad Air 2 respectively, táo khuyết has still fitted it with a chipset from 2015. The A9 is found inside the i
Phone 6S and i
Phone 6S Plus & the new i
Pad has a significantly higher native resolution lớn drive than either of these smartphones.
I suspect apple found itself in a dilemma here. It couldn’t fit a newer processor in the i
Pad 9.7 given it has yet to lớn update the năm ngoái A9X inside the significantly more expensive i
Pad Pros. As such while the A9 remains a speedy chip, the i
Pad 9.7 is not a model power users should buy.
Cameras - Functional Rear, Flimsy Front
Apple has something of a split personality when its comes to camera technology. The company is determined to push its i
Phones khổng lồ their very peak (even if the Google pixel and Galaxy S7 recently stole their thunder), but i
Pads are always fitted with much older camera modules & this remains the case with the i
Pad 9.7:
Pad 9.7 (2017), i
Pad Air 2, i
Pad Mini 4 and i
Pad Pro 12.9 - rear: 8MP, ƒ/2.4 aperture, 1080p video, no OIS. Front: 1.2MP, f2.2 aperture, 720p video, no OIS i
Pad Pro 9.7 - rear: 12MP, ƒ/2.2 aperture, 4K clip recording, no OIS. Front: 5MP, ƒ/2.2 aperture, 1080p clip recording, no OIS
Yes, the 2017 i
Pad 9.7, 2014 i
Pad Air 2 and năm ngoái i
Pad Mini 4 & i
Pad Pro 12.9 all use the same optics which come from the 2013 i
Phone 5S. This means no 4K đoạn phim recording, no optical image stabilisation (OIS) & the front 1.2MP camera is really only good for basic video clip conversations. These are not selfie friendly i
Pads.
The good news is the rear camera is still a fairly competent snapper in good light, but four years remains a long time lớn recycle camera technology và I can’t help but feel táo should have given us something newer here. Again the fact the premium i
Pad Pro 12.9 uses this công nghệ probably stopped hãng apple from upgrading the new i
Pad.
The standout shooter in the i
Pad range is the 2016 i
Pad Pro 9.7 which has front và rear modules taken from the i
Phone 6S. This still doesn’t bring OIS but it does deliver significantly better photos, especially from the front camera. But be careful because i
Pad Pros are due an tăng cấp soon.
Battery Life - 10s All Round
One of the great strengths of the i
Pad range is its stamina và while that hasn’t changed in many years, the i
Pad 9.7 keeps its end up by also toting a familiar 10 hour battery life (9 hours using cellular).
There are no other flourishes like fast charging (though an i
Pad charger will increase the tốc độ an i
Phone charges) or wireless charging, but the aim of an i
Pad is you shouldn’t need khổng lồ charge it often in any case.
Capacity and Price - Good và Bad News
If you’ve been reading this article & wondering why the i
Pad 9.7 has a number of compromises, then here is the answer: it’s the cheapest i
Pad in the range:
The i
Pad Air 2 is not featured because táo khuyết has ended the Air range with the launch of the new i
Pad. But you can find some decent second hand bargains around if that’s the mã sản phẩm you want.
Ultimately ending the Air simplifies Apple’s branding to i
Pad, i
Pad Mini và i
Pad Pro & I suspect the Mini range could also be on the chopping block as it hasn’t featured any significant upgrades since the i
Pad Mini 2 in 2013. ‘i
Pad’ and ‘i
Pad Pro’ lines would give Apple’s tablets a clarity they have lacked for a long time.
The other option khổng lồ consider is whether you want a Wi
FI-only or Cellular model. Personally I’m happy tethering tablets và laptops to điện thoại cảm ứng thông minh as it saves the complication of multiple carrier contracts, you’ll get a lighter i
Pad và the $130 you save can be put towards upgrading your phone’s data allowance.
Early Verdict
Simply put: the new i
Pad 9.7 is not the most exciting tablet apple has ever released. It’s essentially a cheaper, (surprisingly) fatter version of the i
Pad Air 2 with a slightly faster chipset và no anti-reflective screen coating. But the i
Pad 9.7 is cheap.
Furthermore it is the only i
Pad I would consider buying at this time. Táo bị cắn is likely to lớn upgrade the i
Pad Pro 9.7 and i
Pad Pro 12.9 in the very near future and the i
Pad Mini range looks set to lớn be retired alongside the i
Pad Air when this happens.
