Hi, iPad Air owner here! iPad Air was my first ever Apple device, I found it to be really useful for all my high school needs. My iPad Air was at iOS 9.1 before I recently updated to 9.2 public beta. There are MANY performance issues like lags and etc. These issues never occurred in the past while on iOS 7 or 8. It's a fact that iOS 9, 9.1, etc. are poorly optimized in terms of user interface fluidity.
After using this product for so long. I strongly recommend against buying the first generation iPad Air, because the screen isn't laminated to the glass. Thus, there is a few millimetres of 'air gap' (heh) between the LCD display and the glass. My original iPad Air had a strongly noticeable problem with colour uniformity across the screen. The left side colour looked way off compared to the right side when held in portrait view. I took it to an Apple store and the technician told me she couldn't see the problem. After a lot of awkward and surprisingly difficult arguing back and fourth with her, she decided to give me a replacement. But told me I won't get another replacement if I come back complaining about the same problem again.
And guess what? The iPad Air replacement I got also had the unpleasant screen colour problem where one side of the screen has a yellow tint. I'm stuck with the lack of colour uniformity forever I guess.
Here are my observations on iOS 9.1 running on iPad Air, hope it helps you in deciding your purchase:
- Multitasking app switcher is INCREDIBLY laggy, the frame rate is unacceptably low switching between apps and simply opening the view itself by double pressing the home button.
- Spotlight search is also unacceptably laggy and has choppy frame rates.
- There are some occasional frame rate drops across the OS whenever high amounts of transparency effects are rendered.
- To make the device near-60 FPS buttery smooth, you can: Enable Reduce Transparency and Reduce Motion. HOWEVER: The white virtual keyboard is completely borked with Reduce Transparency, the white keys do not become dark when you tap on them, making it nearly impossible to tell if a key press was registered or not. Does not affect dark virtual keyboard though. (I submitted this bug to Apple while I was running the iOS 9.1 Public Beta, it seems they either ignored my submission, or they recognized it but haven't got around to fixing it, or simply don't care.
So yeah, iPad Air is pretty bad running iOS 9.1. I suggest saving up for an Air 2 or Air 3 or iPad Pro if you can.
P.S. As much as I enjoy some of Apple's products, I will always stand at the consumer side and offer the most realistic, undistorted experience based on my usage of Apple products I own. Because I believe pro-consumer is the way to go. Being pro-company is detrimental to both the company and us consumers on the long run.
