Comparing Apple’s iPad Air 5 to My 12.9-Inch iPad Pro

a conundrum.

Joshua Beck
16 min readMar 27, 2022
A plethora of iPads. Image by Author.

Reader, I’ve started writing this review about five times. And that’s because I’m finding the iPad Air 5 to be a bit of a conundrum for me to review.

With each attempted start, I’ve found myself comparing Apple’s latest tablet to all the various iPads that I’ve used, from the logical choices of the previous-gen iPad Air 4 and the similarly powered 11-inch M1 iPad Pro to the less obvious iPad mini and 12.9-inch M1 iPad Pro (because those are the ones that I personally own at the present). But each time, I’m just as lost at the end of the review as I was at the beginning, not knowing which device I prefer.

Ultimately, I have decided against comparing the Air 5 to its predecessor because A) every other review has already done so, and B) the new one has the M1 chip, so yeah, it’s better. And while I think the comparison to the 11-inch iPad Pro is more interesting since they now share the same processor and form factor with only a few minor differences, this too has already been done by countless other reviews; the only thing I really think I can add to that conversation is that I personally think spending $749 on the 256GB model of the iPad Air 5 is a better deal than spending $799 on the 128GB model of the iPad Pro. The Pro does have some nice features like 120-hertz ProMotion…

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Joshua Beck
Joshua Beck

Written by Joshua Beck

I am just clever enough to get into trouble…

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