Au iesit si primele review-uri pentru noul iPad Air. Intre 12 ore si 13 ore si 45 de minute in testul de baterie (desi avem baterie de 32.4Wh pe Air fata de 42.5Wh pe iPad 4). Lovely! Iar din ce vad in SunSpider, la 388ms deja se poate spune ca a trecut la capitolul "desktop performance" (comparativ, al meu i7 3770K scoate 127ms). Din pacate, avem insa tot 1GB RAM, iar procesorul este identic cu cel din iPhone 5 (doar ca e tactat la 1.39Ghz fata de 1.29Ghz).
In caz ca va intrebati de temperaturi, cei de la CNET spun: "In case you’re wondering, yes, the iPad Air does get quite warm when doing this sort of number crunching. The back of the tablet feels slightly cooler at full-tilt than its finger-toasting predecessor, but there’s still plenty of heat coming off the back, reinforcement that your slinky new tablet is, indeed, working hard.". Eu zic ca e absolut OK, la ce performante are. Deci i'm sold!
iPad Air Benchmark results:
| Benchmark | iPad Air | iPhone 5s | iPad 4 |
| SunSpider (ms) | 388 | 418 | 865 |
| GXFBench 2.7 T-Rex HD Offscreen (fps) | 25 | 23 | 19 |
| Basemark X (onscreen / offscreen) | 13.3 / 15.5 | 27.7 / 16.7 | N/A |
| 3DMark Ice Storm Unlimited | 14,631 | 13,729 | 10,613 |
| Geekbench 3.0 (multi-thread) | 2,682 | 2,562 | 1,763 |
| Linpack | 950 | 795 | N/A |
iPad Air Battery test results:
| Tablet | Battery Life |
| iPad Air (LTE) | 13:45 |
| Apple iPad mini | 12:43 (WiFi) |
| Apple iPad (late 2012) | 11:08 (WiFi) |
| Apple iPad 2 | 10:26 |
| Apple iPad (2012) | 9:52 (HSPA) / 9:37 (LTE) |
| Nexus 7 (2012) | 9:49 |
| Microsoft Surface RT | 9:36 |
| Apple iPad | 9:33 |
| Sony Xperia Tablet Z | 8:40 |
| Galaxy Tab 2 7.0 | 7:38 |
| Nexus 10 | 7:26 |
| Samsung Galaxy Note 8.0 | 7:18 |
| Nexus 7 (2013) | 7:15 |
| Samsung Galaxy Tab 3 10.1 | 6:55 |
iPad Air review
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Calling it the "Air" was fitting indeed, since it's ridiculously small and light compared to previous models. It measures 7.5mm thick and weighs only one pound (1.03 pounds, to be exact), making it 1.9mm thinner and 0.43 pound lighter than the iPad 4. Apple's also trimmed the left and right bezel by roughly 8mm on each side. If that doesn't sound significant, just hold the Air for a minute and then pick up an older iPad; the difference is immediately noticeable. Simply put, the iPad Air is the most comfortable 10-inch tablet we've ever used.
When it comes to battery life, Apple's sweet spot appears to be 10 hours; this is the exact amount of runtime the company has claimed for each of the full-sized iPads. Indeed, nothing's changed this time around -- except, of course, the size of the battery itself, which has shrunk to 32WHr (down from 42 in the fourth-gen iPad). So did this have an adverse effect on battery life? No. Surprisingly, it did even better. In our standard video rundown test, the Air stayed alive for a whopping 13 hours and 45 minutes. Under heavy use, the device kept us going for a little more than a day and a half (admittedly with a few hours of sleep during this time).
Surprise: the iPad Air is the best iPad we've reviewed. In addition, though, it's also the most comfortable 10-inch tablet we've ever tested. Not every manufacturer can produce a thin and light device without also making it feel cheap or flimsy, but Apple nailed it. Factor in a sizable boost in performance and battery life, and the Air is even more compelling. The last two iPads served up relatively few improvements, but the Air provides people with more of a reason to upgrade or even buy a tablet for the first time.
Review: iPad Air
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When I first picked up the iPad Air, I noticed how light it was. I mean really light. In reality, Apple shaved about half a pound of weight off the new iPad compared to the previous generations. That may not seem like much, but when the old iPad only weighed approximately 1.5 pounds, knocking off half a pound is significant.
It’s very hard to describe how good the iPad Air feels in your hand without actually picking one up. It’s kind of like the first time you saw a Retina display for the first time—shock.
Apple iPad Air Review - Watch CNET's Video Review
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The good: The iPad Air delivers more performance and comparable battery life in an attractive and impossibly thin-and-light package. An improved front-facing camera makes FaceTiming look better, and the Retina Display still looks great.