If you’re in the market for a productivity machine then a budget Windows or Chrome OS máy vi tính (you’ll get better performance from the latter at this price point) is the way lớn go. But if you have your heart set on an affordable tablet then I’d strongly suggest you save up for the new i
Pad 9.7 rather than an apk tablet where app support remains disappointingly thin on the ground.
Ultimately the i
Pad 9.7 may not be an exciting tablet but it’s solid, well priced và will get the job done.
___
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I am an experienced freelance technology journalist. I have written for Wired, The Next Web, Trusted
Reviews, The Guardian and the đài truyền hình bbc in addition khổng lồ Forbes. I began in b2b print journalism covering tech companies at the height of the dot com boom & switched to lớn covering consumer công nghệ as the i
Pod began to lớn take off. A career highlight for me was being a founding thành viên of Trusted
Reviews. It started in 2003 và we were repeatedly told websites could not compete with print! Within four years we were purchased by IPC truyền thông (Time Warner"s publishing division) lớn become its flagship tech title. What fascinates me are the machinations of technology"s biggest companies. Got a pitch, tip or leak? contact me on my professional Facebook page. I don"t bite.
9.7-inch i
Pad Pro vs i
Pad Air 2: Maxing out your pads
Apple’s gone và done it again. Its latest sản phẩm launch not only showed off a new i
Pad và a new phone – the i
Phone SE, apparently the tech mega-giant is now greener than Captain Planet.
We’re not going to delve into the legitimacy of Apple’s environmental claims right now. We’ll save that for later.
What we’re looking at now is whether the i
Pad Pro 9.7 is really that much better than the i
Pad Air 2. Let’s answer the big question: should Air 2 owners be looking to lớn upgrade already?
From a distance it may seem obvious. No, of course you shouldn’t. But there’s more to this ‘upgrade’ when you get closer.
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Related: WWDC năm nhâm thìn – What to expect
WATCH: 9.7-inch i
Pad Pro – All you need khổng lồ know
i
Pad Pro 9.7 vs i
Pad Air 2: The smart keyboard
We use a Mac
Book. We use Windows laptops. There’s not a hope in hell of us replacing a proper máy tính with an i
Pad any time soon.
However, hook up an apple smart keyboard to an i
Pad Pro và you can turn it into a passable computer for writing docs, emails & so on. Táo has made a special version of the keyboard it rolled out for the 12.9-inch i
Pad Pro for the new 9.7-inch version.
It costs £129, but may mean some of you can get rid of your knackered old laptop. While you might imagine the keyboard will also work with the i
Pad Air 2, the táo bị cắn dở Store’s compatibility notes say it’ll only function with the new i
Pad Pro, that’s because it attaches via the Smart Connector – those three circles on the sides.
It clips into place using magnets, then uses a folio-style case part that folds into a support for the screen.
9.7-inch i
Pad Pro vs i
Pad Air 2: Yep, it gets the pencil too
If you’ve had any interest in the i
Pad Pro to lớn date, it’s probably the Pencil that got you interested. It’s the one tablet stylus that has had a lot of arty types saying it is better than a Wacom Cintiq, which is the industry standard for graphics tablets.
Using exactly the same vi xử lý core hardware as the i
Pad Pro 12.9, you can expect the pen to lớn feel great, with near-zero latency making it feel like you’re actually drawing on the screen. With a pencil.
You get none of this in the i
Pad Air 2. While you can grab a whole load of different styluses for the tablet, they’ll either be dumb capacitive sticks, meaning you’re just replacing your finger with a fake pen (no pressure sensitivity), or third-party systems that simply aren’t going to work as well.
If you’re a bit of a comic book artist like our own review editor Alistair, there’s no competition. The Pro is going lớn be miles better.
So there. All done? You get a bit of extra scribbling và a bit of extra tapping away at Word documents, right? Not quite, there’s actually a whole load more khổng lồ the i
Pad Pro 9.7
Related: i
Pad Pro 9.7-inch feature & specs
9.7-inch i
Pad Pro vs i
Pad Air 2: It has a much more powerful CPU
Sorry i
Pad Air 2 owners, your tablet is now officially an underdog. The i
Pad Pro 9.7 features a much faster A9X CPU, the same used in the 12.9-inch version.
This is built on a completely different processor architecture than the Air’s A8X, so while the i
Pad Air 2 has a tri-core CPU & the i
Pad Pro 9.7 a dual-core one, the newer tablet is still a lot faster.
