JUNE 2019 MACWORLD 79have a superior 12MP camera capable
of 4K video recording while you’re
stuck with an older, 1080p-limited,
8MP camera on the iPad Air. It’s not a
bad camera for a tablet, it gets the job
done, but nothing more.Lightning port (don’t
lose the cap!). It’s an
awkward design that
we’d like to see Apple
move on from;
maintaining two “Apple
Pencils” with the same
name but different
features and mutually
exclusive compatibility
is a mess.
The A12X
processor in the iPad
Pro is a lot faster, too.
It’s got an extra
gigabyte of RAM, four
high-speed CPU cores (instead of two in
the A12), and seven GPU cores (versus four
in the A12). As much as the iPad Air blows
the doors off the iPad, the latest iPad Pro
leaves it in the dust.
Then there are other Pro features, like
the TrueDepth sensors for Face
ID and Animoji (go.macworld.
com/anim) (and the slimmer
bezels that go along with that),
and quad stereo speakers (two
on each side). That’s something
you’ll notice every time you
watch a video and hear the
sound oddly coming out of one
side of your iPad. It’s a real
step back.
The latest iPad Pros also Battery life on the iPad Air is fantastic.
0 100 200 300 400 500iPad Air (2019)
iPad mini (2019)
iPad Pro 12.9 (2018)
iPad 9.7 (2018)
iPad Pro 10.5 (2017)BATTERY LIFE
(Minutes)
499461467341368Yes, there’s Apple Pencil support, but only for the old Lightning-style
Pencil, not the slick new wireless one.