The bad: The Touch ID fingerprint scanner, introduced on the iPhone 5S, is sadly absent here, meaning you’ll still have to type in a passcode with every unlock and a password with every purchase. Starting at $499 for 16GB, it’s still expensive compared with the competition.
The bottom line: Functionally, the iPad Air is nearly identical to last year’s model, offering only faster performance and better video chatting. But factor in design and aesthetics, and the iPad Air is on another planet. It’s the best full-size consumer tablet on the market.
AnandTech | The iPad Air Review
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An Update on Apple’s A7: It's Better Than I Thought.
I don’t yet have a good understanding of the number of execution ports and how they’re mapped, but Cyclone appears to be the widest ARM architecture we’ve ever seen at this point. I’m talking wider than Qualcomm’s Krait 400 and even ARM’s Cortex A15.
In all available graphics benchmarks the iPad Air delivers better performance at its native resolution than the outgoing 4th generation iPad. Now many of these benchmarks are bound more by GPU compute rather than memory bandwidth, a side effect of the relative lack of memory bandwidth on modern day mobile platforms. Across the board though I couldn’t find a situation where anything was smoother on the iPad 4 than the iPad Air.
Since the iPad Air uses the same A7 silicon as the iPhone 5s, it also uses the same on-die GPU as the 5s: IMG’s PowerVR G6430. This is a 4-cluster configuration of IMG’s latest graphics hardware, running at some relatively high frequency.
Apple’s decision to unify silicon across the iPhone 5s, iPad Air and iPad mini with Retina Display is an interesting one, but ultimately it doesn’t come with any real tradeoffs for iPad owners. Apple’s own 64-bit Cyclone cores are incredibly powerful, even more so than I originally expected when I reviewed the iPhone 5s. Apple seems to have built a bigger, higher performance CPU architecture than any other ARM player, including ARM itself. The design isn’t perfect, but it’s a completely different caliber performer than anything else it competes against. As such, Apple was completely justified in putting the A7 in both the iPhone 5s and the iPad Air.
On the GPU front, Apple does increase performance over the iPad 4 as well - despite having a narrower memory bus. The increase in performance ranges from 40 - 70% depending on workload. I suspect we’re beginning to see some of the limits of 28nm here as Apple would’ve traditionally gone for an even larger GPU.
Despite having a smaller/thinner/lighter battery, battery life improves across the board compared to the 3rd and 4th generation iPads. Battery life in our web browsing, video playback and gaming workloads is better than either of the previous two iPads. Only the iPad 2,4 was able to deliver better battery life, but nothing with a Retina Display can match the iPad.
The iPad Air is the most significant upgrade to the 9.7-inch iPad in its history. It’s lighter, more portable, more usable and faster than any previous iPad. It doesn’t fundamentally change what you can do with a tablet, but if you’re in the market for one the iPad Air really is the best iPad to date. Competition is definitely more stiff among the smaller tablets thanks to the Nexus 7, but in the nearly 10-inch tablet space it seems like Apple is going to continue to enjoy a great position there.
Speed and Power Packed Into a Thin iPad Air - Walt Mossberg - Personal Technology - AllThingsD
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In my tests, the iPad Air far exceeded Apple’s claim of 10 hours of battery life. For over 12 hours, it played high-definition videos, nonstop, with the screen at 75% brightness, with Wi-Fi on and emails pouring in. That’s the best battery life I’ve ever recorded for any tablet.
iPad Air Review: Apple Makes Big Tablets Beautiful All Over Again | TechCrunch
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The iPad Air is a huge improvement over the iPad 4th-gen, or the iPad 2, pictured in the gallery. Its form factor is the best currently available for a 10-inch tablet, and it provides a great blend of portability and usability that leans towards the media device end of the spectrum.
iPad Air Review - SlashGear
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Apple quotes up to 10 hours of WiFi-connected browsing, video, or music from a full charge of the iPad Air, or alternatively 9 hours over a cellular connection. In practice, though, and with mixed use, we were blown away by just how long the iPad Air can last.
From a full charge, after more than 7 hours of frequent use – browsing over WiFi and cellular wireless, playing video files and music, and using apps and FaceTime – and almost 14.5 hours of standby, the iPad Air still had 77-percent of its battery remaining. Even when we purposefully tried to run the battery down, playing video and keeping the screen active, the iPad simply ran and ran.
If the best tablet is the one that has power when you need it, then the iPad Air is competitive on battery alone. Knowing you can reach into your bag for it day in, day out, without worrying about power is transformational.
