Transcript & Summary: Which iPad Should You Buy? (Basic, Mini, Air, Pro or Pro 12.9)

[00:00] hey friends welcome back to tech tuesdays it is that time of the year again we are doing the most requested video of which ipad should you buy in 2022 there are five to choose from you have the basic ass budget ipad there is the ipad the ipad air there's the ipad mini there is the 11 inch ipad pro and there is the 12.9 inch ipad pro so as usual we're going to start with an upfront conclusion where i tell you what i think about these then we're going to talk about the idea of diminishing returns and the consumer to create a spectrum [00:27] which kind of dictates which of these five ipads you should go for and then one at a time we're gonna go over the pros and cons of each of the ipads and i'm gonna tell you why i personally use an ipad mini rather than any of the other fancier ones so let's start things off with the upfront conclusion and that is that if you are broadly a consumer of stuff ie you watch things you maybe do the occasional google doc here and there but broadly your ipad is a consumption device for you i would recommend the [00:51] basic ipad which is a fantastic option if you're a student as well or the ipad mini moving along spectrum if you are a light creator or a student then broadly the ipad air is a good option for you and the ipad pro's the 11 inch and the 12.9 inch models so this one and this one those are only really ideal if you are a kind of professional and you know that you need the power of something like the m1 chip which is i suspect not what 99.9 of people out there actually need so that was the upfront conclusion [01:18] to hopefully save you time if that's all you wanted then feel free to drop a like on the video on the way out and maybe consider subscribing to the channel but now let's talk about this stuff in more detail and let's start by talking about this idea of the consumer to create a spectrum so there is this thing in all of tech it's like are you a consumer or are you creator it's it's sort of like a spectrum a consumer is someone who tends to watch things or read things like you know netflix spend spends most most of [01:41] the time in a web browser maybe watching some youtube videos maybe listens to some spotify maybe listens to some podcasts maybe reads a book on kindle or reads articles on instapaper or in safari or on chrome or whatever it's broadly a consumptiony type person then as we go further along the spectrum towards the creator professional category we have people who most people are kind of in that middle camp where you're kind of using your ipad for some consumption stuff but also for some like creation stuff maybe you're typing word [02:05] documents here and there maybe you're making presentations maybe you're an artist and you're sketching some stuff maybe you're a student and you're taking typed out or handwritten notes that puts you square in the middle of the consumer to create a spectrum and then all the way on the creator or pro side of the spectrum we have people who need things like 3d modeling people who do advanced like i don't know video gaming people who do stuff like rendering massive files in photoshop or music producers [02:25] who have like zillions of tracks running for those sorts of people they are on the creator slash professional end of the spectrum so it's generally useful to know where you land on the spectrum because it helps you figure out how much money you should actually pay for stuff if you're on the consumer end you don't need to buy tools that are designed for the professionals and the creators but if you're a professional creator you kind of know it and you know you have to spend more money on the things that you [02:45] want so that was one of the principles the other principle that really comes in when valuing ipads is the idea of diminishing returns which is that as you spend more money on an ipad you actually get less and less return for your money spent so for example if you just buy the basic ipad for 319 pounds that gives you i would suggest roughly 88 of the value of the ipad experience spend an extra 160 pounds on the ipad mini and you go up to 92 percent i think these are just my numbers off kind of my own personal [03:10] experience spend an extra 100 pounds and go for the ipad air and you go up to 95 paying an extra 170 pounds then takes you from 95 to 98 with the 11 inch pro and then paying an extra 250 pounds takes you from 98 to 100 with the 12.9 inch m1 ipad pro with the i don't know fancy xdr display that they've got on it so you can see we've got this sort of curve where the more money you spend the less value per unit money spent you're getting from the ipad and a graph like this is particularly important because [03:37] when we're asking is the ipad air worth it or is the ipad pro worth it it kind of depends it's just like well objectively no because you're paying a lot more for a very very small percentage increase in utility or usefulness or whatever but the question of whether something is worth it actually does depend on how much money you have how much money you have to burn because that dictates whether you know is it worth it to spend one pound 50 on a can of coke when you could just get water at home like i don't know like