Thin enough to carry around all day: iPad air review

Apple’s latest update to it’s full sized iPad comes as the firm is facing major competition from Google’s Android tablets, Microsoft’s Surface, Nokia’s newly announced tablet, and even the firm’s own iPad Mini.

The product that kickstarted the tablet category into life is facing tough times.

In an earnings call earlier this week, when it became apparent iPad sales have stagnated, CEO Tim Cook promised an iPad christmas - and based on the Air, that may well happen.

It’s certainly not a massive revolution, and it shouldn’t be.

The iPad is such a phenomenon, and YouTube so full of children and the elderly instantly taking to the device, that Apple would be daft to radically overhaul it.

However, what they’ve done is give it an injection of the Mini’s slick design, and crucially, made it light enough to take everywhere - and hold with one hand.

Pick one up, and you’ll be instantly converted.

It’s thinner and lighter, and while the weight drop does make it feel slightly less solid than the previous model, this is without doubt a tablet you can carry round all day.

Crucially, there’s less of a bezel around the screen, which makes this feel much smaller that the older iPad, despite having the same size screen. There’s also some neat software so you can hold it in one hand without sending the touchscreen haywire.

For commuters, this is a big step forward - meaning we’re likely to see a lot more big-screen iPads on the tubes and buses, for better or worse. This does raise the slight issue that with a big high definition screen, it’s going to be obviously you’re actually playing Candy Crush rather than catching up on those important emails.

Internally, Apple has given the Air a big overhaul, with a blazingly fast new 64 bit processor, and expect to see a raft of new apps more powerful than ever before, with games in particular set to benefit from the increased processing power.

There are, at the moment, only a handful of apps optimised to take advantage of that extra power, but expect more - lots more.

The Air also boats the M7, the motion sensing chip that’s expected to be central to Apple’s plans for a watch, and here it’s set to be put to use making games even more accurate, and propelling Apple into the kind of gaming performance that only months ago we’d have only expected to see from a dedicated console.