Apple's iPad Air 2022 - Review

2022 Apple iPad Air (10.9-inch, 64GB) - Starlight (5th Gen)

There's a book called "The Myth of Fair Value." And in that book, it's all about pricing strategies for different products and things like that. And in that, there's a study that they go over about purchasing patterns. So in test number one, a company selling a product offers a regular option and a premium option. And four out of five people picked the more premium one. So then in test number two, they added a third cheaper option to see if they could maybe increase revenue by looping in an audience that's looking for a cheaper, lowest possible price. Turned out the cheapest option was kind of just ignored, but it completely flipped the ratio of standard to premium purchases because now people would assume that the middle one was the appropriate value, so then in test number three, they took away the cheap option but then added an ultra-premium option over the top. And this ended up flipping the ratio right back to the original premium one, but also, some portion of people just went with the more expensive one just because that's what they want. So this ended up with the highest overall revenue generated. Pricing ladders are real and designed to get you to spend as much as possible and make those companies as much money as possible.

iPad Air 2022 (5th Gen)

Today we have the new 2022 iPad Air with the new M1 chip inside. It's nice, but it is one of the strangers Apple products that I've seen in a long time because of its price and where it sits in the lineup. Cause it kind of messes with the ladder a little bit. So look, it's very simple to understand what you're getting here with this spec bump, which is an even more powerful version of the iPad we already know. This is a thin 11-inch tablet with the same exact dimensions as the last iPad Air so those cases all still work. Your single camera on the back, USB Type-C at the bottom, the Touch ID fingerprint reader in the power button up in the corner, and, the 11-inch, 60-hertz display up front, running the same iPad OS as every other iPad. The reason it's so strange is, this one Apple product seems to overlap another, that other product being the iPad Pro. So the last iPad Air was already very close to the iPad Pro, right? It had basically the same dimensions, same camera, same battery life, and the same software features as all the other most expensive iPads. It works with the same 2^nd gen Apple Pencil and it's just as thin.

iPad Air 2022 - About Price!!!

So this year, now that the new iPad Air also gets the incredible massively overkill new M1 chip inside, it's one more thing that they do exactly the same. So the iPad Air starts at $599, and the 11-inch iPad Pro starts at $799. But let's take a closer look at this pricing. See, this is a pricing ladder, so it's designed to have something available at every price. And then every time you arrive at one price, there's something a little higher to try to nudge you up and try to get you as high on that ladder as they can. So the base price of the iPad Air is only a 64-gigabyte iPad. For $600 bucks in 2022, that's not really great. I mean, we got 20 gigs games today. So, of course, the only available storage option is straight up to 256 gigs, which is 150 extra dollars. So now you're playing in the $750 territory, which is a lot of money to spend on an Air when for just $50 more, you can get a Pro, right? So now you might as well just bump up to the iPad Pro. So you can see what they're doing, right? They're nudging you up a little bit by a little bit. But the thing is, the iPad Pro is more expensive but it's almost the same tablet in so many ways. So they're already practically the same dimensions to the point where the iPad Air works in all the same cases and keyboards that the iPad Pro works in. They're the same primary camera on the back, the same USB-C port, the same battery life, and now the same M1 chip. So you have to think extra hard about spending extra money on an iPad Pro when the list of reasons to do so is smaller than ever before.

iPad Pro or iPad Air

Now, as someone who's used both tablets, honestly, one of those reasons is pretty huge and then the rest are all pretty minor. But let's just go through each of them. So the only reason I still pick an iPad Pro as a better overall experience, a better tablet than the Air is the ProMotion display. So they're about the same size and resolution, but the faster 120-hertz refresh rate is one that makes everything about using the Pro smoother and snappier, and more responsive. And that's the thing that makes the M1 chip in this iPad Air so funny, which is, it theoretically closes the gap in performance versus the Pro with rendering and exporting and compiling and things like that. But it does not feel as fast because of the 60 hertz. So those big animations where your hand moves across the entire screen, the unlock animation, the multitasking gestures, the big stuff like that. It wouldn't feel as smooth as the ProMotion iPad. Now, sure, some people need to see them side by side and even then they barely see a difference, in which case, yeah, that person should just get the iPad Air. But I'm telling you, for me, if you're like me that's something I would spend the extra money for.

But then the iPad Pro has one extra camera, the 10-megapixel Ultrawide, plus a LIDAR scanner and a flash. The iPad Air just has a single camera, no flash. So, for the occasional video call or document scanning, that's fine for me. And like I said, it's the same main camera as the iPad Pro, so there isn't even a quality difference here. Then the iPad Pro has quad-speaker audio instead of the dual speakers of the iPad Air. They're both very solid speakers, and it's a bit fuller and louder from the Pro, but that's not something you're going out and spending extra money on specifically. And then the Pro has higher max storage. So you can go up to 2 TBs instead of just 256 gigs. And the USB-C port is Thunderbolt on the Pro instead of just a faster USB-C on the Air. So that might open up some potential peripheral options for actual pros plugging in drives, etc. And then of course you have Face ID on the iPad Pro where you've got the Touch ID fingerprint reader on the iPad Air. Honestly, at this point, it's kind of preference. You get used to having Face ID on the tablet very quickly when you have it. But also, the good old-fashioned two fingers registered on the iPad Air works really well, too. So in portrait, it's the right index finger that unlocks, and then in landscape, it's the left index finger, great. Do you know what's funny though? The only other update to the Air besides the M1 chip being inside is the selfie camera is now ultrawide with Center Stage. So it's got the newer selfie camera. And it's convenient. It follows you around the room. It's kind of in an awkward location, but it's decently smooth with FaceTime, Zoom calls, et cetera. But because the iPad Pro has the Face ID sensors and stuff, technically, only that older selfie camera will support Animojis and Memojis and things like that.

iPad Air - The Cheaper iPad

But that's basically it, right? That's the difference. So now hearing that list, you probably already know if you would be tempted to move up one more rung on that ladder. Maybe 50 extra bucks for ProMotion does it for you like it does it for me, or maybe you just want a larger tablet 'cause you do have the 13-inch iPad Pro with mini-LED if you're tempted to go large. But other than that, the extra camera, LIDAR, Face ID, the speakers, are all pretty minor things. But then the funniest part, usually, the ladders are designed to try to nudge you up to try to get you to spend more and more money. Putting one of the features from the more expensive model in the less expensive model just removes one reason to upgrade and may actually encourage a small number of people to move down. Because now that theoretical person who would've spent the extra money to get the hugely improved processing power of the M1, just has one less reason to get the Pro. They can get it in the Air. Well, that is until the M2 version comes out anyway.