It used to be that, if you wanted to buy the best possible iPad, you splurged on an iPad Air. It wasn't just sleek -- it was terribly powerful, too. (Well, for the time, anyway.) In 2015, though, the company launched the iPad Pro, and before long, the iPad Air line was discontinued and left to the annals of Apple history. Until now, that is.
To be clear, Apple's new iPad Air has little in common with the old models it shares a name with. It has a bigger, 10.5-inch screen and a body carried over from an earlier iPad Pro. It plays nice with Apple's Pencil, the stylus that — while definitely not for everyone — can feel indispensable to the artistically inclined. The most important distinction, though, might lie in the Air's purpose. Unlike earlier models, which were meant to sit atop Apple's heap of tablets, this year's Air was designed to make a few of the iPad Pro's features more accessible. (Maybe Apple should've called it the iPad XR, instead.) That might not be the most exciting goal for a new tablet, but it is still an important one.
Gallery: iPad Air (2019) hands-on | 10 Photos
Gallery: iPad Air (2019) hands-on | 10 Photos
We've been testing the new, $499 iPad Air for a little over a day now, and it'll be a while yet before we publish our full review. At this point, though, it's already clear that the new iPad Air sits in a sweet spot that a lot of people are going to find compelling. See, on the low end, there's the $329 iPad — it hasn't been touched this year (so far), and it's an excellent, basic tablet. On the high end, there's the iPad Pro, with its USB-C port and fancy new design (and its $800 price tag).
In our limited time together, the Air seems well-suited to living in that crucial middle ground. Its 10.5-inch display is noticeably better than the one in the less expensive iPad, with its wider color gamut and real-time True Tone color tuning. Sure, it doesn't have the super-smooth ProMotion technology that made the last 10.5-inch iPad so easy on the eyes, but Apple had to save money somewhere. And in terms of performance, it's basically a bigger version of this year's iPad mini, since they both share the same A12 Bionic chipset.
That's a very good thing, mind you: it means that both of this year's new iPads are just as snappy as the iPhone XS family, not to mention noticeably quicker than Apple's $329 tablet. Again, we haven't been testing the Air for very long, but so far, it has handle multitasking, light video editing and graphically complex games with aplomb.