Store
iPad Air 4 (2020): REAL WORLD Review in 2021 // For content creator, photographers & students
This is NOT your normal review of the Apple iPad Air 2020 (4ht generation). This review is all about my experience with using the iPad Air as a content creator and student. I will quickly compare it to the iPad Pro and I will talk about my favorite apps including Adobe Lightroom Mobile, LumaFusion, OneNote, Notion, ClickUp and much more! I will also share some apps that didn't work as well on the iPad like Adobe Premiere Rush. I wrap this up by letting you know if the iPad Air 2020 is the right choice for you or if you should stick with your existing laptop.
🔗 BUY the iPad AIr 2020: https://geni.us/ipad-air-2020
🔗 BUY the Apple Pencil (v2): https://geni.us/apple-pencil-v2
🔗 BUY the Magic Keyboard: https://geni.us/apple-magic-keyboard
#iPad #iPadAir #iPadReview
✨ WATCH NEXT ✨
- Pixel 4a vs PRO Canon Camera https://youtu.be/4KY9rIr0ifE
- Google Pixel 4a Review https://youtu.be/7wNDXsDKoCg
- Shooting stars with your phone https://youtu.be/LwnMOsq0Mpk
✋ COME SAY HI!! ✋
- Instagram: @loic.bellemare.alford (http://bit.ly/lba_instagram)
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/loic294
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/lbaphotographie
📖 CHAPTERS 📖
00:00 - A morning with the iPad Air (b-roll)
00:35 - Introduction
01:30 - iPad Air 2020 vs iPad Pro 11"
01:58 - Photo Editing/Organization in Lightroom Mobile
03:32 - Video Editing (LumaFusion & Adobe Premiere Rush)
06:13 - Magic Keyboard Review
07:30 - Productivity for students
09:19 - Environmental Impact
10:00 - Should YOU buy the iPad? Or a computer?
11:05 - Conclusion - Thanks for watching!
🖼 SHOP FOR PRINTS 🖼
- My online store: https://store.lbaphotographie.ca
🎶 MY MUSIC 🎶
- Affiliate link for Epidemic Sound: https://www.epidemicsound.com/referral/iu5gau/
📸 GEAR I USE ON YOUTUBE 📸
https://kit.co/loic.bellemare.alford/youtube-gear
- DJI Pocket 2 Creator Combo https://geni.us/dji-pocket-2-combo
- 128 gb MicroSD card https://geni.us/sandisk-extreme-128gb
- Canon 6D Mk https://geni.us/canon-6d-mkii
- Google Pixel 4a https://geni.us/google-pixel-4a
- Canon ZOOM LENS EF24-105mm F4L IS II USM https://geni.us/canon-lens-24-105
- Canon EF 16-35mm f/2.8 Lens https://geni.us/canon-lens-16-35
- Canon EF 70-200mm f/4.0L-IS II USM Lens https://geni.us/canon-lens-70-200
- VANGUARD VEO 2 265CB CARBON FIBER TRIPOD https://geni.us/vanguard-veo-265cb
- DJI MAVIC AIR https://geni.us/lba-dji-mavic-air
🌍 MY PERSONAL WEBSITE 🌍
- 0:00 A morning with the iPad Air (b-roll)
- 0:35 Introduction
- 1:30 iPad Air 2020 vs iPad Pro 11"
- 1:58 Photo Editing/Organization in Lightroom Mobile
- 3:32 Video Editing (LumaFusion & Adobe Premiere Rush)
- 6:13 Magic Keyboard Review
- 7:30 Productivity for students
- 9:19 Environmental Impact
- 10:00 Should YOU buy the iPad? Or a computer?
- 11:05 Conclusion - Thanks for watching!