We’ve not had a chance lớn run any benchmarks on the thing yet, we’ll cover that in our review, but existing Geekbench 3 results for the i
Pad Pro 12.9-inch give you a good idea of what to lớn expect. According khổng lồ the benchmark’s own aggregate league table, the i
Pad Pro scores 5466 points, the i
Pad Air 2 4527.
Phil Schiller gave us some pretty tasty little soundbites as he unveiled the tablet too. Its CPU has over “three billion” transistors, and the 12-core GPU offers 0.5 teraflops of power, “more than an Xbox 360”.
For a bit of wider context, the Ge
Force GTX980 offers 5 teraflops. But then it is a £500 graphics card.
Related: i
Phone SE vs i
Phone 5S
9.7-inch i
Pad Pro vs i
Pad Air 2: The Pro has much better screen colour
With the original i
Pad Pro, táo khuyết redesigned the display driver of its tablet, và the 9.7 version gets this too. Some of this technology is about making the display respond naturally lớn the Pencil, though, so let’s focus on the bits you’ll really notice.
The i
Pad Pro 9.7 will get you richer colours than an i
Pad Air 2. This is one of those upgrades we’ll have khổng lồ get a bit technical to lớn appreciate because we, lượt thích just about everyone else, think the Air 2 has very nice display colour already.
Until now i
Pads have focused on the s
RGB colour gamut. This is a standard rainbow of colours that HP and Microsoft agreed in the 90s as something monitors & printers should aim for.
Tablets with 100 per cent s
RGB coverage & decent calibration, like the i
Pad Air 2, look great. But now hãng apple says the i
Pad Pro is made to lớn satisfy the DCI colour spectrum.
This is a whole new rainbow laid out by the film industry, and features tonnes of all colours way deeper than anything you’ll see in the fairly limited s
RGB range. We review screens a lot, và even good ones can fail to reach 50 per cent of the DCI gamut.
If the 9.7-inch i
Pad Pro manages lớn cover 100 per cent of it, well, that’ll be impressive. Of course, táo bị cắn didn’t actually claim full coverage. But unlike many Androids with wide colour gamut OLED screens, you can bet the i
Pad Pro won’t look unnaturally oversaturated despite its “wide colour gamut”.
9.7-inch i
Pad Pro vs i
Pad Air 2: The Pro will be much better to lớn use outdoors
If you’re not an epic screen snob, you probably don’t have khổng lồ worry about whether DCI is better than s
RGB. Leave that lớn the nerds.
However, that it’s going khổng lồ look much better outdoors on a sunny day is going to lớn benefit just about everyone. Phil Schiller says the 9.7-inch i
Pad Pro is 40 per cent less reflective than the i
Pad Air 2, even though that older tablet’s anti-glare coating was sold in as one of its key features back at its birth in 2014.
After all the excitement about an anti-glare i
Pad died down, people also found that the i
Pad Air 2 was a bit less bright than its predecessor, which is something the new Pro fixes. Schiller says it is “25 per cent brighter than the i
Pad Air 2” with 500-nit output.
Colour matching for the environment is in
As part of i
OS 9.3, both of these tablets will be able to use a feature called Night Shift, which is where the colour temperature of the screen gets warmer as the sun goes down. This means it’ll gradually look more orangey as it gets later.
Why? xanh colour spectrum light is part of the reason why using an LCD screen device at bed time can keep you awake. It may also give you a bit of eyestrain.
Cyanogen
Mod has had this temperature-shifting feature for a while, in fact.
Where the i
Pad Pro gets another boost over the i
Pad Air 2 is that it has an extra-special ambient light sensor that lets it tweak the colour temperature of the screen to suit lighting conditions as well. Schiller says it has “two four-channel ambient light sensors”. The net effect is that whites should look white no matter what funky lighting is around the tablet.
Messing around with trắng balance is why that whole ‘is the dress xanh or gold?’ internet sensation cropped up in 2015.
9.7-inch i
Pad Pro vs i
Pad Air 2: Four speakers are better than two, right?
Yet more proof the i
Pad Air 2 isn’t really a top-end táo bị cắn tablet anymore, the 9.7-inch i
Pad Pro has much better speakers. The Pro has four drivers, the Air 2 just two.
In the i
Pad Air 2, the drivers sit on the bottom of the tablet, one to lớn each side of the Lightning connector. The Pro moves the drivers, with one at each corner.
