Among tablets the iPad Air 2 looked invincible until recently when tablet sales cooled, other devices such as the tablet/laptop hybrid the Surface Pro 3 arrived to break its monopoly. Importantly the Surface Pro 3 managed to reinvent itself successfully last year as it took on the device from Apple.

Design

When it comes to design both devices are neck and neck as iPad Air 2 has an aluminum unibody while the Surface Pro 3 features magnesium. However, the device from Microsoft is slightly taller, broader and thicker and much heavier than the iPad Air 2. The Surface Pro 3 however provides a Type Cover keyboard and a dedicated pen which have to be bought separately. As for the iPad Air 2 keyboard cases are available, but there is no dedicated stylus available. Finally the iPad Air 2 has a fingerprint sensor which is missing on the Surface Pro 3.

Display

The display on the Surface Pro 3 is bigger and measures 12 inches. It has a resolution of 2160 x1440 pixels and a destiny of 216 pixels per inch. As for the iPad Air 2 it has a display measuring 9.7 inches with a resolution of 1536 x 2048 pixels and density of 264 pixels per inch.

Specs

The Surface Pro 3 comes either with an Intel dual core i3/i5 or i7 processor while the iPad Air 2 comes with an Apple A8X chipset and a triple-core CPU clocked at 1.5 GHz.

Memory

As for memory slots, the iPad Air 2 does not have one but the Surface Pro 3 has a microSD slot and so external storage can be added. As for RAM, the device from Apple has 2 GB while the Surface Pro 3 comes with either 4 GB or 8 GB. When it comes to external storage, the iPad Air 2 has either 16/64 or 128 GB while the Surface Pro 3 starts at 64GB and goes up to 512 GB.

Software

A big advantage in the Surface Pro 3 is that it comes with Windows 8.1 while the iPad Air 2 has iOS 8.1

Price

The starting model of the iPad Air 2 costs $500 while the lowest priced Surface Pro 3 costs $800 and this increases to $930 when the type cover is included.