FEBRUARY 2020 MACWORLD 45It doesn’t come close to the Pros, though.glass sits closer to the actual display—as
well as a P3 wide-color display and an
anti-reflective coating. The laminated
display in particular does a good job of
helping the iPad mimic the feel of writing
on paper with a pen.
THE iPAD AIR IS A
LOT FASTER
The 10.2-inch iPad contains the same A10
Fusion chip we found in last year’s 9.7-inch
model, while the iPad Air has an A12 Bionic
chip that includes Apple’s second-gen
Neural Engine for optimized
machine learning. It’s quite the jump.
Mind you, the A10 is a fine chip. Until
recently, I used the 9.7-inch iPad every day
and I never thought it let me down. But as
you can see from our benchmarks from
earlier this year, the A12 in the Air thumped
the A10 soundly on iOS 12. If you’re
looking for a relatively future-proof device
that’s less likely to slow down with heavier-
duty apps and OS upgrades in the coming
years, go with the Air.
YOU GET A LOT MORE ROOM
WITH THE iPAD AIR
This could be a biggie if you download a
lot of movies or games to your iPad. The
10.2-inch iPad only comes in 32GB and
128GB configurations, while the iPad Air
starts at 64GB and goes all the way up to
256GB. Lately I find myself struggling with
64GB on my iPhone, so if you plan on
using your iPad like a laptop with all the
neat new features coming in iPadOS 13
(go.macworld.com/ipos), go with the Air.
Which reminds me......THE iPAD AIR IS A BETTER
MATCH FOR THE SMART
KEYBOARD
Yes, the new 10.2-inch iPad has a Smart
Connector for use with Apple’s full-sized
(and expensive) Smart Keyboard, and I’m
happy to see it.
But it’s the same Smart Keyboard you
can use with the iPad Air, and if you’re0 10,000 20,000 30,000 40,000 50,000iPad Air (2019)iPad mini (2019)12.9-inch iPad Pro (2018)9.7-inch iPad (2018)10.2-inch iPad Pro (2017)GEEKBENCH 4
HIGHER SCORES ARE BETTER21,69220,56042,98212,87730,58011,55411,46818,2819,585Compute (graphics performance) CPU - Multi-Core CPU - Single-Core4,8144,8275,0503,4756,0713,991