Review: IPAD 9.7-INCH (2017)

Apple’s new iPad isn’t revolutionary, inventive or, well, new. But for most people it’s the tablet you should buy.

It’s not as feature rich as the iPad Pro, nor as thin as the iPad Air 2 it’s replacing, but it’s the perfect mix of functionality and price.

I wouldn’t advise any anyone upgrades from an iPad Air, but if you’re looking to upgrade an older iPad, or a new tablet entirely, this is the one you should buy.

NEW IPAD 9.7-INCH – DESIGN

If you’ve seen one iPad from the past five years, you’ve seen them all. The metal and glass design with those curved chamfered sides hasn’t changed a lot since the iPad 2, but that’s because Apple hit upon a formula that clearly works. The design has aged very well, which isn’t something you can say about a lot of tech.

The iPad 9.7-inch is thicker and marginally heavier than both the iPad Air 2 it essentially replaces and the pricier iPad Pro 9.7-inch, but really unless you have all three side-by-side you’re not going to think anything of it. The new iPad 9.7-inch is light enough to hold up while binge-ing on Netflix, and it’s barely noticeable when chucked in a bag.

In fact, this iPad has more in common with the first iPad Air in terms of weight and thickness, and cases for that model fit the 9.7-inch iPad perfectly.

Around the sides you’ve got a volume rocker – there’s no orientation lock here – and a headphone jack on the opposite side to the power-button on the top. On the bottom you’ve got the single speaker and a Lightning port for charging, And, of course, there’s a shiny Apple logo smack bang in the centre.

A TouchID enabled home-button sits just below the 9.7-inch display, and it matches the other iPads in terms of speed and reliability. That means it’ll unlock with a firm tap, but it’s not quite as snappy as the one on the iPhone 7.

Three colours are available – Gold, Silver and Space Grey – but there’s no Rose Gold option, that’s still exclusive to the iPad Pro.

While I like the design of the iPad, I can understand it might seem tiresome to many. But, importantly it’s durable and holds up well to being passed around different family members. Apple is aiming this as the iPad for everyone, and I think the design fits well with that mantra.

NEW IPAD 9.7-INCH – DISPLAY AND SPEAKERS

The iPad 9.7-inch looks almost the same as the first iPad Air, and it has the same display, too. This is both good and bad news.

The good is that this is a great 9.7-inch screen; it carries the Retina moniker and packs a dense 2048 x 1536 resolution that actually matches the pricier iPad Pro.

It’s an LCD panel, so it doesn’t quite have the saturation and sheer colour pop of the AMOLED on the Samsung Galaxy Tab S3, but colours are bright and it’s virtually impossible to pick out individual pixels. Blacks are deep, too, and it’s just a fantastic screen for watching movies or reading books.

It lacks the Dual-Tone tech of the iPad Pro 9.7-inch, whereby the screen dynamically adapts to the environment, but you still get the Night Shift mode for ridding the panel of pesky blue hues that are believed to harm sleep if you often use a tablet before bed. It makes the screen go a soothing orange colour, and does seemingly make a genuine difference.

My biggest issue with the display though is the lack of lamination of the panel to the glass that sits above it. This was something that was introduced with the iPad Air 2 and it gets rid of the air gap that sits under the glass.

With a laminated panel it feels like you’re actually touching the pixels, without it though it’s obvious you’re pressing down on the glass. There’s a visual difference, too, and a laminated display does a much better job at minimising reflections when you’re using the iPad in sunny conditions.

By no means does this stop me recommending the iPad 9.7-inch, but if you’re particularly fussy about displays I would suggest looking for a iPad Air 2 instead.

The downward facing speakers are on the bottom, and they’re fine if nothing special. They’re loud, with enough detail for movies and YouTube, but they lack the bass needed for music.
NEW IPAD 9.7-INCH – PERFORMANCE

I have never had a problem with the performance on any iPad out of the box, and the iPad 9.7-inch is no different. This is a smooth and fast tablet that can handle any app or game from the App Store with ease.

The 64-bit A9 chip isn’t the latest or greatest CPU in Apple’s arsenal, but it’s still very capable. I can comfortably edit FHD footage in iMovie or edit RAW photos in Pixelmator without any lag, and it consistently opens apps and files quicker than the iPad Air 2 which ran the A8X chip.

