Sure. It has more effective RAM than the air due to the same amount if RAM, and the air being 64bit.
Just realize that at some point iOS 9 or 10 will be 64bit CPU only. So that is your trade off. But it is a perfectly good device.
That's not really an appropriate comparison...as an owner of both, there is definitely a distinct difference in their fluency, especially with 7.1. I love them both but the Air having 'less memory' because it's 64bit chip utilizes more is horse pucky. There's a WHOLE lot more to the A7 than it's 64bit chip as it's also using the new A8 instruction set and faster RAM than the '4'. Since 7.1 I've had no springboard crashes, no RAM challenges at ALL. The iPad 4 will definitely drop a frame or two while swiping up for multi tasking trays, pinch to home or four finger swipes between open apps. The Air on the other hand is smooth as silk...pretty amazing difference actually and I use them both every day.
The iPad Air doesn't do anything that the iPad 4 can't. The quad-core graphics on the A6X are beastly and in some graphics tests even surpasses the A7 due to memory limitations of the dual-core setup. There's no new software that only works on the A7. There's no touch-ID and RAM is the same 1GB.
Get the cheaper iPad 4 and wait for the Air2 when it comes with touch-ID and more RAM.
Any chance you could point me to those graphic tests? I've seen nothing but complete and TOTAL dominance of the A7 chip in the 5s and Air/Mini compared to the A6x...here's a link to Anand's performance numbers...
Actually...let's try memory bandwidth first @
http://anandtech.com/show/7460/apple-ipad-air-review/2
Maybe it's the GLBench 2.7 Triangle Throughput tests on and off screen you're talking about? ALL other Graphic measurements from the 6x to the 7 are anywhere from 50-100+% better in 'real world' tests (Games specifically) as far as GLBench, Anand's comment was "We see an even smaller gap between the Air and 5s in the triangle throughput tests (2.9%). There doesn't seem to be any substantial difference in GPU frequency between A7 implementations here. The regression in triangle rate performance compared to the iPad 4 is explained by differences in how Series 6 and Series 5XT GPUs scale in width. Whereas 5XT replicated nearly the entire GPU for "multi-core" versions, multi-cluster versions of Rogue only replicate at the shader array. The result? We don't see the same sort of peak triangle setup scaling we did back on multi-core 5XT parts. I'm not sure I'm particularly happy with the magnitude of the regression here, but I haven't seen any real world cases where it matters yet.
Next up are the game simulation tests. We'll start with the more strenuous of the two: T-Rex HD."
Which can be seen here
http://anandtech.com/show/7460/apple-ipad-air-review/4
The CPU? Octane is showing almost a 400% improvement!!! That's absolutely amazing IMO from one generation to the the next...check it out
http://anandtech.com/show/7460/apple-ipad-air-review/3
It's obvious if you use both every day. Not so much if you don't ...and it sounds like the OP has both (albeit a mini retina scaled back .1Mhz, still the A7) --- BUT at the price he or she paid, the iPad 4 is a Bargain...and IMHO, the second best tablet on the market.
It's good the layman doesn't read these forums and fret about RAM constantly....as my Note 3 has three times the RAM as my 5s and Air but they both are as fast or faster in real, day to day tasks and software usage.
To the OP---Good Buy! I love my Air---but we run a mobile audio and video production company and when the '4' dropped we bought four of them for field work---they're hearty little machines, I don't mean to take anything away from their capabilities---and I like their robust build for field work. That said, the Air is one HELL of a tablet, as is the rMini and 5s...the A7 chip is fast...and when you have that speed, the memory efficiency and graphics combined...it's an amazingly fluid experience. As iOS 7 continues to mature and developers continue to refine their software...the masses are still using the iPad 2/3...the 4 in some cases the older Mini. If they want to make money they'll continue to target the masses...and the 4/Air are on the bleeding edge of performance. I'm still using the original iPad as a music only player but it still gets 10-12 hours of battery life, looks great, works well and doesn't give me any grief...they're all awesome!
