In the early hours of Wednesday morning, Apple officially released the iPad Air 4 tablet. This time, iPad Air 4 changed its usual monotonous appearance, adding three vibrant colors of rose gold, blue and green for the first time, bringing a touch of freshness to this series. iPad Air 4 cleverly integrates the Touch ID module at the bottom of the original screen into the inside of the power button, creating a space for a full-screen design.
Since the appearance of the iPad Air 4 is very similar to the iPad Pro series, many users wonder whether this new product is worth buying. Therefore, we will compare these two products today, and briefly talk about the difference in their parameters, and whether this difference is worth adding money to the Pro series.
Screen: All top Liquid Retina panels
As a representative of the thin and light iPad, the screen is the biggest change in Air 4 this time.
iPad Air 4 is equipped with the same Liquid Retina screen as iPad Pro. This top-of-the-line IPS LCD screen is still very good. It also supports P3 wide color gamut and original color display. It is also equipped with anti-reflective coating and anti-oil stain and anti-fingerprint. coating. Unlike the iPad Pro, the peak brightness of the iPad Air 4 screen is only 500 nits, while the peak brightness of the iPad Pro is 600 nits. However, if it is not used in the sun, this gap is not enough to make a very obvious difference in user experience.
We calculate according to the theoretical value:
CPU: 147444*1.4≈206422
GPU: 201751*1.3≈262276
Assuming that the iPad Air 4 has the same running score as the iPad Pro 2020 (6GB+256GB) in terms of storage combination, the theoretical running score of the iPad Air 4 is 655304, which is only 87.2% of the iPad Pro 2020.
If the storage score is not included, the processor score (CPU+GPU) of the iPad Air 4 is only about 83% of that of the iPad Pro 2020. In terms of comparison results, the performance of the iPad Air 4 is not as good as the iPad Pro 2020.
In theory, the 5nm process A14 bionic chip is better than the 7nm process A12Z bionic chip in terms of power consumption and temperature control. However, the A14 Bionic has a six-core CPU and a quad-core GPU, while the A12Z has an eight-core CPU and an eight-core GPU. From the core count, the A12Z wins. More cores usually means more powerful performance, it can be said that A12Z is born for performance.
In addition, there has been news recently that in order to widen the gap with the iPad Pro, the performance of the A14 bionic chip of the iPad Air 4 may be limited, but this rumor will not be known until the real machine is tested.
After the above calculation, we can roughly calculate that the A14 Bionic is not as powerful as the A12Z. If this is one of the factors that influence your choice, then the simple analysis above may help you.
Price: iPad Pro is “excellent”
The prices of iPad Pro 2020 and iPad Air 4 are shown in the picture. Due to the similar size, only the 11-inch iPad Pro and iPad Air 4 prices are compared.
From this table, we can draw these conclusions:
- If your purpose of buying an iPad is just to buy a full-screen tablet for “iqiyi”, and the daily use time is not long, then the iPad Air 4 with a starting price of 64GB is enough.
- If you are a student party who often uses iPad (or a user who can enjoy educational discounts), and 64GB is not enough for you, choosing iPad Pro is undoubtedly a better choice. The iPad Air 4 256GB version is priced at 5399 yuan, and the iPad Pro 128GB is priced at 5829 yuan (headphones will be given if it catches up with the back to school season). The actual price will be cheaper than the iPad Air 4. If you cannot enjoy the education discount, the price difference of 430 yuan is also worth paying.
- If you are a heavy user of iPad, and use iPad for daily content creation, the no-brainer iPad Pro is the right choice.
- If you just want to buy a tablet that is “good to use”, the iPad Pro is also recommended.
Conclusion: If you want a good tablet, choose iPad Pro
After drawing these conclusions, I was a little surprised and deeply felt the embarrassment of the current positioning of the iPad Air 4. Apart from the starting price of the iPad Air 4, I cannot find a reason to recommend other configurations. Apple said it can handle 4K video, so can iPad Pro; Apple said A14 performance is burst, but A12Z processor performance is better; iPad Air 4 supports second-generation Apple Pencil and Magic keyboard, iPad Pro has long supported it; iPad Pro also has a variable refresh rate technology that the iPad Air 4 does not have, an extra wide-angle lens and a LiDAR sensor, and the iPad Air 4 does not even have a flash.
In addition, the iPad Air 4 has only two speakers, while the iPad Pro has four. In terms of audiovisual effects, the former is difficult to compare with iPad Pro.
Users who can spend 4799 yuan to buy iPad, the purpose is to buy an excellent tablet. In addition to being attracted by the colorful color schemes of the iPad Air 4, it is not simple to stop one’s urge to add more money to buy an iPad Pro. After all, “usable” and “usable” are really two different things.
Yes, for these two products, I recommend buying iPad Pro. The reason is that the starting price of the iPad Air 4 has increased by nearly 1,000 yuan compared with the previous generation, while the increase is not much. If you can enjoy educational discounts, this conclusion will be even more obvious.
Perhaps the only thing that can save the embarrassing situation of iPad Air 4 is the e-commerce festival and pdd.
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