This is a very significant upgrade for the i
Pad as a media and gaming device, meaning you’ll get stereo sound you can actually appreciate. Schiller says the Pro puts our “two times the volume” as an i
Pad Air 2. So does that mean the drivers are working at the same level, but there are two more? Perhaps.
The i
Pad Air 2 is already one of the best-sounding tablets money can buy, so the Pro will almost certainly be the best-sounding 10-inch tablet.
9.7-inch i
Pad Pro vs i
Pad Air 2: The Pro actually has a good camera
Just as we wouldn’t use the i
Pad as our main computer, we wouldn’t use a tablet as our camera either. Maybe it’s pride. Let’s be honest: people taking pictures with tablets look silly.
We’re not going to lớn be able able to lớn use the excuse that tablets have crappy cameras anymore, though, because the i
Pad Pro 9.7-inch gets the same 12-megapixel i
Sight camera as the i
Phone 6S (or so it would seem). It’s a terrific sensor, with on-sensor phase detection pixels và much larger-than-average photosites, making it much better for low-light photos than the vast majority of điện thoại devices.
The i
Pad Air 2 has an 8-megapixel camera that, while good for a tablet, already lagged way behind the i
Phone 6 in 2014. Táo khuyết has not specifically said the i
Pad Pro matches the i
Phone 6S component-for-component, but the specs available are identical. As well as the same sensor resolution, it has a 5-element lens with an aperture of f/2.2 & those tell-tale “Focus Pixels”.
Unlike previous i
Pads, including the 12.9-inch i
Pad Pro, this doesn’t appear khổng lồ be a cut-down camera. It can even shoot 4K video.
For the selfie hunters, the i
Pad Pro 9.7-inch has a 5-megapixel front sensor & supports the same Retina flash as the latest i
Phones. This is where the screen’s backlight goes supernova briefly to lớn act lượt thích a regular flash. By comparison, the i
Pad Air 2’s 1.2-megapixel selfie camera seems flat-out rubbish.
9.7-inch i
Pad Pro vs i
Pad Air 2: It comes in new models, including pink ones
Here’s the bit you’ve really been waiting for. You can get the i
Pad Pro 9.7-inch in Rose Gold. It’s the first time an táo bị cắn dở tablet has been available in this dusky pink shade.
More exciting, but something we’re equally unlikely to buy, is the a 256GB i
Pad Pro. That’s truly mammoth storage for a tablet, the same amount we use on a day-to-day Mac
Book Pro. Both Pro models are now available with this extra space.
9.7-inch i
Pad Pro vs i
Pad Air 2: Price – the deal-breaker?
The 9.7-inch i
Pad Pro is much more than just an i
Pad Air whose had its screen fiddled with khổng lồ make the táo Pencil work. It’s a comprehensive, really quite impressive boost in almost every area.
But you vày have to lớn pay for it.
The i
Pad Pro starts at £499/$599, which gets you the 32GB version. You’ll pay £619/$749 for the 128GB edition & £739/$899 for the Big Mac 256GB one. Need 4G? That’ll be an extra £100/$130 for each.
Bear in mind the Pro doesn’t come with the keyboard (£129) or Pencil (£59) either. It can get very expensive.
Apple doesn’t offer directly comparable models of i
Pad Air 2 instead filling-in the gaps with a £349/$399 16GB version & a £429/$499 64GB one. Again, địa chỉ £100 for 4G.
There’s no way around it, the entry price of an i
Pad Air 2 is a lot more affordable.
9.7-inch i
Pad Pro vs i
Pad Air 2: First Impressions
Ok, ok, we admit it. The i
Pad Pro 9.7 seems lượt thích a pretty good upgrade. A great one really. We were ready to bash it with the cynicism stick, to bởi our best lớn shatter that smug Appley screen and laugh at Apple’s great ruse of trying lớn get us lớn use these toys as our main PCs.
And now we kinda want one. We still wouldn’t want to use an i
Pad Pro as a full-on computer, but even without all the Pro-themed upgrades, táo apple has actually done enough lớn make this a worthwhile alternative to lớn the i
Pad Air 2 for new buyers. New screen, new camera, new speakers.
I still don’t think many current Air 2 owners should feel the need lớn upgrade, though. Does your tablet really feel old? It shouldn’t vày unless you let your dog use it as a comfort blanket or something.