it [04:01] just depends on how you personally value money and there is no one answer to the question of is something worth it so so far what we've arrived at is basically that the budget ipad 319 pounds gives you the vast majority of the value of having an ipad so if you are on a budget honestly this is the one i'd recommend it's still really good it looks a bit old-fashioned compared to the newer models but to be honest the budget ipad is pretty sick and especially if you're a student on a budget this is the one [04:23] that i would recommend broadly without reservation with the new model that was released in september 2021 they now have support for the apple smart keyboard so you could add an apple smart keyboard if you want although logitech and other brands have a bunch of third-party accessories which are pretty good as well and if you're on a budget you probably don't want to spend i think like 100 150 quid for the apple version of the keyboard and this one has the a13 processor which is a few years old at this point but again if you're a student [04:44] if you're on the lighter creator or consumer end of the spectrum you're not really going to notice the difference between a 300 pound processor a13 and a 1300 pound like m1 processor you just will not notice any kind of difference between the two having said that there are a few drawbacks of the budget ipad firstly is the design like it still has the old design that has the home button and so it's less bezel-less than for example the new ipad air is it's also got a 10.2 inch non-laminated display [05:09] what that basically means is that there's a bit more of an air gap between the screen and the stuff underneath it's not massively relevant you don't really notice it but if you're writing with an apple pencil a lot you might notice and if you have like an ipad air on ipad pro side by side then you may well notice some slight difference again i don't think it's a big enough difference to justify spending an extra 200 quid on the ipad air just for the sake of that laminated air gap but it is something [05:32] that is noticeable about the ipad budget if you hold it side by side with other ipads the other annoying thing is that this is compatible with the apple pencil generation one which means if you want to charge the apple pencil you can stick it out of your ipad like this this is not a very aesthetic way to charge a pencil and apple pencil whereas with the other models it's the apple pencil generation too and so you can charge it magnetically alongside the ipad which is just a much nicer way of dealing with pencil charging having [05:56] said that recently they have included this adapter with the apple pencil series one so what you can do is you can put this lightning to lightning adapter on the back of it and then you can just charge this via a lightning cable which is what you can charge your iphone with or in fact your budget ipad with because this still uses lightning rather than usb-c that's not a huge concern like lightning cable for the pencil lightning cable for the ipad but it's just a slight difference between the usb-c [06:18] compatible version of the ipad air and the ipad mini and the ipad pro so conclusion if you're on any kind of budget at all i would fully recommend the budget ipad it's genuinely really good it gets you 88 of the value of an ipad without having to pay too much for it and it starts at 319 pounds and we'll put the dollar price here as well all right so let's put that aside next up we have the next one which is the ipad air now the ipad air is a 260 pound upgrade over the ipad budget this starts at 579 [06:44] pounds again dollar price here and overall this is a really good middle ground ipad yes you're paying quite a lot more you're paying almost double the price of the budget ipad but there are things about the ipad air that make it a pretty compelling alternative to the budget ipad and what you get because of these slightly reduced bezels is that in basically the same form factor of the bit of the budget ipad you get a very slightly larger screen so this is 10.9 inch rather than the 10.2 inch on the [07:05] budget ipad the great thing about the ipad air is that it has support for the apple pencil generation 2 which means you can charge an apple pencil by sticking it on the side which is just very convenient and the apple pencil generation 2 is just a nicer a nicer feeling apple pencil it feels a little bit more kind of like matte plastic rather than glossy plastic compared to generation one it also is more has this like ridge on it which means it's not gonna fall off the table and when i was a student [07:29] and i used the ipol apple pencil generation one it would always just end up like rolling off the table which was just like super annoying whereas this one it rolls a bit and then it stops rolling because it's got this like ridge on it so apple pencil two is a bit of an upgrade over the apple pencil one the display quality is apparently better than the budget ipad and it does feel less plasticky it feels more like a premium product because this is a laminated rather than non-laminated display but again unless you hold them [07:51] up side by side this isn't really a thing that you're gonna notice on like on the daily the ipad air also has usbc