Recently got the Air to replace my iPad4 which I sold a couple of weeks back. The experience is night and day and there are a significant amount of differences both in the exterior and the interior.
Outside, it is the weight and thickness that really struck me. Wow! The other aspect is the speakers that are IMHO significantly better (and you get stereo as a bonus). As for the screen, if it is confirmed to be IGZO, that is fantastic news! I noticed less reflection and the color reproduction also seems to be more accurate.
Inside, it is the A7 chip, that at first doesn't seem to be that different of an experience compared to the A6 in the iPad 6, especially with the incredibly badly optimized ios7. But in reality I just think that this is a sleeping beast. It was when I launched the Myst app that the huge difference became clear. I didn't get any of the annoying stuttering that plagued the iPad 4, especially when panning through the scenes!
The other big difference I immediately noticed is heat dissipation. On the ipad4, just cranking up the brightness produced heat, especially on the left edge. Non of that on the Air! Same goes for CPU/GPU intensive apps. The Air just runs much cooler.
Finally, power consumption and battery charging experience are also significantly better on the Air. This thing runs not only faster but actually consumes less power. Charging times are also almost half of what they were on the iPad 4. No longer having to wait half a day to charge.
I must say that I am a very happy camper right now. If there is one small gripe, it is that Apple may have been stingy with RAM. Only time will tell if this is the case, considering that ios7 still needs a lot of ironing out (it was clearly half baked when released).
Outside, it is the weight and thickness that really struck me. Wow! The other aspect is the speakers that are IMHO significantly better (and you get stereo as a bonus). As for the screen, if it is confirmed to be IGZO, that is fantastic news! I noticed less reflection and the color reproduction also seems to be more accurate.
Inside, it is the A7 chip, that at first doesn't seem to be that different of an experience compared to the A6 in the iPad 6, especially with the incredibly badly optimized ios7. But in reality I just think that this is a sleeping beast. It was when I launched the Myst app that the huge difference became clear. I didn't get any of the annoying stuttering that plagued the iPad 4, especially when panning through the scenes!
The other big difference I immediately noticed is heat dissipation. On the ipad4, just cranking up the brightness produced heat, especially on the left edge. Non of that on the Air! Same goes for CPU/GPU intensive apps. The Air just runs much cooler.
Finally, power consumption and battery charging experience are also significantly better on the Air. This thing runs not only faster but actually consumes less power. Charging times are also almost half of what they were on the iPad 4. No longer having to wait half a day to charge.
I must say that I am a very happy camper right now. If there is one small gripe, it is that Apple may have been stingy with RAM. Only time will tell if this is the case, considering that ios7 still needs a lot of ironing out (it was clearly half baked when released).
