I unboxed the iPad Air 2 two weeks ago and offered my initial impressions. I’ll suggest IOS 8.1 still seems to have some bugs.  If you’re one of the people with WiFi connectivity problems, try the steps in this article before you get too worried. A friend of mine with a new iPad Air 2 experienced frustrating sluggishness and dropped connectivity.  After applying the steps recommended in the article, she reported the iPad’s performance was much improved. I’m considering trying those steps on mine just to make sure the connectivity lines are cleared.  I sometimes experience some connection slowness.

The Air is thin and light. Almost too thin and too light.  Does that make sense? It’s narrower than my iPad 2, but the screen display size is exactly the same.  Battery life has been tremendous. As a new device, it provides an easy twelve hours of usage.  I was doing a lot of reading and not a lot of WiFi usage over the past week, so that could explain better efficiency.

There’s a…feature?…in IOS 8 that cones in very handy.  Even though I don’t have my personal Hotspot in the Phone turned on, the iPad can see it and turn it on remotely when I connect WiFi from the iPad. When I stop using the iPad, the Hotspot on the phone turns itself off. I can do the same from OS X. Apple talked about this, but I didn’t understand the significance, because when they announced it, I thought, “Well, duh, I can connect to my Hotspot with my laptop or iPad now.” But this means my phone can be sitting in the other room, and I can handle the connection remotely from the device I’m using. Very nice. Before, I had to go to the other room to turn on the Hotspot, and it would stay active until I turned it off.

The camera is quite good.  I don’t use it a lot, but at least it’s an option now, where on the iPad2, it was only good for snapping copies of receipts. If you have an older iPad, this upgrade is definitely worthwhile.  If you have a newer Retina iPad, I’m not in a position to make a recommendation for you, because those are beautiful pieces of equipment as well.  I plan to use this device for several years. I think four is a solid goal to shoot for.

Would you like to hear about apps in a future post?  Any other questions?