support so for example if you have a macbook and you charge it by usbc and you have an ipad you can charge it by usbc although generally people with ipads also have iphones and so lightning versus usbc is not a huge difference there but if you do want to use third party accessories it's generally easier to find usbc accessories for the ipad air and then it is to find lightning compatible accessories for the budget [08:14] ipad although again i've been using ipads for like five plus years at this point and i basically never needed to plug in an extra accessory because the ipad just does the job completely fine on its own so the question here is is the ipad air worth it compared to the budget ipad is it worth spending an extra 260 pounds on upgrading to the ipad air for the sake of a new a new design a a slightly upgraded apple pencil and a slightly different connectivity in usbc again it just depends on how much money [08:39] you have to burn like i said if you're in any kind of budget you get 88 of the value of an ipad from the budget ipad and yes you could pay an extra like 80 more for the ipad air but you're only getting an extra 7 value in my kind of subjective estimation of values of an ipad and so it's really hard to answer this question of is it worth it you just have to decide for yourself is it worth spending an extra eighty percent cash to get an extra seven percent improvement i don't know i would personally but i have [09:02] more money to burn and i can buy these as a business expense and so it really just depends on what your personal circumstances are all right newsflash as of yesterday the ipad air now has the m1 processor which makes it a significant speed jump from the budget ipad but that doesn't really change the question of whether it's worth it because m1 versus a13 versus a14 i mean for most people who are in that middle band of the spectrum so like semi-consumer semi-creator you're not going to bump into the limits of an a13 or a14 [09:27] processor anyway and so the upgrade to the m1 processor shouldn't be a major factor it's like oh my god it's such a speed jump from the ipad budget to the ipad air having said that the fact that the ipad air now has m1 means that you are likely to get a longevity upgrade so going from a13 to m1 it your ipad is likely to last longer so if you're looking to buy something which is then going to last you for the long term you might want to consider the ipad air rather than the budget ipad even though [09:50] it's an extra 260 pounds difference between the two so that was the budget ipad and the ipad air let's now talk about the ipad mini which is the one that i actually have now as my daily driver now the ipad mini is a bit of a weird addition to this lineup um it was always one that's sort of a bit on the side but the ipad mini is actually 100 pounds cheaper than the ipad air and it's kind of similar in that it's got the same kind of design but the form factor of the ipad mini is obviously like this and it's very much holdable in [10:16] one hand and basically the way i think of the ipad mini is that it's basically a glorified kindle so i like using the ipad mini for reading books or reading scientific papers while i'm on the go i'm in the process of writing a book right now so i have to read a bunch of papers and it's much easier reading those on the ipad mini because i can read it with one hand i can read it on the train i can read it on ubers i can read it in public transport i can read it in cafes and if there's just something about it holding an ipad air [10:36] holding an ipad mini that makes it just feel more manageable than holding an ipad air like you have to hold this in two hands and you kind of need to rest on something it feels a bit uncomfortable whereas the ipad mini it's like it's so nice it's just very much and holdable in one hand and therefore makes it better for me at least as a consumption device now i wouldn't really use this as a creation device i wouldn't recommend the ipad mini if you're like a light creator i would recommend more of the bigger sized ipads especially if [11:00] you're going to do things like illustration or taking notes but i think if you are going to use the ipad as basically a glorified kindle or a glorified i don't know netflix machine then actually the ipad mini is a really solid option annoyingly there isn't really a first party kind of smart keyboard attachment for this i thought i think that would have been nice i would have used this as like a portable book writing e typing note taking device on the go but actually you can get a bunch of these small bluetooth keyboards and [11:23] i've got one which sadly i forgot to bring to the studio with me today it's in my bedroom at home i've got one of those that i occasionally use to type stuff on on the ipad mini but again that's a bit of a niche use case if i need to actually do some typing i'll just get out my 14-inch macbook pro and just use that because it's so much easier than trying to fiddle with typing on an ipad unless of course you have a magic keyboard or things like that but then you're getting into the extra ping and then paying an extra 300 pounds for [11:46] that kind of thing so should you go for the ipad mini or should you go for the ipad air i think really the decision