Ah, yes — the age-old question of whether an iPad can replace a laptop. It’s an experiment many people attempted and failed last year with the iPad Pro, so why try again? Especially with the smaller and cheaper iPad Air 5th-gen?
But when you sit down, whether in a chair using one of the devices on your lap or at a desk, the iPad Air immediately becomes a little cumbersome. The lap situation isn’t great, and it’s not because the base of the Magic Keyboard isn’t sturdy. It totally is. It’s really the size of the device that makes it untenable to use on your lap. The palm rest are small enough that your wrists will likely fall over the edge — at least, mine did. It’s not really wide enough to fit in your lap, either.
Swipes and scrolls feel smoother, and switching between apps is virtually seamless. And there are certainly improvements on the graphics side of things. So yeah, when it comes to heavier 3D games that can take use of those 8 GPU cores, you’ll notice a slight difference. Games like Pokemon Unite, Call of Duty Mobile, and Asphalt 9 all run a little it smoother and can hit 60 fps without issue.
Work applications There are benefits to using the iPad Air as your primary computer. You’ll need the Magic Keyboard, of course, but once you have that, the iPad Air is a joy to use. The keyboard and touchpad are excellent, and it’s fun having access to the iPad’s excellent touchscreen gestures. It’s a unique experience that can’t be replicated on a MacBook Air.
In most cases, I found workarounds for many of the issues I ran into, but unfortunately, it never felt quite as efficient as on a MacBook Air. The other hang-up with videoconferencing on the iPad Air are the apps themselves. It’ll work just fine if you’re only using FaceTime, but my daily workflow often involves multiple video calls in Microsoft Teams each day. While the app itself works just fine, you have to have the call fullscreen in order to remain on camera. The second you back out to answer a different chat, your feed will shut off. In other words, everyone will know when they don’t have your full attention.
Meanwhile, the iPad Air has a couple of obvious advantages over the MacBook Air — namely that it has a touch screen and all the great gesture support that iPadOS benefits from. Using the iPad Air with the Magic Keyboard for some time makes you realize just how silly it is that MacBooks still don’t support touch. The combination of keyboard, touchpad, and touch screen — all well implemented — give you so many ways to navigate and accomplish things.