Summer has been great so far, but unfortunately it won’t last forever. That means school and college will be starting up again soon, and you may find you need a tablet or laptop to study on. Let’s see what Apple products Amazon has on sale.
We’ll start with the 2021 Apple iPad – it’s the cheapest option and still does a good job. The Apple A13 Bionic chipset shows its age, but this isn’t a gaming tablet – importantly, it still gets iPadOS updates. Note that this is the last version with a Lightning connector, which could be a good or bad thing depending on whether you’ve switched your charging cables to USB-C.
The 2022 Apple iPad brings more processing power with an A14 Bionic and an extra gigabyte of RAM. More importantly, it has USB-C with DisplayPort. The display is also slightly larger (10.9” vs. 10.2”), and both support the original Apple Pencil stylus. However, the 2022 model is around $100 more expensive than the 2021 model.
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, with an Apple A15 chip, it’s faster than the two tablets above. 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 feature the powerful Apple M2 chip. They come in 11″ and 13″ sizes, both with IPS LCDs – and both run at 60 Hz. With a DisplayPort-enabled USB-C port and Stage Manager support, these tablets can also multitask on an external display. The differences between the 11- and 13-inch models are in the displays (of course), but also in the battery capacity. The rest is the same.
For even more power and better displays, the new Apple iPad Pros feature the latest Apple M4 chip (they’re still the only ones to have it) and tandem OLED displays. This means two OLED panels are stacked on top of each other to double the light output.
And if you’re serious about work, you might need a proper keyboard—the Apple Magic Keyboard Cover practically turns iPad Pros into laptops. However, there’s one thing that stops them from doing so.
iPadOS just isn’t as powerful as macOS. That brings us to the 2024 MacBook Airs. They come in 13.6″ and 15.3″ sizes and are powered by the Apple M3 chipset. Amazon offers 8/256GB and 16/512GB configurations. Unlike their M2-based predecessors, these can drive two external displays with the lid closed. And with only passive cooling, they’re as quiet as can be.
If you want to create a desktop setup instead, the 2023 Apple Mac mini features an M2 chipset and is available in 8/256GB and 8/512GB configurations. There is a version with an M2 Pro chip, which increases the number of CPU cores (from 4+4 to 6+4) and the number of GPU cores (10 to 16).
That’s it for Apple devices. Here are three deals that seemed too good to pass up, even if they don’t have the Apple logo.
First, Amazon is selling the Samsung Galaxy S24+ and Galaxy S24 Ultra with $200 gift cards. Note that the Galaxy S24 Ultra 256GB also has a regular $125 discount.
Also, Google dropped 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 2021 Fire TV Stick 4K Max.
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 bump in clock speed. And they cost a lot less than the TV Streamer – especially now that they’re discounted. They offer better wireless connectivity (Wi-Fi 6 on the 4K and Wi-Fi 6E on the 4K Max versus Wi-Fi 5 on the TV Streamer), but lack a Gigabit Ethernet option (the official adapter only manages 100Mbps).
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