It was sung and so it has been. Before winter leaves us here we have a new iPad Air from Apple . Apple’s latest mid-range tablet for the consumer market is armed (surprisingly) with the Cupertino company’s own M1 processor and with 5G connectivity while the rest of the elements remain unchanged. With all this, the iPad Air 2022 repeats the impression due to its raw performance or screen quality but it also leaves us gaps regarding its place in the ecosystem of Apple equipment, with increasingly blurred lines, or in what Apple believes that we will be able to do with it.
iPad Air (2022) data sheet
| IPAD AIR (2022) | |
| SCREEN | 10.9 inches
2,360 x 1,640 pixels (264 dpi) True Tone, 500 nits Wide color gamut (P3) anti reflective film |
| PROCESSOR | Apple M1 chip
CPU: 8 cores GPU: 8 cores Apple’s Neural Engine |
| RAM | 8GB |
| STORAGE | 64GB 256GB |
| REAR CAMERA | 12MP f/1.8 |
| FRONTAL CAMERA | 12MP f/2.4 |
| BATTERY | 28.6Wh
up to 10 hours |
| OPERATING SYSTEM | iPadOS 15 |
| CONNECTIVITY | wifi 6
Wi-Fi 6 + Cellular Bluetooth 5.0 |
| WEIGHT | iPad Wi-Fi: 461g
iPad Wi-Fi + Cellular: 462g |
| OTHERS | USB-C, Touch ID on the side button, Compatible with Apple Pencil (2nd generation) and Smart Keyboard Folio |
| COLORS | Space Grey, Star White, Pink, Purple, and Blue |
Nothing changes at the design level or experience
In the vast majority of technical and design aspects, the iPad Air 2022 is a pure heir to the previous generation. And we already know that this is from the Pro range from a couple of years ago. So we have a slim tablet, very well built and whose experience revolves completely around its screen. In this model we have a USB-C port and magnetic connector for compatible accessories, a fingerprint reader placed on the power button and integrated support for charging the second generation Apple Pencil. Regarding the fingerprint reader on the power button, although it works very well and is fast, it still does not convince me at all. Although Apple indicates it at all times, mentally I constantly have to find where it is and make an effort each time to proceed with an identification that with Face ID is much more intuitive in this tablet format.
A lot of power yes, but let’s not compare
Placing the M1 processor inside the new iPad Air 2022 this time has been Apple’s main excuse for releasing a new model this year after the major design renovation of the previous generation. In the end the wheel cannot stop. This already well-known processor and which already definitively and transversally waters the wide catalog of Apple products regardless of the type we are talking about, is quite a declaration of intent by the company. We are talking about a chip that is common to both this tablet and the company’s latest consumer computers, which can give us an idea of the level of raw power we are talking about. And that this line of processors is the safe bet to have some security at the level of updates (or improvements and integration surprises) in the face of a long useful life for the tablet.
Both in the experience of using the iPad Air 2022 and in the synthetic tests, there is no doubt about its capabilities. Although in performance with a single core the difference with the A14 that mounted the iPad Air of the previous generation is not very relevant (1707 of the M1 by 1495 of the A14), in multicore the takeoff of the M1 is evident, with almost 7000 points in GeekBench 5 versus the 4,205 we got in our test with the iPad Air (2020) .
