Apple iPad Air Apple iPad Air 2 Wi-Fi 64GB Gray (Renewed) Review

At $145, this renewed iPad Air 2 is a paradox: a great value iPad that's also painfully old. Its 2GB of RAM lands in the 3rd percentile, crippling modern performance. Only buy this if your needs are extremely basic and your budget is absolutely fixed.

At $145, this renewed iPad Air 2 is a budget tablet that scores surprisingly well on features and social proof, landing in the 76th and 75th percentiles respectively. That means for the price, you're getting a lot of the classic iPad experience people love. But you're also buying a device that's nearly a decade old, and the numbers show it: RAM sits at the 3rd percentile, storage is at the 30th, and CPU performance is in the 42nd percentile. This isn't a powerhouse; it's a capable basic tablet for very specific, lightweight tasks.

Performance is a story of trade-offs. The 9.7-inch Retina display still holds up decently, scoring in the 62nd percentile for screen quality. That's good for reading and watching videos. But under the hood, the 2GB of RAM (3rd percentile) and aging Apple A8X chip (42nd percentile for CPU) mean you'll feel the limits. It runs iPadOS 15.7.7, but don't expect to multitask heavily or run the latest demanding apps smoothly. GPU performance is at the 44th percentile, so light gaming is possible, but anything graphically intense will struggle. Battery life is right in the middle at the 49th percentile, which for a renewed device of this age is actually not terrible.

The value proposition here is brutally simple: you're paying $145 for an iPad. That's it. You're not paying for cutting-edge performance. You're paying for the iOS ecosystem, the build quality, and the basic tablet functions at a price that undercuts even the cheapest new Android tablets. The trade-off is that you're getting hardware from 2014. For the right user, that trade-off is a steal. For anyone else, it's a hard pass.

Stack this up against the competition and the gaps are huge. A modern base iPad starts around $330 and will have 3-4x the CPU performance, more RAM, and years of software support. Even compared to a renewed iPad (7th gen) around $200, you get a much newer chip and support for the Apple Pencil. Against Android rivals like the Lenovo Idea Tab Pro, you lose massively on screen size and specs but keep the iOS simplicity. This Air 2 only wins if your budget is absolutely locked at $150 and you must have an iPad. The Samsung Galaxy Tab S10+ isn't even in the same universe performance-wise.

Skip this iPad if you need to do real work. Its 3rd percentile RAM score means multitasking is a nightmare, and the 42nd percentile CPU will choke on anything beyond basic web apps. Students needing several research tabs and a document open, artists using professional apps, or anyone who gets frustrated by lag should look at a newer renewed iPad (6th gen or later). Its low score for business use (38.4/100) tells you everything.

We can recommend this renewed iPad Air 2, but only with major caveats. If you need a super cheap tablet for an elderly relative to video call, a kid to watch videos, or a dedicated digital photo frame, it's a fantastic deal. Its high feature and social proof scores for the price prove that. But if you're a student needing to multitask, an artist using Procreate, or anyone who expects a snappy modern app experience, the 3rd percentile RAM and 42nd percentile CPU are deal-breakers. Look at a newer renewed model or stretch your budget.