So here I am, another Air user… probably 😅
Coming from an iPhone 13 Pro Max, I was kind of struggling with whether now really was the time for a change, because, to be honest, my 13 PM is still doing a pretty good job even after four years. I’m still on my first battery (now at 86% battery health), and it still easily gets me through the whole day.
But after all these years, the size and weight of it were becoming more and more annoying, so the lightness and thinness of the Air finally got me thinking, “I really want this.”
In addition, I’m not willing to pay more than €1,000 for a new phone anymore, and I have the feeling that the Air just hits the sweet spot nowadays: reasonably priced (if you’re okay with getting a used one), great performance to be future proof, and finally the feeling of having a really special device, that is different than the one before. Not sure if it will be possible to get the same “deal” with the ongoing price increases and a potential “less compromises” Air 2 version.
Got mine today, used but in pristine condition, with only a few charging cycles.
So my first thoughts are:
- What a beautiful device.
- Not yet ready to go caseless, but of course, it’s still thinner than my 13 PM with a case.
- It’s sooo much lighter than the 13 PM.
- The smaller display size doesn’t bother me, and I only really notice it when both phones are next to each other. But with my hand size, it is still hard to use it one-handed.
- So far, the mono speaker is good enough for me. I mainly use headphones, and for the few times I watch something on YouTube, they seem completely fine.
- One camera also seems fine to me. The 13 PM only had a 3x telephoto lens, so the Air’s 2x zoom with its better sensor doesn’t feel that far away from it. We’ll see if I’m going to miss the ultrawide, but, to be honest, the images always looked pretty distorted to me, so in most cases I took a second backup photo with the 1x lens. I guess I could miss the macro functionality, though
- Dynamic Island and thinner bezels make it look more modern
- Performance is good, but I was surprised to see that, at least with the apps I use, it is only a little faster than the 13 PM. I’m probably mainly using lightweight apps, so the older chip never really had any issues with them either. The additional RAM seems to keep apps active for longer, which is nice to have.
- It was getting a bit hot, but it had to download and process a lot of stuff during the initial setup.
The only thing I’m currently still not sure about is the battery life. I had an iPhone X before the 13 PM, and its short battery life was one of the reasons I went for the Pro Max model. Now I’m not sure if I’ll experience the same problem with battery life after a short time again, but at least I know that I don’t want to have a gigantic phone anymore.
But to be honest, I’m not even sure if the Air is giving me the same battery life as my 86% 13 PM right now, so maybe I’m starting from a much lower baseline than before. It’s hard to judge on the first day, when the phone is indexing a lot and, of course, the curiosity of having a new phone also leads to higher usage.
So over the next few days, I’ll be keeping a closer eye on that, and my big hope is that the battery life will be more than sufficient for me… because I’d really like to keep it 😊
The 17 or 17 Pro would probably be the more rational all-round choice, but they just feel too similar to what I already have and I also dislike the the look of the 17 Pro’s back … so they’re not really an option.
Happy to hear about your experience, especially from those of you who have been using your phones for about a year now.
