Pros:__________
- Super light, amazingly slim, and sleek. Consider the best on the market.
- Its A8X chip is powerful and fast and there is not lag or any form of slow down. Everyday using it feels like you just bought it yesterday.
- Very comfortable and feels extremely solid. You can hold it all day since Apple always puts quality over price.
- Put a keyboard on it and you have a laptop replacement for your daily web browsing.
- 1,536 x 2,048 resolution beats a hell of a lot of televisions / monitors on the market.
- Glare has not yet become a factor in me enjoying this. This machine basically knows when it's bright out and when it's dark out so the screen itself adapts so you can view it with little glare effect.
- Just like the iPhone, the slow motion video works like a charm.
- Split View does work well when my emails are open while I’m browsing the internet or editing my photos.
- No glitches with the screen at all as the retina screen touch panel works without a hitch.
- One of the few tablets that have an accurate battery life as 10 hours is almost right down to number when I need to charge it. This includes web surfing, gaming, videos, and music playing more than 2 hours each, some at the same time (music + web surfing).
- Love that you don’t need to shut down your apps when you’re done because Apple has done a really great job in making sure apps that you’re not using will not eat the battery away.
- This is a must buy for a Netflix binge watching in bed as there is a great reduction in reflection and its improved color / contrast ratio.
- I’ve taken it to the beach and was able to view it clearly when the sun was shining high.
- Speaker is quite impressive give the size of it. The sound is rich and has a good base, way better than I expected.
- Cheaper than the IPad Pro and really no reason why you need to buy the pro.
- As mention before, no matter what type of lighting you’re in the Air makes sure that each color contrast is accurate as it adapts to your lighting (such as when I was at the beach).
- Apple is moving forward and all I can say is thank god the 3.5mm headphone jack was built in before Apples big change.
- Wi-Fi is super-fast as there are two antennae with the use of 802.11ac technology, making the upload and download rate quick.
- With Skype this is the best to have as its dual microphones allowed me to at far way distance and still my voice will be heard crystal clear.
- 1080 videos are always consistent and the only layout I use when there is an event at my home.
- Charging is fast as well. After only 30 minutes it went from 0 to 15 percent. Pretty impressive.
- When I put it in rest, the next day I only saw, on an average, 1-2 percent drop in battery.

The Cons and Oks:__________
- If you have the first gen iPad Air there is no justification to really upgrade.
- Not waterproof, you’ll be freaking out every time you take it outside.
- When I switch to video mode I some noise coming inside the Air which caught me off guard. Firmware fixed this issue.
- When viewing my photos on slideshow it will crash time to time. It will suddenly shut out of the app and bring me to the home screen. This doesn’t happen every time but it’s enough to post it from my experience.
- Sometimes my photos will not sync up which was annoying, but an apple employee was able to fix the issue.
- Once out of a hundred times going online the Wi-Fi on Air was dead slow. The solution I found was to shut the tablet down completely and wait for 5 minutes before turning it on again.
- No more built-in mute switch as you’ll need to go into the control panel if you want to mute the air.
- Full brightness will eat double the amount of battery life when gaming /watching a video, which makes sense. I only wish the Air will notify me when the brightness level has reached its maximum.
- When you’re playing some high power games your battery life will fall dramatically. Not a good idea if you’re planning a road trip and all you have is real racing.
- It’s like a book so it’s annoying when you’re at a concert and some guy in front of you takes this out. You’re basically going to view the concert on what he’s filming. Not a great idea if you want to meet new friends.
- The speakers are not in the best place as I sometimes have my hands covering them when I’m watching something in landscape form. Hope one day Apple will build a tablet with front facing speakers.
- Front facing camera is identical to the iPhone 6 which is perfectly fine.
- Touch ID works like a charm and still is unable to function if your fingers are sweaty. If you’re at the gym with this I advise that you switch to the digital password as your fingers will be sweaty and the Touch sensors will not recognize it (at least that is what I do).

Bottom Line:__________

I can summarize it in two words: future proof. This tablet is fast, slim, beautiful in quality and design. The battery life is accurate in what Apple has stated and is “almost” a device that you can replace your computer with. Like any device, there are some glitches but firmware updates have fixed the problem as I honestly can’t find a hard line reason why not to buy this Air.

Personally, I don’t like taking videos or pictures with this if I’m out. This device is not built to take it to a festival and start filming with it as my iPhone can do a great job on its own. When I see someone who trying to film with any iPad I only see a giant magnet attracting pickpockets. Now if I’m at home that’s a different story because I will be using this first when a party or a special event is happening.

