2022 iPad Buying Guide

Starting with the overall best, the iPad Air. Here’s the thing, this isn’t the best iPad by a long shot, but it’s the best for most people’s needs!

For its looks, it’s available in five colors; Space Gray, Starlight (yellowish), Pink, Purple, and Blue. It inherited the modern iPad design which ditched the home button for a full-screen 10.9-inch display with rounded-off corners which is so stunning to look at, not to mention I think it’s also the perfect size for an iPad especially if you’re planning to use it with a keyboard case. Lastly, it’s also paired with a quad-speaker setup already making it a perfect media consumption device.

This iPad is also great for professionals as it has Magic Keyboard support which essentially turns this iPad into a laptop-style device. It also has Apple Pencil support which makes it extremely suitable for artists, photographers, and graphic designers.

The iPad Air 5 also has a new USB-C port which is a pretty good upgrade! This can now use high-speed external drives and connect to displays up to 6K-60Hz, unfortunately, the port isn’t Thunderbolt probably for cost-cutting purposes, and honestly, I think it’s fine since most people probably won’t need a Thunderbolt port on their media device.

Now, let’s get to the juicy part, this iPad is running on Apple’s M1 chip! Yup, it’s that processor that beat pretty much most Intel and AMD processors out there in terms of performance per watt, and yet here it is on light and thin iPad.

For the specifics, the M1 has an 8-core GPU, 8-core GPU, Neural Engine, and 8GB of RAM. Now I know that doesn’t sound too exciting but since it’s tightly integrated into one chip its processes are extremely efficient which essentially made it possible to be faster. So, what does all this do? According to Apple, the M1 makes the iPad Air around 60% faster and twice as powerful graphics-wise compared to the previous model.

The new processor also enabled the camera to shoot 4K video with better dynamic range without needing to change the camera. There’s also an option for 5G cellular which is great if you plan to use the iPad as your primary device, otherwise, you can just use your phone’s hotspot.

Next up, we have the best iPad (or rather the best iPads) for professionals, and that is the current gen iPad Pro both the 12.9-inch and 11-inch models. One is better than the other, which we’ll get more in-later.

For now, let’s talk about its general performance. Both iPad Pros have an M1 chip, which as we talked about earlier is an overkill. Although there’s a huge difference here, if you get an iPad Pro with 128GB-512GB storage, you’ll get 8GB RAM, but if you get the ones with 1TB or higher, it now also comes with 16GB RAM, which is a huge step up! iPads can run well with little RAM, so the 16GB RAM is a huge help as it prepares the iPad Pro for editing 4K videos and editing huge batches of photos.

Now, if you’re a video/photo editor, a designer, illustrator, or really anything that deals with graphics, the iPad Pro 12.9-inch is an obvious choice since it has more screen real estate, but there’s more to that.

The 11-inch model has the Liquid Retina Display with ProMotion, P3 color gamut, True Tone, and 600 nits SDR brightness, it’s pretty impressive as it is. Although the 12.9-inch takes things to a whole new level, it has a Liquid Retina XDR Display which is essentially a mini-LED screen, it has everything that the 11-inch’s LED display has with the addition of 2596 dimming zones allowing it to have a 1,000,000:1 contrast ratio and a peak brightness of up to 1600 nits (for HDR content only), it’s a huge deal since this display even rivals some of the best TVs out in the market.

The iPad Pro 12.9” is certainly the best iPad for graphic-intensive tasks, but doesn’t that render the 11-inch useless? Well, no. It’s still a great tablet that’s perfect for professionals like health care workers and educators, and even more so with Real Estate agents and Engineers that can utilize the LiDAR Scanner. The smaller iPad Pro is perfect for these professionals since it’s easier to wield out in the field.

Next up, we have the all-new iPad Mini, it’s the first redesign since the inception of the iPad Mini back in 2012. One thing that stands out right away is its small overall footprint at 195.4mm x 134.8mm which is actually smaller than the previous iPad Mini design. While it is smaller, its new full-screen IPS display is also larger at 8.3-inches.

In terms of power, it has the A15 Bionic Chip with Neural engine, which of course, isn’t as good as the overpowered M1, but it’s still powerful enough to push you through day-to-day tasks and it can even handle light video and photo editing. Besides, putting the M1 chip on this tablet will probably hurt its battery life, which is oddly consistent since the first iPad Mini at 9-10 hours.

The smaller iPad opens up a lot of possibilities that full-size iPads are just too large for, one of those is photography. I mean, it’s still not the best, but if you don’t want an iPhone and prefer an iPad for a shoot then edit workflow, then it’s certainly doable, it doesn’t disappoint as well, it has the standard 12MP wide camera with f/1.8 aperture and Smart HDR 3. It isn’t the best (it doesn’t even have portrait mode, but if you want this iPad Mini as an iPhone replacement, it can make do.

Initially, the iPad Mini is a bit confusing for me, it’s certainly the best in the portability realm, but what is it good for? The one thing I’m sure of is that it’s great for students, upon holding the iPad Mini, it’s as if I’m holding an A5 notebook, it’s just the right size and with the Apple Pencil, it’s also comfortable to handwrite notes.

As for typing notes, the iPad Mini doesn’t have support for Magic Keyboard or even a Smart  Folio Keyboard, and I think it’s for the better, small keyboards are very uncomfortable.

When I think of gaming, high-computing power and high refresh rates come to mind which the iPad Mini doesn’t have, instead, the iPad Pro easily ticks those boxes. But how come I dubbed the iPad Mini the best for gaming? It’s again due to the size, it’s the perfect size to hold onto, and thumbs can easily reach across the surface of the screen making touch controls viable.

If you don’t like touch controls on your games, the iPad Mini is also the perfect size to be clipped onto a controller!

Last but not the least, we have the iPad for your basic needs. I mean, let’s face it, most of us have laptops and/or phones already, so when most of us look to get an iPad it’s for watching YouTube or Netflix and scrolling through social media, and let me tell you that the 9^th gen iPad has got you covered for more.

In terms of power, the iPad rocks an A13 Bionic Chip with Neural Engine, which might sound weak or outdated to some but I assure you, even my iPhone XS Max with an A12 Bionic Chip holds out to this day, and I’m not being gentle with it!

The iPad has a 10.2-inch Retina Display with True Tone and up to 500 nits of brightness which is honestly not bad. Since this iPad doesn’t have the newer design, the screen corners are still sharp and haven’t been rounded off yet, which I personally love since it’s just perfect for watching videos on.

Lastly, this does have 1^st gen Apple Pencil and Smart Folio Keyboard support so if you’re picking between this iPad and the iPad mini for a school workhorse and a keyboard is necessary for you, then this might also be great for you.

Even though the basic iPad doesn’t have a lot of features to brag about, it has a very affordable price and it still does a lot including support for the Pencil and Smart Folio Keyboard, so I have little to no complaints.