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I had no idea Air 2 was so underpowered

K

Kendo

macrumors 68020
Original poster
Apr 4, 2011
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Are any Air 2 owners (since October 2014 launch) finally upgrading to the new iPad Pro next year? I think this device has served us faithfully for 4 years next year. It feels a little sluggish (but still very usable and smooth which is amazing for a 3 year old device) but I was shocked at just how far ahead the new iPad Pros (and even the regular iPad) are.

https://browser.geekbench.com/ios-benchmarks

The regular iPad beats the Air 2 in all testing fronts (single-core, multi-core, GPU). The Air 2 is the longest I've ever comfortably used an iOS device so I'm pretty excited to upgrade next year after faithfully using it for 4 years.
 
I used the 2017 iPad and the Air2 and I saw negligible differences in performance. It’s literally a half a second at the most.. I returned the 2017 because the Air2 is built so much better and prefer the laminated display. If your going to compare the Air2 to the 10.5 pro, then of course it going to be outclassed by a huge margin. The 10.5 pro buries the 2017 iPad by a large margin also so I have no problems keeping my Air2 until I feel like upgrading to something that actually gives me noticeable improvements
 
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Battery drain on my Air 2 is insane now. The second I upgraded to iOS 11 the battery drain kicked in. May do a full wipe and see if that solves the issues. Will probably jump on next year's iPad refresh.
 
i have had my iPad Air 2 for over 3.5 years. It is still going strong and i get a day's use out of it (i give it a full overnight charge). I use it for both media consumption and productivity. I edit photos in Afinity Photo and use iMovie for productivity. I use Pages daily with a Bluetooth keyboard for taking notes in meetings. It is only noticeably slower when sitting side-by-side with a co-worker's iPad Pro.
I have used iOS 11 with split screen to view Netflix video while typing in Pages as well as embedding images many time. Nothing underpowered.
These devices last a really long time when they are taken care of and do not need to be replaced.
Saving money is not a crime. Keeping up with the Jones is not required to live a happy life.
 
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Kendo said:
Are any Air 2 owners (since October 2014 launch) finally upgrading to the new iPad Pro next year? I think this device has served us faithfully for 4 years next year. It feels a little sluggish (but still very usable and smooth which is amazing for a 3 year old device) but I was shocked at just how far ahead the new iPad Pros (and even the regular iPad) are.

https://browser.geekbench.com/ios-benchmarks

The regular iPad beats the Air 2 in all testing fronts (single-core, multi-core, GPU). The Air 2 is the longest I've ever comfortably used an iOS device so I'm pretty excited to upgrade next year after faithfully using it for 4 years.
Click to expand...
If you're looking at raw numbers then, yes the Air 2 is less powerful than the new models being sold.

From a practical day-to-day experience, the difference is not as striking as benchmark numbers would indicate.
 
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Software parallelism has always been difficult to achieve.

The A8X has 3 cores but most software can't take advantage of it. Most users are better off with 2 speedy A9 cores rather than A8X.
 
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JPack said:
Software parallelism has always been difficult to achieve.

The A8X has 3 cores but most software can't take advantage of it. Most users are better off with 2 speedy A9 cores rather than A8X.
Click to expand...
True but honestly, I think we're at the point of diminishing returns in terms of processing performance for typical usage (at least until AR, etc become the norm). Just look on the laptop/desktop side. Even 10-year old Core 2 Duo-based devices are still quite serviceable (paired with 4+GB RAM and SSD).
 
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Do you mean overpowered? It was a beast when it was released. I should know because I bought it the day it was released. If I remember correctly there were no apps that took advantage of that power. The 6s and the Air 2 are the longevity models. They both succeeded inferior predecessors. The 2gb of Ram alone was a major step forward. I was using the Air 2 until I bought the pro 10.5. The Air 2 went to my mom and it's still snappy. I kept it on iOS 10 for her and that's how it will stay.
 
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I’m happy with the Air 2 performance for day to day stuff. I’m waiting for next IPad Pro with Face ID .
 
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Kendo said:
Are any Air 2 owners (since October 2014 launch) finally upgrading to the new iPad Pro next year? I think this device has served us faithfully for 4 years next year. It feels a little sluggish (but still very usable and smooth which is amazing for a 3 year old device) but I was shocked at just how far ahead the new iPad Pros (and even the regular iPad) are.

https://browser.geekbench.com/ios-benchmarks

The regular iPad beats the Air 2 in all testing fronts (single-core, multi-core, GPU). The Air 2 is the longest I've ever comfortably used an iOS device so I'm pretty excited to upgrade next year after faithfully using it for 4 years.
Click to expand...

Was the Air 2”underpowered” before you looked at the benchmarks?

Royksöpp said:
The Air 2 went to my mom and it's still snappy. I kept it on iOS 10 for her and that's how it will stay.
Click to expand...

She could safely upgrade to iOS 11 - the Performance tends to be the same between 10 and 11.
 
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Kendo said:
Are any Air 2 owners (since October 2014 launch) finally upgrading to the new iPad Pro next year? I think this device has served us faithfully for 4 years next year. It feels a little sluggish (but still very usable and smooth which is amazing for a 3 year old device) but I was shocked at just how far ahead the new iPad Pros (and even the regular iPad) are.

https://browser.geekbench.com/ios-benchmarks

The regular iPad beats the Air 2 in all testing fronts (single-core, multi-core, GPU). The Air 2 is the longest I've ever comfortably used an iOS device so I'm pretty excited to upgrade next year after faithfully using it for 4 years.
Click to expand...

It's not "underpowered" at all. iOS has undergone significant under the hood changes and Apples hardware improvement has improved exponentially.
 
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My nearly 3 year old Air 2 works great, I do fairly general tasks, mail, web surfing, streaming and use a few other apps like Evernote, Devonthink, Workflow etc. It's still very usable day to day.

When iOS 11 first came out it slowed it down a bit, but that was mainly I think to do with iOS 11 being so buggy. My only 1 year old iPhone 7 seemed to be slower then my Air 2 on iOS 11, that's how bad it was.

Now with 11.2 both devices are running better, hopefully we've now gotten over the bugs of the initial release versions.
 
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Kendo said:
Are any Air 2 owners (since October 2014 launch) finally upgrading to the new iPad Pro next year? I think this device has served us faithfully for 4 years next year. It feels a little sluggish (but still very usable and smooth which is amazing for a 3 year old device) but I was shocked at just how far ahead the new iPad Pros (and even the regular iPad) are.

https://browser.geekbench.com/ios-benchmarks

The regular iPad beats the Air 2 in all testing fronts (single-core, multi-core, GPU). The Air 2 is the longest I've ever comfortably used an iOS device so I'm pretty excited to upgrade next year after faithfully using it for 4 years.
Click to expand...

Benchmarks don't mean a thing vs real word usage
 
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Still pleased with my 3 year old Air 2. Battery life has taken a hit, but overall it’s aged very well for what I use it for which is the normal basic stuff like emails, social media, surfing, etc. I don’t think it will fare well on iOS 12 so I might retire it when the next iPad is out, depending on what Apple puts out.
 
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Air 2 is still fantastic!

I doubt it will remain this snappy on iOS 12 so next year will either be 10.5 pro purchase on discount but i would rather have the bionic cpu so we’ll see what Apple introduces next year.
 
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