The basic iPad runs on Apple’s A14 Bionic processor, which ran the iPhone 12 series from 2020. Meanwhile, the iPad Air runs on the M2 processor that spins the wheels in the 2022 MacBook Air.
You don’t need to spend more on the iPad Air if you only plan on running basic apps or even demanding games. Both iPads work as well as each other for simple tasks like web browsing, video streaming, or running casual apps. Even a graphics-heavy game like “War Thunder Mobile” runs well on the standard iPad at 50 frames per second (fps) at maximum graphics settings.
Concerns regarding the iPad’s longevity are valid, as its nearly five-year-old A14 processor is getting on with age. However, we can attest that Apple devices are amazingly resilient to age. The 2020 iPad, running on Apple’s A12 Bionic processor from 2018, still opens and runs casual popular apps surprisingly quickly and smoothly in iPadOS 18. Even demanding games like “War Thunder Mobile” play at an acceptable 30 fps, albeit at reduced graphics settings.
With that in mind, we’d expect the standard iPad to continue running smoothly for at least another two years, with the potential for longer. The current iPad could last many more years for those with very basic uses, like video streaming.
The iPad Air’s superior processor becomes more useful for future-proofing to run apps and games and demanding workloads like photo or video editing. It also supports hardware-accelerated H.264 and HEVC formats and features a video encoder and decoder. The standard iPad can run the same professional-grade apps as the iPad Air, like Photoshop or LumaFusion, but the iPad Air works noticeably faster for heavier duties.
The standard iPad notably lacks several high-end features available to the current iPad Air and Pro models, including the Stage Manager feature for app multitasking and support for an external display or monitor. The 2024 iPad Air models also have a higher base storage (128GB) and more storage options (up to 1TB) than the standard iPad and the previous three iPad Air generations, which only offer 64GB or 256GB capacities.
The latest iPad Air models can run Apple Intelligence AI features, whereas the standard iPad cannot. Apple Intelligence offers useful text-based tools to summarize and even write text for you, like emails or converting scribbles in Notes into prose. It also improves Siri with ChatGPT integration and features enhanced photo searching and editing.
In our testing, the initial iterations of Apple Intelligence are promising but need refinement. The continued rollout of new Apple Intelligence features and improvements in coming iPadOS updates may decidedly tip the scales in favor of the iPad Air.
