iPad Air M1 Review | Don’t Choose Wrong!
There’s a book called The Myth of Fair value, and in that book, it’s all about pricing strategies for different products and things like that.
And in that, there’s a study that they go over about purchasing patterns so in test number 1 company selling a product offers a regular option and a premium option, and four out of five people pick the more premium one. So then in test number 2, they added a third cheaper option to see if they could maybe increase revenue by looping in an audience that’s looking for a cheaper lowest possible price.
Turned out, The cheapest option was kind of just ignored, but it completely flipped the ratio of standard to premium purchases because now people would assume that the middle one was the appropriate value.
So then in test #3 they took away the cheap option, but then added an ultra-premium option over the top
and this ended up flipping the ratio right back to the original premium one, but also some portion of people just went with the more expensive one just because that’s what they want, and so this ended up with the highest overall revenue generated.
Pricing ladders are very real and very much designed to get you to spend as much as possible and make those companies as much money as they can.
This is the new 2022 iPad Air with the new M1 chip inside. You can tell because it’s a nice shiny deeper blue color.
It’s nice, but it is one of the stranger Apple products that I’ve seen in a long time because of its price in words, it’s in the line-up because it kind of messes with the ladder a little bit, so look, it’s. It’s actually very simple.
To understand what you’re getting here with this spec bump which is an even more powerful version of the iPad we already know.
This is a thin 11-inch tablet. Same exact dimensions as the last iPad Air, so those cases all still work. There is a single camera on the back, a USB type C at the bottom.
The touch ID fingerprint reader in the power button up in the corner and the 11-inch 60 Hertz display up front run the exact same iPad OS as every other iPad.
The reason it’s so strange is this is the most I’ve ever seen. 1 Apple product seems to overlap another product being the iPad Pro.
So, the last iPad Air was already very close to the iPad Pro, right?
It had basically the same dimensions, same exact camera, same battery life, and the same software features as all the other most expensive iPads. It works with the same 2nd Gen Apple Pencil, it’s just as thin in my review,
I called it the one true iPad Pro killer because it’s 80% of the tablet for 200 fewer dollars.
And so, this year now that the new iPad Air also gets the incredible massively overkill new M1 chip inside, it’s one more thing that they do exactly the same, so the iPad Air starts at 599, and the 11-inch iPad Pro starts at 799.
But let’s take a closer look at this pricing, see this is a pricing ladder after all, so it’s designed to have something available at every price and then every time you arrive at one price, there’s something a little higher to try to nudge you up and try to get you as high in that ladder.
As they can, so the base price. iPad Air is only a 64-gigabyte iPad for 600 bucks in 2022. That’s not really great. I mean we got 20 gig games today.
So of course, the only available storage option is straight up to 256 gigs, which is 150 extra dollars.
So now you’re playing in the $750 territory, which is a lot of money to spend on an error when for just $50 more. You can get a pro right? So now you might as well just bump up to the iPad Pro.
So you can see what they’re doing right? They’re nudging you up a little bit by bit, but The thing is The iPad pro Is more expensive, but it’s almost the same tablet in so many ways, so they’re already practically the same dimensions to the point where the iPad Air works in all the same cases and keyboards that the iPad Pro works in, they’re the same primary camera on the back, the same USB C port, the same battery life, and now the same M1 ship.
So, you must think extra hard about spending extra money on an iPad Pro when the list of reasons to do so is smaller than ever before.
Now, as someone who’s used both tablets honestly, one of those reasons is pretty huge, and then the rest, All pretty minor, but let’s just go through each of them.
So, the only reason I still pick an iPad Pro as a better overall experience, a better tablet than the air is the Pro-motion display, so they’re about the same size and resolution, but the faster 120 Hertz refresh rate is one of those things that just makes everything about using the Pro smoother and snappier and more responsive, and that’s the thing that makes the M1 chip in this iPad Air so funny which Is theoretically closes the gap in performance versus the pro. With you know, rendering and exporting and compiling and things like that, but it does not feel as fast because of the 60 Hertz.
So those big animations where your hand moves across the entire screen, the unlock animation. The multitasking gestures the big stuff like that. You could put a 3090 in here and it wouldn’t feel as smooth as the Pro-motion iPad Pro.
Now sure, some people need to see them side by side, and even then, they barely see a difference. In which case, yeah, that person should just get the iPad Air. But I’m telling you, for me, if you’re like me, that’s something I would spend the extra money for.
But then the iPad Pro has one extra camera. The 10 megapixels ultra-wide plus, LIDAR scanner, and a flash. The iPad Air just has a single camera, no flash, so you know, for the occasional video call, Or document scanning? That’s totally fine for me. And like I said, it’s the same main camera as the iPad Pro, so there isn’t even a quality difference here.
Then the iPad Pro has quad-speaker audio instead of the dual speakers of the iPad Air, they’re both very solid speakers, and it’s definitely a bit fuller and louder from the pro, but that’s not something you’re going out, and spending extra money on specifically and then the pro has a higher Max storage, so you can go up to 2 terabytes instead of just 256 gigs and the USB C port is Thunderbolt on the pro instead of just Faster USB C on the Air, so that might open some potential peripheral options for actual pros, plugging in drives, etc.
And then of course you have face ID on the iPad Pro whereas you’ve got the touch ID fingerprint reader on the iPad Air. Honestly, at this point, it’s kind of preference. Like you get used to having face ID on the tablet very quickly when you have it, but also the good old fashion two fingers registered on the iPad Air works really well too, so in portrait, it’s the right index finger that unlocks and then in landscape it’s the left index finger.
Great, you know. It’s funny though the only other Update to the air. Besides the M1 ship being inside is the selfie camera is now ultra-wide with center stage, so it’s got the newer selfie camera and it’s convenient, it follows you around the room. It’s kind of in an awkward location, but it’s decently smooth with FaceTime, zoom calls, etc. But because the iPad Pro has the face ID sensors and stuff, technically only that older selfie camera will support Animojis and Memojis and things like that. So, there’s that. But that’s basically it, right?
That’s the difference is so now hearing that list, you probably already know if you would be tempted to move up one more rung on that ladder.
You know, maybe 50 extra bucks for promotion does it for you as it does it for me? Or maybe you just want a larger tablet cause you do have the 13-inch iPad Pro with Mini LED. If you’re tempted to go large, but other than that, you know the extra camera Lidar face ID, the speakers, all pretty minor things, but then the funniest part usually. Right, the ladders are designed to try to nudge you up to try to get you to spend more and more money.
Me putting one of the features from the more expensive model in the less expensive model just removes one reason to upgrade and may actually encourage a small number of people to move down, because now that theoretical person who would have spent the extra money to get the hugely improved processing power. One now just has one less reason to get the pro. They can get it in the air.
Well, that is until the M2 version Comes out anyway.
Either way, it’s fascinating. It’s always interesting to see these new products come out at these different various price ranges. I think in that example from the beginning, you know Apple clearly has a baseline iPad and iPad Air, and an iPad Pro and most people don’t need to spend the extra money to get the most premium iPad Pro. I think the promotion is enough just for me and a lot of people would too. But there’s also going to be a bunch of people that just spend the extra money just cause they want The most premium thing, Fine, but this iPad Air is another great spec bump that actually makes me even more frustrated That iPad OS is not evolving to fully take advantage of it, but that’s another rant for another story. Either way, that’s been it.
Thanks for reading. Catch you on the next one. Peace.
