NY Times:

For all types of device users, then, the iPad presents a quandary. Are Apple’s premium tablets still worth their lofty prices?

After using the iPad Air 2 for the last few days, my answer is: Yes, with reservations. Whether you should take a leap on Apple’s new Air depends entirely on how you use your other devices. If you’re not a big fan of personal computers and you don’t really like having your nose stuck in your phone all day, the iPad Air 2 might be for you. The iPad Air 2 is powerful enough to use as your main or secondary computer, after your phone, especially if you use your tablet as a replacement PC on the go, and if you’re looking to play processor-intensive games or run media-editing software.

But if that advice weren’t confusing enough, I’ll add one more caveat. If you’re mainly interested in a tablet for surfing the Web or watching movies — for “consuming media,” as the techies say — then the iPad Air 2 is probably overkill. Go instead with last year’s iPad Air, which is slightly slower, thicker and lacks TouchID, but starts at $399 and will prove pretty capable for many users. Even a bargain-basement machine like Amazon’s $99 Kindle Fire HD is a pretty good media device. It doesn’t look look as good as the iPad, but if your needs are slight, it will get the job done.

As for the iPad Mini 3, Apple’s other new tablet, I’d advocate skipping it. Unlike the Air 2, the new Mini has not been upgraded with Apple’s latest processor. This means that internally, it is almost identical to last year’s iPad Mini 2, which Apple is still selling for $299 and up. The primary difference is that the iPad Mini 3 has a TouchID fingerprint scanner and has one more color option, gold. (The 2 comes in just silver and black.) Unless you’re going to be doing a lot of Apple Pay shopping or you’re gaga for gold, it’s best to save the $100 and go with the Mini 2.


FWIW.

It looks like the iPad Air 2 (finally) has 2 GB of RAM in it. That was one of the huge weaknesses of our iPad v1 - doing almost anything with it required reloading stuff over the network. With 2 GB, it might not be RAM constrained (for a few weeks anyway)...

Of course, one can get Android phones and tablets with 3 GB now without much trouble...

Cheers,
Scott.