US Edition 
Apple iPad Air 2 review: the best gets slightly better
The iPad Air 2 is even better than its brilliant predecessor, says Matt Warman
From £399
The original iPad Air was a remarkable machine: so light it ceased to notice in a bag, so slim that it really lived up to the marketing hype of being a sheet of glass in your hand. Customers, Apple crowed, reported 100 per cent satisfaction.
So how to make the best better? And what a nice problem to have. Apple’s reply to make the pencil-thin Air thinner than a pencil, lighter than ever and even available in gold. Try to contain your excitement.
Android aficionados point out that iOS8 is infinitely less customisable than Google’s system, but that’s not the point: most users want an iPad, and those that don’t want something cheaper, such as the excellent Tesco Hudl range. One could argue that the iPad Air 2 only exists to capture some of the Christmas spending spree.
In fact, however, there’s much more in this incremental improvement to recommend it. The new A8X processor makes everything some 40 per cent faster and makes editing video on the fly – impossible not so long ago – easy today. Improvements to the camera are significant, upgrades to battery life are slight but noticeable. Everything’s getting a bit better, and the apps of the future will take advantage of it to great effect.
Although it doesn't initially feel important, most significant is perhaps the expansion of TouchID, meaning there are now slightly fewer reasons to be lumbered with a password, or to be lumbered with a password you’ve forgotten. Apps that use it are now able to demand what is effectively a password every time you log on without the hassle of asking you to type one in. It feels like a standard that should be ubiquitous.
Should owners of an existing iPad Air rush out to upgrade? No. Should owners of a slightly older model use this as an excuse, or the inspiration for their optimistic Christmas list? Yes. Its launch will be marked by none of the queues that accompanied the launch of the iPhone - although John Lewis is opening an hour early - but the excellence of the Air 2 should not in any way be diminished by the excellence of its predecessor.