If you’re into filming and photography this a great device to begin your career as is cheaper and easier to use than paying a hefty price for high-end equipment, if you're still trying to get into these industries (keep in mind that 32GB is not that much). But if this is still out of your price range then I recommend the Galaxy Tab or Nexus as these are also great alternatives to the Air.

Overall it’s a great tablet, but it’s only a tablet. With only a 32GB storage (not taking into account ICloud) this is not a 2 in 1 tablet as this is a device you’ll get after your computer. The Surface Pro is still considered the best around for 2 in 1 tablets as the Apple needs to enter this market soon. The IPad Air 2 is an experience enough to go into Best Buy to see it for yourself. This is the perfect time to buy because the pricing is dropping on these devices and even if the next iPad Air models come out this one will still hold its ground. Verdict: It’s almost perfect and is a real treat for those who have it (its brand new).

Hopefully I was a help to you,
Love,
Honest Reviewer

 We own 4 generations of the Apple iPad devices. They are the iPad 2, the iPad3, the iPad Air and the iPad Air 2. We each use the tablets about 8 hours per day for photography editing, video taking and editing and working on the internet. I am extremely familiar with the products and we own a total of 16 tablets using Apple, HP and Android technologies.

In my attached video I have tried to do a comparison between several of the product generations and the overall performance. Physically the iPad Air 2 is about the same, appearance wise, to the iPad Air. If you look closely you will see some differences.
* The iPad Air 2 is 18% thinner and a little lighter in weight.
* The Retina display is better as it is thinner and the colors and clarity is much better to my eyes. The parallax side views are clearer and the colors are deeper and more realistic. It still has 264 pixels per inch and it is an excellent video device.
* The iPad Air 2 has the newer finger print sensor on the home button.
* The rear facing camera is in a different location on the back of the tablet and so your iPad Air cases will not work as they will interfere with your taking photos.
* The microphone ports on the tablet have moved and I show the new locations in my video.
* The portal holes for the stereo speakers are just one row now and larger and the speakers are louder sounding. Not a major difference but it is noticeable.
* The slide switch on the side of the tablet for the mute/screen lock rotate is gone now. You have to make those adjustments in the operating system of the tablet now or use the sound volume switches.

The major differences in the tablet are the ones regarding performance. The CPU and GPU in the iPad Air are just very powerful. In my benchmarking I found the iPad Air 2 to be 56 % faster in performing standard tasks and the GPU graphics speed is 2.5 times faster. The 3D GPU test on the iPad Air 2 was 24157 versus 9051 for the iPad Air which is 2.69 times better. In using a bench marking software the iPad Air was 40129 as a benchmarks and the iPad Air 2 was 62482 which is a major improvement. You can see it in using the tablet, loading apps, browsing the internet and editing videos. My wife's older iPad 2 was only benchmarked at 15010 so the iPad Air 2 is 4.16 times faster and more powerful. That is a dramatic improvement in only a few years.

The camera on the front and the back of the tablet are improved. The rear facing camera is now an 8 Mega Pixel camera with improved signal processing. The photos are 3264 by 2448 pixels in resolution and the video is 1080P HD. You can take time lapse video, have exposure control, take slow motion video at 120 fps, bust mode photographs, timer mode photos and high resolution panorama shots.

Browsing on the internet is faster and pulling up web sites and videos on the internet is just smooth and fast. The signal is stronger for the WIFI and things just pull up faster. Even syncing with iTunes is faster.

This is an excellent product and my wife loves hers which was a surprise gift from me. I had it engraved for her to make sure that I didn't take it and claim it was mine.

I own 16 different tablets and have extensively used them all. When it comes to getting a top quality tablet you cannot go wrong with the Apple iPad Air 2. I rated it at 5 stars.

If you have any questions please contact me and I will try to help answer your question if I can.

Several people have asked me in comments and also via email if I recommend a nice iPad Air 2 case. I really like the ZooGue magnetic tilt case. It is highly protective of your tablet and it is by far the best tilting tablet case I have used on any iPad. Here is a link to that product.

Best iPad Air 2 Case Prodigy Elite By ZooGue

Product description says iPad Air2, what we received is a first generation iPad Air. Model number A1474 is for late 2013, early 2014 iPad Air. iPad Air 2 model number is A1566.

Recieved my iPad today. I called Apple to check on the warranty & I was informed that my device was PRE-OWNED and bought back in November 2015. This device was advertised as BRAND NEW. Please be aware before purchasing from seller BLUE BOX.