Apple’s iPad Air 2 Is Thinner, Faster, And Has Touch ID

@grg / 10:44 am PDT • October 16, 2014

And it’s official!

After a surprise last-minute leak yesterday and almost exactly one year since the debut of its predecessor, Apple has officially announced the iPad Air 2.

Here’s what we know so far:

It’s 6.1mm thick, making it 18% thinner than the original iPad Air
The WiFi model will cost $499, $599, or $699 for 16GB, 64GB, or 128GB respectively
The WiFi + Cellular model will cost $629, $729, or $829 for 16GB, 64GB, or 128GB respectively
It’ll come in gold, silver, and “space grey”
Pre-orders begin Oct. 17th, and ship “by the end of next week”
The screen is one single laminated component, removing any air and thus reducing glare
It has an anti-glare coating that reduces reflection by 56%
It’s got a new generation of Apple’s chipset, here called the A8X. It’s got a 40% faster CPU over the last generation chipset, with a 2.5x faster GPU.
Like with the newest iPhone CPUs, the A8X brings a few other chips into the mix: it’ll track motion right on the chip, and tracks local air data through a built-in barometer
It has a battery life of 10 hours.
You can stack two iPad Air 2s on top of each other in the same space that the original iPad took. (See the side-by-side below)
It has an 8 mp rear camera (with a f/2.4 aperture); there’s a front camera, too, of course, but they’ve yet to disclose the resolution.
It’s picked up the iPhone’s slo-mo video capability, allowing videos to be shot at 120fps
It’s got 802.11ac WiFi, allowing a theoretical download speed of up to 866 megabits per second
As yesterday’s leaks suggested, it has Apple’s TouchID fingerprint sensor, allowing you to unlock your device and pay for things on iTunes (or in third party apps, through Apple Pay) with your finger.