Review - iPad Air 5th Generation - The Perfect Size?

The year was 2013. I’d just completed my first year at Apple, the company that had hired me out of my old job and paid for my relocation from Germany to Ireland. Still flush with the feeling of having “moved to the Champions League” of customer support, I decided to treat myself to my very first Mac, an 11” MacBook Air. The original wafer-thin justification was that I’d soon start on the Mac support lines, having started my Apple career on iOS support, and having a personal Mac would make it easier to do my job, although this ploy was so transparent that even Stevie Wonder could see through it. I just wanted a Mac, and a certain constellation of employee discounts had just become available that made said MacBook dirt cheap. However, whilst I absolutely loved MacOS, or OS X as it was still known back then, I really fell in love with the MacBook Air’s form factor. It was compact, light, easy to handle, and I could take it anywhere without it taking up too much space in a bag. I ended up using this machine intensely for four years, only selling it in 2017, after I’d taken over my late mom’s MacBook Pro.

Ever since that time, I’ve been searching for a device that could take up the 11” MacBook Air’s mantle. Don’t get me wrong, I loved the extra oomph that the Pro’s increased specs brought with it, and I’ve been using a MacBook Pro ever since. But those things are heavy, and just a little bit too bulky to lug around with me on a daily basis. And so, the quest was on. I tried my hands at iPads, both the regular version and the iPad mini. I even hopped over into the Microsoft world to try the perfectly sized, but dramatically underpowered Microsoft Surface Go 2, but nothing really seemed to stick, not least because device sizes kept creeping upwards. Until this spring. During a company event in New York that I was lucky enough to attend, my company announced a sizeable bonus for every employee and even though the US Dollar to Euro exchange rate, as well as the tax man would take a sizeable chunk out of that bonus, what remained was more than enough for me to get my hands on the one machine that looked like it could finally step into that trusty MacBook’s footsteps: The 5th Generation iPad Air. 

Hardware

Whether it's with a keyboard...

...or without, the iPad Air is simply a gorgeous looking device!

There’s no use beating about the bush here, talking about the hardware on an Apple device is about as exciting as watching paint dry. The Cupertino crew long ago perfected the hardware design for their products and the iPad Air feels every bit as premium as you’d expect. The design looks and feels great, and the “Starlight” colour option that I went with, simply because there were no other options available in two stores here in Cork, is actually kind of mesmerising in the way that it seamlessly morphs between champagne gold and silver depending on how the light falls onto it. But it’s nothing we’ve seen before. Yes, the removal of Lightning in favour of USB-C is welcome, and yes, the omission of a headphone jack is still frustrating, but it’s all been there before.

The keyboard cover really sets the device apart though. With it on, the iPad Air 5 nearly feels like a small laptop.

Until you add the cover to the mix. Normally, I would look at a device like an iPad without paying any heed to accessories since, unlike say the Surface Go 2, the iPad really doesn’t need them. But I love writing. And as much as I loved my trusty iPad mini, being forced to use Bluetooth didn’t really make the writing experience any better. However, just like its older sibling, the Air 4, or its bigger cousin, the iPad Pro, the 5th Generation iPad Air is designed with a Smart Connector to allow the use of external keyboards without either blocking the only port on the device or forcing the use of Bluetooth. As a result, I got Apple’s Magic Keyboard to go along with my iPad. And while this keyboard cover is frankly overpriced as hell, and I ordinarily would have gone for a more affordable third-party keyboard, what use is a bonus when you can’t splurge every now and then. And this keyboard is truly a game changer. The synthetic material feels a bit cheap at first, and the whole thing is a lot heavier than you’d think, but the hardware quality as such is excellent, the extra USB-C charging port on the keyboard, which will charge the iPad, goes a long way toward defusing the port situation on the device, and the floating position that the iPad is held in by the case actually makes typing a whole lot easier, since your fingers aren’t always bumping up against the device when you’re writing something. The downside of this floating position is that the case is surprisingly heavy, although it makes sense, given that the keyboard has to act as a counterweight to the iPad. And honestly, you get used to that pretty quickly

Everyday Use

This is the type of use the iPad Air 5 was designed for!

