iPad Air4 256GB or Pro 128GB?

[Student of Life]

Side by side comparison of Air 4 and Pro:

It seems that for day to day activities the Air is actually better . The difference is actually noticeable in the clip.

Only in the video render and gaming with ultra-detail did the Pro come out on top.

I was impressed with the results, not what I was expecting. Seems like the Air 4th generation is a powerhouse. I thought the pro would win but what a surprise.

 

[djake80]

I've been following all of the reviews and comparisons and I'm still pretty stuck but I'm still leading towards the 128GB Pro. I think the determining factor will be the best deal I can find by Black Friday at the latest.

 

[dmccloud]

Not true lol. You obviously haven’t tried the new Air! I tested the 2020 Pro for a week and ran it beside the Air when I got it yesterday. Returned the Pro today. Didn’t really see any differences other than the Pro rendering videos 10 seconds faster. The Air can handle a LOT of Safari tabs without refreshing - plus if I do leave 30 tabs open at a time I really couldn’t care less if it refreshes.

8GB vs 4GB might be a more noticable RAM comparison. But trust me when I say 6GB vs 4GB is not something to worry about.

Also need to mention the trade offs - theres a miniscule difference in multi-score tasks between the Air and the Pro but everything else is noticeably faster on the Air (loading websites, launching apps, games, etc.)

At the end of the day both devices will give you similar performance. Personally I’d much rather take the extra storage, which is why I returned the Pro.

You overlooked the fact that the DDR5 in the Air is faster than the 6GB DDR4 in the Pro, which really eliminates some of the drawbacks of 4GB compared to 6GB RAM. In essence, the Air can do more with less since DDR5 can perform page ins/page outs and memory swaps much faster than DDR4. This is a big reason most current generation videocards are using GDDR6 when 99% of the PC and Mac market is still using DDR4 RAM. Even when the PC market was still heavily using DDR3, the videocard market was on GDDR4 and GDDR5 due to the performance boosts associated with the faster specs. That's why the storage and price are the real differentiators between the two models.

 

[StefanSC86]

@dmccloud :

Actually, the issue with page faulting is the whole overhead that comes with it. Since you will need to access the disk which will be 5 to 10 times slower than the RAM, your bottleneck will not be your RAM speed.

Also, GDDR is not DDR. They have the same base concept but they are geared towards different activities as GPU and CPU handle data differently.

 

[onfire23]

Look at this video. I was surprised Ipad air won everything. Even ram management was similar to Pro.

 

[Keniutek]

New Air is a BEAST. If one can live with the 60Hz screen, GO FOR IT, there's nothing it can't handle.
Im (sadly) waiting for the 2021 Pro. Want to keep that thing for at least 4-5 years.

 

[StefanSC86]

While there is no denying that the A14 is a beast of a mobile CPU (the numbers show it and the tests show it), I think that videos like the one above might lead to the wrong impression.

For example, I have Asphalt 9 and CoD installed on my Pro and out of curiosity, I did a "start-along" with the clip above.

And out of 5 runs, restarting the iPad between each run, my iPad would load Asphalt visibly slower than either of those in the test but it would load CoD faster than either of those ?

 

[kristalsoldier]

Look at this video. I was surprised Ipad air won everything. Even ram management was similar to Pro.

This is hardly an objective test though.

 

[onfire23]

This is hardly an objective test though.

There are several tests on YouTube with similar results. The single core uplift of 42% (Geekbench) matches with these tests.