During yesterday’s event Apple didn’t unveil the iPhone 12, as many would have wanted, but instead chose to offer us two new Apple Watch models and two new iPads. One of them is actually more powerful than expected: the iPad Air 4. The 4th gen iPad Air comes with an Apple A14 Bionic CPU, freshly unveiled and expected to pop up on the iPhone 12 as well.
Then there’s the affordable Apple iPad 8th gen, at $329, ideal for students and pupils all over the world.
iPad Air 4
The latest iPad Air is just like the rumors said it was going to be: a 10.9 inch slate with pretty much the same design as the iPad Pro 2018. It offers a 2360 x 1640 pixel resolution, slim bezels and interestingly enough it places the Touch ID fingerprint scanner in a Power button at the top side. It also offers an USB-C port at the bottom. This is the first device with the brand new 5 nm Apple A14 CPU inside. The processor has 6 cores, 4 GPU cores and 11.8 billion transistors, a 40% boost over the previous gen 7 nm chips.
Compared to the previous iPad Air, this model is expected to provide at 40% faster CPU, 30% faster graphics, 10X faster machine learning. This iPad Air also has WiFi 6 and support for 60% faster 4G, plus a 20W USB-C power adapter. Specs are pretty predictable otherwise, with a 12 MP main camera and 7 MP front camera. It also supports the Apple Pencil and Apple Magic Keyboard as accessories. The product goes on sale in October for $599 and up.
iPad 8th gen
The 10.2 inch entry level iPad has also been updated with an Apple A12 CPU. It has a metal body and supports optional accessories, like the Apple Pencil and Apple Smart Keyboard. It keeps the Lightning port, but brings an adapter from Lightning to USB-C. There’s an 8 megapixel rear camera here, plus HD Front camera and a body made from 100% recycled aluminum. We also get optional support for Gigabit LTE. iPadOS 14 is preinstalled.
The starting price remains $329, like the predecessor. The newcomer is on preorder now and should be sold from this Friday, September 18th.
