This year saw Apple's largest tablet challenged by a variety of smaller contenders, one of which is the LG G Pad x8.3. Here is how the budget priced device from LG compares against its competitor.

Design

The iPad Air 2 is one of the best tablets available and its popularity is largely due to its design which consists of a full metal build and curved edges. Additionally, it has a smooth high quality finish on its back panel, a fingerprint scanner incorporated into its home button and comes in three color options, gold, silver and space grey.

As for the G Pad x8.3 it has plastic on its front and its edges are covered with a soft lining of the same material. Its back panel, however, is metal. The G Pad x8.3 only comes in black.

Display

The iPad Air 2 is the bigger device and obviously has a bigger 9.7 inch IPS LCD, capacitive screen with a resolution of 1536 x 2048 pixels and a density of 264 pixels per inch. As for the G Pad x8.3, it has an 8.3 inch TFT screen with a resolution of 1920 x 1200 pixels.

Specs

Comparing the hardware in the two devices, the device from LG has a Qualcomm Snapdragon chipset, an octa-core CPU clocked at 1.5 GHz and an Adreno 405 GPU while the iPad Air 2 it comes with an Apple A8X chipset, and a CPU with three cores clocked at 1.5 GHz.

Memory

There is no memory slot on the iPad Air 2 while the G Pad x8.3 come with a slot which allows for the addition of up to 128 GB of external storage. As for RAM, both the G Pad x8.3 and the iPad Air 2 have 2 GB onboard.

Price

The LG G Pad x8.3 costs $299, unlocked, but with a two-year contract its price falls to $79.99. As for the iPad Air 2, its unlocked 16 GB version costs $500.