Apple iPad Air Fails iFixit Repairability Test

Apple's new iPad Air looks sleek, weighs next to nothing, and is nearly impossible to repair.

In its latest teardown, iFixit slammed the slate, giving it a failing repairability score of 2, based on difficult battery removal, oodles of adhesive holding everything in place, and fragile entrails.

Cupertino last month unveiled the 9.7-inch iPad Air, complete with the new A7 chip currently found in the iPhone 5s, and the M7 motion coprocessor, which keeps tabs on the accelerometer, gyroscope, and compass.

But it's those newfangled pieces of technology — which help boost the performance capabilities of the tablet — that are also the Air's greatest downfall when it comes to restoration.

Once finally opened, with some brute force and special iFixit equipment, the team found the new 3.73 V, 32.9 WHr, two-cell power unit — "the worst battery ever," according to iFixit's Walter Galan. Trapped under the logic board and glued onto the slate for dear life, the battery eventually comes free, warping in the process.

Along the way, the teardown team was able to extract the SIM card tray, which is glued in, but separately from the logic board.

"We'll call this a repairability-neutral finding," iFixit said.

The excursion also revealed the typical iPhone-like parts, the Lightning connector, and Wi-Fi and Bluetooth antennas, which, along with Multiple-In-Multiple-Out (MIMO) technology, offer twice the wireless performance of past iPad models.

The end product, though a fast, weightless device, is not one meant for home repairs.

"Sometimes we sound like a broken record when it comes to terrible repairability, and we get it — seems like there's a lot of product bashing going on lately," iFixit Chief Information Architect Miroslav Djuric wrote in the teardown release. "Yet for every fixable Nexus 7 and Kindle Fire, there's a Surface Pro — or, in this case, an iPad Air — to saturate the market with unrepairable devices."

It turns out the iPad doesn't fall far from the Apple tree. When iFixit reviewed the fourth-generation iPad a year ago, it received the same 2 out of 10 score as the Air and the iPad mini — just one step up from the site's lowest ever score, a 1 out of 10, issued to last year's MacBook Pro.

Cupertino's newest tablet, the iPad Air, hit stores today, starting at $499 (16GB Wi-Fi) and $629 (cellular) in 42 countries, including the U.S., U.K., and Canada.

For more, see PCMag's hands on with the iPad Air and the slideshow above.