This is the brand new iPad Air 2. This was just announced last week at Apple’s October event and at first look, like a disappointing upgrade. Other than Touch ID and it being a wee bit thinner, it looked pretty much the same as last year. But as time progressed, we found out more about the brand new iPad Air 2 and all of its upgrades so let’s go ahead and crack open the box and take a look inside.

First things first, the box looks completely identical to the first generation iPad Air. The only real difference is that the iPad is shown at a profile to show the thinness and probably the omission of the mute orientation lock switch.

Now let’s go ahead and just open this guy up. And first things first, the iPad Air 2 is sitting on top. We’ll just lift that up and take a look at all the accessories that comes with the iPad Air 2. So you get your standard manuals and literature in the Apple book. Underneath that is the lightning to USB cable and below that is the AC wall wart for charging. And that’s about it.

Now let’s take a closer look at the iPad Air 2. The first thing you’ll notice is the brand new thin profile. It’s now down to 6.1mm, which makes it the thinnest tablet in the planet. It also weighs a little less than 0.9 lbs. but honestly, I couldn’t tell a big difference from the already ultra-lightweight version of the first generation iPad Air.

The next thing you’ll notice is the brand new display or should I say the new process they are doing which is lamination of the panel and the glass itself. This eliminates the gap between LCD panel and the glass itself, the same process they’ve done on the iPhones ever since the iPhone 4. And once you turn it on, the content just looks a lot closer than before. It really does give you a feeling that you’re touching the content instead of touching the panel.

But in terms of resolution, it’s the same 2048x1536 retina panel that we’ve seen ever since the iPad with Retina Display back in 2012. PPI is rated at 264 like it has been before. Touch ID has also been added to the brand new iPad Air 2 but it works just like the iPhone’s Touch ID sensor. The specs have also had a workover, hacked to the brand new A8X processor which is the 1.5GHz tri-core processor. And it’s really interesting to see Apple pack a third core into their A8 chip and it’s also a big surprise when you find out that this iPad Air 2 has 2GB of RAM.

Software’s iOS 8 and just from startup, the Air 2 is running smoother than ever. It’s going to be very interesting to see how the iPad Air 2 performs in real world because according to the benchmarks like this one, the iPad Air 2 is a much more capable device than any of its predecessors. Even the new iPhone 6 and 6 Plus don’t match the processing power nor the RAM of the brand new iPad Air 2.

So make sure to keep a watch here on PhoneDog.com and leave a comment down below on what you’d like to see on the iPad Air 2.