Yes, it’s gotten to the point that we tech critics can pretty much recycle our iPad reviews from year to year.In any case, the iPad Air 2 really is extremely thin. That’s the salient feature. Less than a quarter of an inch thick(6.1 millimeters). You will definitely bend this thing if you put it in your back pocket and sit on it. Fortunately, you probably don’t have a pocket big enough.Why does thin matter? Because a tablet is something you have to hold all the time you’re using it. Thin and light matter. The iPad Air 2 isn’t strikingly light(it’s about a pound), but Apple won’t be switching from the handsome aluminum body to plastic anytime soon.And, sure enough, there’s a new processor inside: Apple’s own custom-designed chip, called the A8X. It feels noticeably snappier than last year’s A7 chip(40 percent snappier, Apple says). Fast is always good.And, yes, the camera’s been improved. It does seem awfully weird to take pictures with a tablet — not to mention downright rude, if you’re blocking the view of people around you. But if people are going to do it, Apple’s there to help.
The new sensor takes 8-megapixel photos and 1080p high-def videos. They bring to the iPad most of the tricks of the iPhone 6, like time-lapse video, slow motion, burst mode, a self-timer, and panorama mode.
Touch ID is by far the smoothest, fastest, most reliable fingerprint sensor on the market — it doesn’t care what angle your finger’s at — and it’s a thousand times better than typing in a password over and over. The screen is fantastic, as always. At full brightness, you could light a runway with this thing.
(At night, anyway. In direct sun, you can hardly tell it’s turned on.)
But Apple also claims that the Air 2 “features a custom-designed antireflective coating that reduces glare by 56 percent, making it the least re?ective tablet in the world.”