just comes down to the form factor do you need a smaller ipad would you like a smaller ipad or do you want something bigger and the reason i personally go for the ipad mini is because the ipad does not replace my laptop i have a macbook which i literally carry everywhere i go this is the 14 inch m1 pro macbook pro it's literally in my bag all the time and i just know i have to carry it everywhere i go i don't i [12:12] really don't go anywhere anywhere without this and i've actually had the 11 inch ipad pro in my bag for the last few months at the same time as the as the macbook pro but i just never use the ipad pro or the ipad air like when you have the option of getting a macbook out and you have to do some quote proper work i would just never use an ipad when i could use the macbook and so for me there's really no point in having this kind of middle ground 10.9 or 11 inch ipad when i have my macbook for real stuff [12:39] but there is actually a point and having like a glorified kindle in my bag i can just chuck it in it's very lightweight i kind of forget that it's there but if i do want to take it out and i'm in i'm in a circumstance like in a cramped cafe or in a library or in public transport where taking out my macbook is a bit overkill i can just take out the ipad mini and i can read some stuff which is awesome next we come to the 11-inch ipad pro now this is what i've had in my bag for the last few months but as i said i [13:00] almost never even take it out because i've got the macbook and it is really nice it's it's just it's just very expensive it's 750 pounds and it's such a it's such a beautiful glorious device that i you know have gotten a reasonable amount of use out of but again it's hard to justify when you have a macbook and you have an iphone like why would you need an 11 inch ipad as well at least for me that's just how i feel about it maybe your use cases would differ but i think most things that you can do on an [13:23] ipad pro you can also do on the ipad air you can also do on the budget ipad it just depends on how much money you want to spend and yes the ipad pro does have the new m1 processor as does the ipad pro 12.9 inch but again realistically for the vast majority of people you're never going to notice a difference in performance between the a13 chip the a14 chip or the m1 chip i certainly have never noticed i've been dabbling with these ipads for a while switching ipads here and there i just never noticed a [13:45] speed improvement the only difference i noticed with the ipad pros is the fact that they have an incredible display with the 120 hertz pro motion thing which makes the display like super super smooth and the annoying thing about all the other ipads the non-pro ones is that they only have 60 hertz displays now this difference between 60hz and 120hz it's annoyingly noticeable but it's only noticeable again if you if you've used a pro then you are very used to what it the beautiful buttery smoothness of the [14:12] ipad pro display just looks freaking incredible whereas if you then switch to an ipad mini or an ipad air like i've done and you scroll around the screen you notice that oh oh something about this just feels bad it just it just it just doesn't feel as nice it doesn't look as nice now if the ipad mini had the option of 120hz promotion display i would be buying this in a heartbeat because that's my only beef with the ipad mini that it doesn't have that promotion display in fact if they had an ipad pro and they just shrunk it to the [14:39] form factor of an ipad mini i would be like take my money this is the absolute perfect ipad for my personal use cases but yeah i just i just cannot get enough of the 120hz promotion display is this a good enough reason to buy the ipad pro i don't think so i think it's mostly an aesthetic preference and it's good for example if you're an artist and you actually notice the difference between drawing with an apple pencil in 60hz versus drawing with an apple pencil 120 hertz these ones also now have face id [15:00] it's kind of nice but face id versus touch id on the side doesn't really make much difference to my life and the good news is this has 128 gigabytes of storage by standard as standard whereas the other ones have 64 gigabytes as standard and you know in the past i used to hate on 64 gigabytes but actually i now have a 64 gigabyte ipad and i've realized that i i very rarely store anything locally because cloud storage options have become so cheap and so good these days and i have fast internet basically everywhere i go and so 64 [15:24] gigabytes is actually reasonable but it's kind of nice that for the extra 200 and 300 quid you're paying for the ipad pro you are getting a little bit extra storage as well so is the ipad pro worth it i would say for most people probably not if you're the sort of person that needs the performance of the m1 chip you already know that you need the performance of the m1 chip and so this review of me as someone who is not someone who needs a performance of the m1 chip shouldn't really sway your decision one way or another but hey it's [15:46] kind of nice to have if you have the money to burn and let's let's say you're a student and you've just got rich parents or you've got a side hustle or you just have loads of money