By Dan Moren

March 16, 2022 7:00 AM PT

iPad Air vs. iPad Pro: My buying decision

Note: This story has not been updated since 2022.

There comes a time in one’s life when, no matter how long one puts it off, one must buy a new iPad. For me, that day came immediately following last week’s Apple event, at which the company unveiled the fifth-generation iPad Air.

But, before you ask: no, I didn’t buy an iPad Air.

I was tempted, I must admit. Given that the previous generation of iPad Air already had many of the great features of the iPad Pro (as Jason has pointed out), but at a lower price, it seems like an obvious choice.

What ended up tipping me over the edge, however, was the one thing that Apple didn’t change. Like its predecessor, the base $599 model of the new iPad Air comes with just 64GB of storage.

As I was weighing my options, I took a look at my current iPad Pro, the 10.5-inch model from 2017. Despite having a spacious 256GB of storage, I was using only around 60GB. Which, yes, is less than 64, but not enough so that I wouldn’t have to constantly police how much stuff I had on it. (I’d already enabled a bunch of space-saving measures, like letting iPadOS offload apps that I don’t launch regularly.)

So, I was clearly going to need more than 64GB. Unfortunately, upgrading to a 256GB iPad Air raises the price to a decidedly less cheap $749. More to the point, that’s just $50 short of the 11-inch iPad Pro with 128GB of storage.

At that point, I had to ask myself some hard questions. For $50 more than that 256GB iPad Air, I could not only get a probably sufficient 128GB of storage, but also pick up all those extra features that the Air lacks: Face ID, a ProMotion display, better rear-facing cameras, Thunderbolt, and so on. Were those features worth $50, especially compared to storage space that I wasn’t likely to use?

The answer, for me, was an unequivocal yes. Don’t get me wrong, the new iPad Air’s a great device. But as someone who enjoys the finer tech in life, I couldn’t resist the lure of all those step-up features. If I end up keeping this iPad as long as I did my last one, I don’t want to feel like my technology is falling behind.

So far, in the day that I’ve had it¹, I haven’t been disappointed. As with any piece of technology, there’s a delight to upgrading to a many years’ newer device, giving you several models’ worth of new features. Though I am still retraining myself not to look for the Home button, and not to accidentally cover the camera when I want to use Face ID.

If there’s anything that I’m missing from the Air, it’s really down to a matter of aesthetics: honestly, I like the colors, and it’s a disappointment that the iPad Pro doesn’t offer more than staid old silver and space gray. (I’m sure Apple will release a version of the Pro with colors within the next year, just to shame me for not waiting longer.)

Despite the added expense of the Pro, I did cut my costs in a few ways. For one thing, I stuck with the Wi-Fi-only model: Convenient as cellular may be, I rarely go some place with my iPad where I need Wi-Fi but there isn’t any.², and in those few cases, it’s just as easy for me to tether to my iPhone. I also decided not to immediately buy a second-generation Apple Pencil or Magic Keyboard, given that they actually go on sale not infrequently these days, and I don’t need them right away. Instead, I bought an inexpensive cover to protect it until I probably end up upgrading to the Magic Keyboard. But hey, at least it comes in green.

[Dan Moren is the East Coast Bureau Chief of Six Colors. You can find him on Mastodon at @dmoren@zeppelin.flights or reach him by email at dan@sixcolors.com. His latest novel, the supernatural detective story All Souls Lost, is out now.]

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