[music] Okay, so I bought an iPad Air 2020 but now the question is should you buy it? Won't be one of those videos where i tell you to buy an iPad instead of a laptop. Instead, I want to talk about why I decided to buy an iPad Air 2020 and if you should be buying an iPad instead of using your laptop. I'm also going to be reviewing this through the lens of a photographer, content creator and full-time student that doesn't live inside of the Apple ecosystem at all. For those of you who are new to this channel, I'm Loïc Bellemare-Alford, a young photographer and filmmaker on the journey to become better at this art. II want to clarify right away that I'm not Apple fanboy. I actually bought two windows tablets before buying this iPad but i realized that when it comes time to tablets the iPad is the best choice simply because of the huge app library and also the very good support for the apple pencil. I want to give a quick explanation of why i decided to buy the iPad Air 4th generation instead of buying the iPad Pro 11 inches. The reason is quite simple and is that the performances of the iPad Air 4th generation is as good, if not better than, the performances of the iPad air 11 inches right now and it costs hundreds of dollars less. The only reason i would have liked to have the iPad Pro is for more storage but 256 gigabyte this should be plenty enough. Let's start by talking about photography because this is the main reason why I decided to buy an iPad. Now don't be scared I'm not going to start taking pictures using the camera on the iPad. t's actually to manage my media. In Lightroom alone, I have over 105 000 pictures and just in September i took another 7 000 pictures using my phone. This is a lot of photos to go through. In my opinion the 11 inch iPad screen is the perfect size for when i need to quickly go through the images and classify them. On my phone the screen is a little bit too small to see the details and on my laptop Lightroom is just painfully slow, especially when i need to sync files from the internet. On the iPad lightroom is super snappy and a high resolution screen actually allows to see all the details inside of the photos. This is going to save me hours this year, especially that I decided that I want to declutter my library and delete at least half of the pictures that i have inside of it. Another reason why I love an iPad for photography is actually for editing my photos. t's really hard to describe but using a pen and touch just feels a lot more natural. I also realize that I tend to be more adventurous inside of my edits and this means I get completely different shots instead of just copy pasting the same settings like I usually do on my computer because it's faster to do it that way on a computer. If you made it until this point in the video, why don't you go hit that big red subscribe button and also leave a like below to let me know that you're enjoying the content. In my next video I'm going to talk about my favorite iPad apps for content creators and students that don't live inside of the apple ecosystem. Now let's talk about video editing because this is one of the places where I was the most disappointed but also the most surprised from the iPad. I want to preface this by saying that i never intended to completely change my edit video editing workflow to the iPad because it can have some pretty complex timelines and i know that the iPad isn't the right tool for this. My goal was to edit smaller videos so like TikTok stories, Instagram stories, Instagram Reels or when I'm traveling around i need to do a quick edit, I think the iPad is great for that. The first day i got the iPad I went on the store and downloaded Adobe Premiere Rush and started editing some 2.7 k footage from my DJI Pocket 2 and it worked great! It was really fun having a pen and my fingers to play around inside of the timeline. Then I tried importing some 4k footage from my phone and it just wouldn't work the app would crash non-stop and I passed hours online trying to find a solution and nothing worked. II even tried other free apps including iMovie and none of them would support the footage. At this point I was getting quite frustrated because pretty much everybody online seemed to say that they had a great experience editing videos on the iPad Air. I knew most of them were using LumaFusion but i didn't really want to pay 40$ only to discover it wouldn't work either. I finally decided to budge in and buy the app and wow I must say it's incredible! LumaFusion can play 4k footage with no visible lag or no performance hits, even when you add multiple effects on the footage which is really impressive when you consider that my 2016 MacBook Pro cannot even play 4k instead of Premiere Pro or DaVinci Resolve without creating proxies first. It's also a lot of fun using pen and touch tweeted a video just like what I said when editing photos it just feels a lot more natural and the fact that there's no proxies to be created it's actually a lot faster to create a project and just a lot more enjoyable of an experience. Am I going to change my mind when I'm using my iPad to edit some videos? No, the reason I'm so efficient at editing videos on my computer is actually because of the custom keyboard shortcuts, my custom After Effects motion templates and also the years of experience of editing videos on a computer the iPad just isn't efficient when you're editing videos because things like just changing the volume requires multiple touches to get to that setting. I know some of you might point out that I could use a keyboard like this one and use keyboard shortcuts but when you consider that the keyboard the iPad and the pen cost over a thousand four hundred dollar canadian, I just don't see why you wouldn't buy a MacBook Air with the M1 chip or a pretty good window laptop to edit your video. While talking about keyboards, let's talk about the magic keyboard from Apple and if it's worth its crazy expensive price. The short answer is no the long answer is maybe yes. So let's start by the good part and it's that it's a really great typing experience. It has good key travel and it's just a very pleasant experience overall using it. I also use the trackpad a lot more than I ever expected and it's especially useful when you're navigating the web or when you're editing longer documents with it. There is no way to go around the fact that this costs so much I looked at cheaper alternatives like the Logitech but I really didn't like the idea of having a bigger case that makes the iPad almost twice as big when using it in iPad mode. If I bought a tablet because I want to have a small form factor not something that's bigger because i have a case on it all the time. Now if you put it back on here, there's one thing that most people don't seem to say inside of the reviews and it's that when you have the iPad inside of the case there's actually only two position you can either have the iPad close inside of the case or you can have the case open in typing mode you cannot use a case in any other way