then 11 inch ipad pro is actually sick if it's non-trivial for you to spend an extra i don't know 300 quid to upgrade from the ipad air for 579 to the ipad pro for 749 then go for the ipad pro you won't regret it the promotion display is really really nice but again it just depends on what sort of budget you're at it is an extra three percent gain for an [16:09] extra 80 cost or like 70 cost it's objectively not worth it but it just again it just depends on how much money you have to burn on the purchase of an ipad oh and now that the ipad air also has the m1 chip the reason you're upgrading to the ipad pro i mean it's mostly for the screen and for the build quality it's not really for the chip itself and so the fact that the ipad air now has the m1 shape makes it even less of a need to upgrade to the ipad pro but if you know you need an ipad pro and you need to [16:34] have and you know that you need to have one this generation you already need that anyway and you probably don't need this video to explain it and then we come to the big daddy the 12.9 ipad ipad pro now this actually used to be my daily driver i used to use this a lot i used to use this a lot when i was at the hospital when i was at work um for planning videos and things but that was before the m1 macbooks came out now that the m1 macbooks are here it's like you know 13 or 14-inch macbook pro versus [16:59] 12.9 inch ipad pro even though i've got this and i've got it with a magic keyboard and all the accessories and stuff i just never find myself reaching for the 12.9 inch ipad pro when i could just be using my macbook people always ask the question can an ipad replace your laptop and i still think five years later the answer to that question is no not really it's very hard to fully replace your laptop with an ipad because the ipad at the end of the day it's just an ipad it does still have the limitations of ipad os it's not a proper [17:23] desktop operating system the ipad pro 12.9 is very nice it's got the same processes and stuff as the 11 inch ipad pro but it does have a slightly nicer screen which has slightly more contrasty blacks again you never notice this unless you're watching looking at them side by side i watch things on the ipad pro sometimes i watch things on the ipad mini i never think to myself oh god the blacks on this don't look as black as they did on the ipad pro unless i'm doing a review and looking at them side [17:46] by side and that's a very artificial unfair way to test ipads and there's a bunch of creators i know on the internet who use the 12.9 inch ipad pro there's like music producers that plug devices in and they're like having 4.9 inches and this is like their go-to device for making music i'm not one of those people if you're watching this video i would hazard a guess that you're probably not one of those people either and so i would again unless you just have loads of money to burn and you really really [18:07] want a 12.9 inch huge ass screen maybe with the magic keyboard it's just very hard to justify spending all this money on an ipad pro 12.9 inch so where are we at the end of all this like i said my daily driver is now the ipad mini i don't need an ipad because i have a macbook to do quite real work but it's nice having the ipad mini as a glorified kindle as a consumption device that i can use one-handed i can just chuck it into my bag and i can use it whenever i'm on the go if i were a student and i [18:30] had absolutely no money at all i wouldn't even get an ipad because an ipad is not a game changer for your university life save your money use it for something else but if i were a student and and was on some kind of budget and i wanted to spend some money on tech maybe i wanted to go paperless with my notes and do handwritten note taking on the ipad i would go for the budget ipad if i was on a budget if i had an extra 300 quid to spare i would go for the ipad air just because the conveniences of the apple pencil usbc [18:51] and the new design is kind of nice and if i was a real bowler of a student and i had like a side hustle and stuff and i had a business that i could funnel business expenses through or i just had really rich parents and stuff i would probably go for the 11 inch ipad pro just because why not at that point but yeah it just sort of depends diminishing returns you know where you're on the spectrum and you can decide from that hopefully what's the best ipad for you this ipad mini is the one for me by the [19:12] way if you're getting an ipad you should totally put a paper-like screen protector on it they're not sponsoring this video but i'll put an affiliate link in the video description if you want to check it out i have been using these guys for that since like 2017 was when i first got a paper like screen protector and it's been on my ipad ever since it's just really good and if you like this video you might like to check out this video over here which talks about my top favorite apps for the ipad because obviously the device is one [19:31] thing but it's really all about the apps and that video goes over all my favorite apps for the ipad so thank you so much for watching hopefully you found this video useful do hit the subscribe button if you aren't already and i'll see you hopefully in the next video bye