In a break from my usual pattern, I’m just going to skip the software section because, well, it’s iPadOS, there haven’t been many major changes for years. Also, the software is so integral to the user experience here that I thought it would be better just to roll it all into one and discuss it while talking about everyday usage. So, let’s talk about that usage. I’ve been using the iPad Air since the end of March 2024 and in that time, it’s been my daily driver from home to the office, to a selection of cafés and even a day trip to Dublin to deal with some consular matters. As you would expect, the performance has been great throughout. Given that the iPad Air 5 has a MacBook-grade chip under the hood, anything else would have been embarrassing. The device is quick, responsive, the display looks great, even if it is a bit dim when used outside, multitasking works great, and the addition of the USB-C port adds a whole new level of flexibility to the device, something I already loved on the iPad mini. Furthermore, even though the keyboard adds quite a bit of weight to the iPad, the device is still eminently portable.

Whether it's penning down your thoughts on the balcony after a stressful day...

...or reading other people's thoughts on a lazy Sunday afternoon, the iPad on its own is plenty powerful.

It is that Magic Keyboard however that is the big game changer. It is, quite simply, one of the best keyboards I’ve typed on, clicky and comfortable to write on, even for extended periods of time. The physical connection via the iPad’s Smart Connector eliminates the lag that sometimes occurs with wireless keyboards, although I personally haven’t had much trouble with that. The backlight could be a bit brighter, but that’s a luxury problem as far as I’m concerned. In fact, this keyboard gives the iPad an almost laptop like feel, which of course begs the question if this finally is the spiritual successor to the 11” MacBook Air that I’ve been looking for.

The answer is, well, complicated. The device has become my daily driver, which in itself should tell you a lot about how I view the iPad Air 5. Granted, there are still some rough spots in iPadOS, mouse/trackpad implementation being the most egregious one, combined with file management, which is still not as intuitive as on regular desktop or laptop operating systems. The biggest drawback however is not the operating system itself; no is it to be found in the pre-installed apps, which I mostly tend to ignore. The biggest issue is third party apps. I use Photoshop quite a bit to create the title images for my blog posts. However, despite being available on iPads for several years at this point, and despite the power of the M1 chip under the hood, basic functionality is still missing from that app. The same goes for pretty much any other major 3rd party app. Most of them are handicapped in one way or another, which is really frustrating. 

Yep, I'm recycling that image again! This type of split screen work is the normal type of work I do on this device, and I was surprised to feel the iPad warm up when doing so.

Then, there’s the myriads of little things that just make the iPad Air 5 feel a bit rough around the edges. The device tends to get a lot warmer than I’m used to, probably due to the more powerful chip powering the device. Even now, with Word & Notion running and Stage Manager enabled, the device is slightly warm to the touch, as is the case with my journaling app, Day One. The latter also shows the limits of Scribble, Apple’s handwriting recognition feature. Now, to be fair, any software that is able to decipher even part of the “epileptic spider” kind of handwriting that I have is to be commended, but for some reason, Scribble will perfectly accept one word in one sentence, and then not recognise it in the next, even though it is written in exactly the same way. Widget implementation still lags significantly behind Android, although I have to admit that I really like the new customisable Lock Screen. And while I praised the speediness of multitasking earlier, I have to say that I’m not quite sure what to make of Stage Manager, that supposedly revolutionary new method of multitasking that Apple has recently rolled out. I mean, it looks cool, I’ll give you that. I’m just not sure what its selling point is. iPad OS already offers some powerful solutions for multitasking, with split screen, multiple windows and slide-over, I’m not sure whether we really needed this additional option. 

However, the most egregious issue however is, surprisingly, stability. For the first time in my long history of using iPads, I’ve had this device completely freeze up on me twice, to the point where it wouldn’t accept any input whatsoever. In both cases, only a hard reset was able to revive the device. It’s been a few weeks since the last such incident, but it’s such a break from my normal user experience that it’s stuck out like a sore thumb. It’s just not what I’m used to from Apple.

Final Thoughts

Despite all those issues, quirks and niggles, and despite the undisputed fact that the look of iPad OS has become seriously dated over recent years, I absolutely love the iPad Air 5. Yes, I’m kicking myself for not waiting a few weeks longer and getting the iPad Air 6, but the 5 is still a powerful device in its own right. The user experience is cohesive, the hardware is great and it’s just the right size to allow for proper productive use while still being easily portable. So, to answer the question I posed at the beginning: Yes, the iPad Air 5 is the MacBook Air replacement that I’ve been looking for since fall of 2017!