so you cannot put the iPad on the top here or have the iPad in tent mode or anything else. So it is very expensive when you consider that you have very limited options with this keyboard. Now this brings me to productivity. As a full-time software engineering student one of the main reasons to get an iPad is actually to take some better handwritten notes. I will say it right away the Apple Pencil version 2 is simply incredible. I use Microsoft OneNote to take notes for school and it works flawlessly on the iPad. It doesn't have all the features that the Windows version has but it has everything that i need to take some good notes for school. Two apps that i use all the time are ClickUp and Notion and I use these apps to stay organized at school and plan all of my YouTube videos. I particularly like the fact that inside of Notion i can use the Scribble Mode with the Apple Pencil to take down some notes using handwriting even though the app doesn't officially handle handwriting. This is a really cool feature my problem starts when I have to edit anything a bit more complex whether it's a Google Docs, an Excel Spreadsheet or some code. There's apps that exist for all of these use cases but none of the apps are as good as their desktop counterparts. Another problem I have with the iPad is just multitasking in general. So I like the fact you can have a split screen and also really like the fact that we can have a window that is open on top of another like for chat or thing like that but it's just not as efficient as having multiple windows open at the same time on the desktop. I know that by using the keyboard we can fix some of these issues. So if we put the iPad with the keyboard we can actually use command tab to switch between app just like on the desktop and also use command space to open spotlight and find some apps pretty quickly or do a web search. But when you take the tablet off of this keyboard it doesn't work anymore so it's kind of useless having these features that are meant to be better for multitasking when you cannot use them when you're inside of the tablet mode. Hey it's editor me here and I wanted to talk about something I forgot inside of the video which is the environmental impact of buying a new piece of gear. I want to start by saying what apple did that is pretty good inside this iPad. So the first thing is that they use 100% recycled aluminium, 100% recycled solder and 100% recycled rare elements inside of the speakers. I think this is a really good start but I cannot wait that Apple and other big companies start making products that are 100% recycled for all the materials inside, not just some parts of it. I also want to remind you that the worst thing for the environment, and also your wallet, is buying a piece of gear that you're never going to be using. So just think twice before buying a product and make sure it's actually something you're going to use. With all that being said I really like my iPad Air 2020 whether it's watching Netflix, watching YouTube, editing some photos, editing some videos, taking notes for school or planning my videos inside of Notion, I use my iPad Air a lot more than i ever expected. Now let's answer the question of whether this is the right device for you. If you're a content creator and especially a photographer that takes a lot of pictures and from time to time it did some small videos this is a great device. If you're a student and somebody that wants to take notes but already has a computer it's also a great device. It might be pretty expensive for a note-taking device but when considering you can be using it every single days for multiple years it's actually not that bad now if you think of buying the iPad for some productivity tasks I'm sorry to break it for you but it's just not as good as a computer. This is mainly because the apps are simplified and made for touch they're not made for more complex scenarios that you might encounter and where buying a computer is more essential and at this price it's easy to get a really good computer for the same price than the iPad. If you enjoyed this video please let me know by hitting the like button below and also consider subscribing for more content on photography and filmmaking my next video is going to be about my favorite apps on my iPad for content creators and students see you in the next one Bye! Bye!
Video Links
- 🔗 BUY the iPad AIr 2020
- 🔗 BUY the Apple Pencil (v2)
- 🔗 BUY the Magic Keyboard
- Pixel 4a vs PRO Canon Camera
- Google Pixel 4a Review
- Shooting stars with your phone
- Instagram: @loic.bellemare.alford ()
- My online store
- Affiliate link for Epidemic Sound
- https://kit.co/loic.bellemare.alford/youtube-gear
- DJI Pocket 2 Creator Combo
- 128 gb MicroSD card
- Canon 6D Mk
- Google Pixel 4a
- Canon ZOOM LENS EF24-105mm F4L IS II USM
- Canon EF 16-35mm f/2.8 Lens
- Canon EF 70-200mm f/4.0L-IS II USM Lens
- VANGUARD VEO 2 265CB CARBON FIBER TRIPOD
- DJI MAVIC AIR
- http://bit.ly/loicba
What is this video about?
I wanted to do something different with this iPad Air review. Rather than just telling you to ditch your laptop, I'm sharing my honest experience using it as a photographer, filmmaker, and full-time student who actually lives in the Windows ecosystem.
First, the comparison to the iPad Pro: I went with the Air 4 instead because the performance is nearly identical, and it costs hundreds less. The only real trade-off is storage, but 256GB has been plenty for me.
Where the iPad genuinely shines: Photography management and editing. I have over 105,000 images in Lightroom, and the iPad's 11-inch screen strikes that perfect balance—bigger than my phone for detail work, but Lightroom runs exponentially faster than on my 2016 MacBook Pro. The pen and touch interface also pushes me to experiment more with edits instead of copy-pasting the same settings. For video editing, I was frustrated initially (Adobe Premiere Rush crashed on 4K footage), but LumaFusion is genuinely impressive—it handles 4K with no lag and no need for proxies.
Where it frustrates me: Video editing still isn't my main workflow. Desktop software has years of custom shortcuts and templates behind it that make me faster there. For more complex productivity tasks—Excel spreadsheets, coding, anything beyond simple documents—the iPad apps feel oversimplified compared to their desktop versions. Multitasking is awkward too; split-screen works, but it's not as natural as having proper windows.
The Magic Keyboard is a tough sell at that price. The typing experience is great, but it locks you into just two positions (closed or fully open), and by the time you add the iPad, pencil, and keyboard together, you're approaching MacBook territory.
My verdict: If you're a content creator who takes lots of photos and occasionally edits short-form video, this is excellent. For students who want better handwritten notes and already have a computer, it's also worth considering. But if you're hoping to replace your laptop for serious productivity work, I'd recommend just buying a solid computer instead.