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New iPad: refinement, not revolution

Apple's latest iPad is twice as thin as the original, but after four years the pace of innovation has slowed considerably.

Apple's latest iPad, The Air 2, is thinner, faster, and slicker. But another word also springs to mind: similar.

Really similar.

Since the launch of the original in 2010, Apple's tablet has been shaved, squished, sharpened and sped-up.

Four years on, there's little more to do. Unlike the iPhone, which Apple continues to overhaul, the iPad is approaching perfection.

Place two of the new models on top of one another, for example, and they're still collectively slimmer than a single original.

But place one next to last year's model, the iPad Air, and it's tough to tell the difference.

It's slightly slimmer and slightly lighter, but the difference is negligible. The deeply impressive Air was already improbably thin and light.

The addition of a fingerprint scanner in the home button is a nice touch, but it's far less integral than it is on the iPhone, which people pull out of their pockets and unlock far more often.

The key difference is in the guts.

Apple has added extra processing grunt in the form of the A8X chip, which supposedly provides a 40 per cent better CPU performance and 2.5 times the graphics performance of last year's model.

It's true that graphically intense games run extremely smoothly, and there is no trace of lag when multitasking and switching between apps.

For most people, though, who want to use their iPad to watch movies, read news, get directions and check Facebook, these improvements aren't essential.

Nor are a handful of smaller additions, including a better camera, an anti-glare screen coating which makes visibility slightly better outdoors, and better Wi-Fi that enables faster transfer speeds between devices.

All nice refinements, but nothing spellbinding.

The point is this: if you don't have an iPad, you're probably best off saving yourself $120 and opting for last year's model, which now starts at $499.

And if you're after a device to create rather than consume things, hybrid tablet-laptops such as Microsoft's Surface Pro 3 are worth considering.

But if you want the best and are willing to cough up at least $619 for it, the iPad Air 2 is well worth getting.

It's a device at the pinnacle of its category. Apple's boffins will have a tough time improving on it next year.


3 min read

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