Top 5 Tablets to Consider Before Buying the iPad Air [July, 2014]

Apple’s 9.7-inch iPad Air is one of the best tablets that money can buy but that doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t take a look at some of its top competitors before deciding on your next tablet. Here, we take a look at the slates we think you need to take a look at before buying the company’s current full-sized iPad, the iPad Air.

Last October, after the dust had settled around the iPhone 5s and iPhone 5c launch, Apple took the stage once again and showed off two new iPads. The first, a brand new 7.9-inch iPad mini dubbed iPad mini with Retina Display. The device, which replaced the original iPad mini, finally delivered the Retina quality screen that consumers had been after for some time.

The other iPad was a redesigned 9.7-inch tablet dubbed iPad Air. The iPad Air delivered a number of new features on top of its new compact design including a new A7 64-bit processor, and iOS 7. The device was, and still is, rated as one of the top tablets on the market and it’s a tablet that many consumers will likely be looking at during the month of July and beyond.

We are constantly bombarded with questions about which tablets to buy. In particular, we’re constantly asked about the tablets consumers should weigh against the iPad Air. There are a number of different devices that we could recommend, the smartphone market is full of solid choices, but we want to narrow things down a bit and take a look at what we consider to be the top five.

These devices represent the devices that we’d recommend to friends and family. And while our list may differ from yours, these are the devices that Gotta Be Mobile editors have selected for recognition this month. We feel like the tablets listed here deliver the best, all-around package for this month and this month alone.

That said, here are the top five tablets to consider before buying the iPad Air.

iPad mini With Retina Display

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Do yourself a favor and check out Apple's iPad mini before you buy the iPad Air. It comes with many of the same features, it's just a little more portable. Cheaper, too. Apple's iPad mini with Retina Display is essentially a smaller version of Apple's iPad Air. Instead of a 9.7-inch display, it offers up a smaller 7.9-inch Retina Display with a more compact design. The smaller footprint makes the iPad mini with Retina a much easier device to take on-the-go. Like the iPad Air, the iPad mini with Retina Display comes with an A7 64-bit processor, upgraded camera, and Apple's iOS 7 software. Some models also are capable of connecting to a 4G LTE network for extremely fast connections when Wi-Fi isn't available. Rule it out before going with the iPad Air.

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