Ipad Air 2

[Squink]

My two children are currently using Ipad Mini 1 tablets, which have had exceptional innings, but are now incredibly slow.

I bought them a couple of Fire HD 10s specifically for Kids Unlimited (free apps and a selection of 'curated' videos). Unfortunately, the Ipad Minis were used and the HD10s left untouched in favour of YouTube Kids, which is not available on Amazon products (except with sideloading, which I didn't want to get into, since I want them to operate within the kids' environment of the tablet).

I'm a tiny bit reluctant to buy them Ipad 2018s. They loved them in the Apple store and desperately wanted them, however that's children for you. As soon as I fork out for a 9.7" tablet, they'll no doubt find them too big and go back to the Minis.

I can pick up a couple of 64Gb Ipad Air 2s (at £200 each, condition: good), and wonder what people feel about these tablets since the update to IOS12. Do they have 2 or 3 years life in them? Does anyone have a child with a full-sized iPad and do they use it comfortably?

The other option is to buy two new iPad 2018s from Tobydeals (or similar import site) for £250 each. I do not want to pay £300 each for something as old as the Mini 4, assuming they're still on offer.

Can anyone offer an opinion?

 

[Phemo]

Been in a similar situation myself recently. I had an original iPad Mini which is mostly ok for what my 4 and 5 year old are doing with it but as you say, they're very slow now. I bought them a pair of Fire 7 tablets a while ago which they were ok with but they also kept wanting to go back to the iPad.

To tide them over for a while, last week I got them an original iPad Air each and they were pretty cheap at only £125 each. I've got them in rubber kid cases with a carry handle on the left side and they seem to cope with them absolutely fine. They haven't even wanted the Mini even though it's still kicking around.

The original Air seems, surprisingly, half decent on iOS 12 at least for all the stuff that they do, so I imagine an Air 2 will be fine but I guess it depends how old your kids are and what sort of things they're doing with them. Mine just seem to faff about with installing pointless apps, FaceTime, YouTube and crappy little games so the original Air should do them for a while yet.

 

[MrRockliffe]

The Air 2 would likely perform on a similar level to the iPhone 6S, since it uses the A8X IIRC - i.e. it should be plenty quick enough for kids.

On a side note - you can probably find iPad Pro 9.7 for similar, or perhaps iPad (2017).

 

[Squink]

The original Air seems, surprisingly, half decent on iOS 12 at least for all the stuff that they do, so I imagine an Air 2 will be fine but I guess it depends how old your kids are and what sort of things they're doing with them. Mine just seem to faff about with installing pointless apps, FaceTime, YouTube and crappy little games so the original Air should do them for a while yet.

It's good to hear the minis got kicked into touch. My children do pretty much the same stuff as yours - videos and a few Toca or Dr Panda games, nothing that'll stress a decent SoC. How is the battery holding up on the Air? The Mini 1 batteries seem perfectly fine after 7 or 8 years, but I suspect we've been lucky in that regard.

Re: iPad Pro 9.7, they seem to come in at £330 and there aren't loads knocking around. There has to be clear space between the price of old and new, otherwise the 2018 is priced low enough that I'd just buy new.

 

[Phemo]

Battery on the original Airs seems to be holding up alright for a 5 ish year old device. Will have to look at the screen on stats to see what they're getting but I'm finding that they're only needing a charge every couple of days (and even then they're still not totally dead) whereas the Fire 7 tabs wouldn't even make it through half a day. Will have to hook these Airs up to CoconutBattery to see how many charge cycles they've got, but they're doing better than I thought that's for sure.

 

[pepp77]

The battery on my iPad Mini (Retina) - so a 2? is still great, but I only use it now as an out of the house device, I have a 9.7" 2018 iPad for inhouse use.

The main issue I find with the mini now is the responsiveness of the touch screen isn't as good as on my newer ipad.

It is using software release 12 without any issues as well.