Summer has been great so far, but unfortunately it won’t last forever. This means that school and college will be starting back up soon and you might find that you need a tablet or laptop for study. Let’s see what Apple products Amazon has on offer.
We start with the Apple iPad from 2021 – it’s the cheapest option and still does a fine job. The Apple A13 Bionic chipset is showing its age, but this isn’t a gaming tablet – the important thing is that it is still getting iPadOS updates. Note that this is the last version with a Lightning connector, which might be a good thing or a bad thing, depending on whether you have changed your charging cables over to USB-C.
The Apple iPad from 2022 brings more computing power with an A14 Bionic and an extra gig of RAM. More importantly, it does feature USB-C with DisplayPort. The display is also a bit larger (10.9” vs. 10.2”), both support the original Apple Pencil stylus. The 2022 model is around $100 more expensive than the 2021 model, however.
Apple may have given up on the small tablet form factor – it’s been three years and no new model. Yes, the latest iPad mini is from 2021, but even so, it is faster than both slates above with an Apple A15 chip. And it has a USB-C 3.1 port with DisplayPort, so its age is less of an issue (unless you were hoping for a faster than 60Hz display).
For more serious work, the two Apple iPad Air models from May this year bring the powerful Apple M2 chip. They are available in 11” and 13” sizes, both with IPS LCDs – and both running at 60Hz. Also, with a DisplayPort-enabled USB-C port and Stage Manager support, these tablets can multitask on an external display. The differences between the 11” and 13” models are the displays (obviously), but also battery capacity. The rest is the same.
For even more power and better displays, the new Apple iPad Pros offer the latest Apple M4 chip (they are still the only ones to have it) and tandem OLED displays. This means that there are two OLED panels stacked on top of each other to double the light output.
And if you’re going to be doing serious work, you may need a proper keyboard – the Apple Magic Keyboard cover practically turns the iPad Pros into laptops. Except there’s one thing holding them back.
iPadOS just isn’t as capable as macOS. This takes us to the MacBook Airs from 2024. They are available in 13.6” and 15.3” sizes and are powered by the Apple M3 chipset. Amazon has 8/256GB and 16/512GB configurations. Unlike their M2-based predecessors, these can drive two external displays when the lid is closed. And with only passive cooling, these are as silent as it gets.
If you want to build a desktop setup instead, the Apple Mac mini from 2023 features an M2 chipset and comes in 8/256GB and 8/512GB configurations. There is a version with an M2 Pro chip, which increases the CPU core count (from 4+4 to 6+4) and the GPU core count (10 to 16).
That’s it for the Apple gadgets, here are three offers that looked too good to pass up even if they don’t have an Apple logo.
First, Amazon is selling the Samsung Galaxy S24+ and Galaxy S24 Ultra with $200 gift cards. Note that the 256GB Galaxy S24 Ultra also has a regular discount of $125.
Also, Google killed off the Chromecast brand this week with the launch of the Google TV Streamer. It was a bit disappointing to find out that it uses the same chipset as Amazon’s Fire TV Stick 4K Max from 2021.
The 2023 versions of the Fire TV Stick 4K and 4K Max still use the same chipset with the new Max even bringing a small boost to clock speed. And they cost a lot less than the TV Streamer – especially now that they are on a discount. They offer better wireless connectivity (Wi-Fi 6 on the 4K and Wi-Fi 6E on the 4K Max vs. Wi-Fi 5 on the TV Streamer), but lack a gigabit Ethernet option (the official adapter only does 100Mbps).
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