While I said the iPad Air 2 has a better screen, the iPad 9.7-inch is marginally faster in certain intensive tasks. It’s far from a reason to upgrade, and the Air 2 is still very fast, but it’s important to note anyway.

The 2GB RAM is the same as both the iPad Pro 9.7 and iPad Air 2, and again does the job well. It’s not as much as the Android toting Galaxy Tab S3, but even the iPhone 7 only has 2GB RAM.

In more synthetic benchmarks tests, the iPad 9.7-inch scores 2539 and 4425 respectively in the Geekbench 4 single and multi-core tests. That’s actually higher than both the Samsung Galaxy Tab S3 (3945) and the Google Pixel C (2816), even though both are pricier slates.

Apple is offering two storage sizes, 32GB and 128GB, and as usual there’s no microSD so choose wisely. You can also choose 4G support if you wish, but this will set you back another £130.

NEW IPAD 9.7-INCH – CAMERA

The iPad 9.7-inch is a universally great tablet, but it certainly ain’t no camera. The rear-facing 8-megapixel camera has a very narrow f/2.4 aperture and I would consider using it for document scanning only. For anything else the results are noisy and blurry, and just plain not very good.

To be completely honest, I think for a tablet like this I would prefer a bigger saving and no rear camera at all. At least that would force people to not use it as their main camera.

As there’s no image stabilisation, 1080p video is shaky and while there is an HDR option and even control over exposure, neither make a whole heap of difference.

The 1.2-megapixel front-camera is equally weak, which is a bit more disappointing. I can see this being a good Facetime tool for families, but video-chats do look very blurry and ghosting is common.

NEW IPAD 9.7-INCH – SOFTWARE

The new iPad 9.7-inch runs iOS 10 just like every other iPhone or iPad you can buy right now. It’s the same gridded homescreen layout that’s now become iconic, with access to the best selection of tablet apps from the App Store. If you’ve used an iPhone or iPad before, you’ll feel instantly at home.

iOS is both excellent and slightly awkward for a tablet, but unless you want something that runs of full desktop operating system like the Surface Pro 4 then it’s your best option. It’s infinitely more usable on the big screen than Android, and I am not quite so fussed about the lack of ‘pro’ features on a tablet that is this affordable.

iOS 10 didn’t add too many iPad specific features, most of them came a year earlier with iOS 9. iOS 9 added in split-screen multitasking and a few other tricks that helped the iPad become a more productive device.

You can open two apps side-by-side, and then resize them at will. This is great for watching a YouTube video and knocking out an email at the same time, or taking notes while studying a web-page. It works well, and even though there’s only 2GB RAM in here nothing is too much trouble.

Only nifty feature that’s just for iPads is being able to pull out a video player and have it floating above your other windows. Again, this is perfect for watching Netflix while you’re working.

Tablet apps are really what sets the iPad apart from Android rivals you’ll likely be able to pick up cheaper. Whereas the majority of apps on Google Play are built for mobile, loads on the App Store are made just for iPad. They make full use of the additional size of the display, of the high-resolution of the panel and don’t just feel like enlarged phone apps. There are also iOS-only apps, like Paper, which are custom-built for the iPad.

If you’re looking to use the iPad 9.7-inch for more than media watching, then there’s the Office suite – though I actually prefer Apple’s own Pages, Numbers and Keynote apps on an iPad – and again these are built to make the most of the big display.

Another bonus of an iPad is that you’ll be first in line for the next version of iOS, which will will likely be released in September just before the iPhone 8.

NEW IPAD 9.7-INCH – BATTERY LIFE

Even though the iPad 9.7-inch has a bigger 32.9w battery, Apple still states it’ll last the same 10 hours of video watching per charge as both iPad Air 2 and iPad Pro 9.7-inch. Apple’s claims seem to match my own results, as I was able to kill the battery in just shy of 11 hours by playing a downloaded film.

In reality though, the times when you spend 11 straight hours watching something on the iPad will be limited, and in realistic day-to-day use that iPad 9.7-inch can go the distance. Over the course of a week of testing the iPad lasted being used a few hours each day without any issues, and it lasted until the end of the week before I needed to juice it up again.

Like previous iPads, the standby time is particularly impressive, which is important for a device you only use intermittently. I found it only dropped 1-2% a day, meaning you won't come back to it after a few days to find it dead.

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