Apple and Nokia both came out with new tablets yesterday.  For Nokia, this is its first entry in the tablet space, and probably its last since in few months it’s hardware division will be swallowed up by Microsoft. Meanwhile, Apple is quite the veteran in the tablet space, having invented the things in the first place, and for most consumers its iPads are still the creme de la creme.

So, out of genuine curiosity given Microsoft/Nokia’s desperation to become a force in mobile, we thought we’d take a closer look at how the newbie entrant compares to the latest offspring of the grandaddy of tablet devices.

Head-to-Head: The iPad Air vs The Nokia Lumia 2520

Design:

iPad Air: Touted as Apple’s thinnest and lightest full tablet to date,  it’s made up of an aluminum unibody, dedicated keys for power/sleep, volume, silent/screen rotation lock, and a Home button

Nokia 2520: Colorful glossy shell casings, available in black, white, red and cyan. With dedicated keys for volume and power/lock.

Dimensions:

iPad Air: Height 240 mm x Width 169.5 mm x Depth 7.5 mm, Weight 1 pound or 469 g

Nokia 2520: 267 x 168 x 8.9 mm, 615 g

Display:

iPad Air: 9.7-inch (diagonal) LED-backlit Multi-Touch display with IPS technology, 2048-by-1536 resolution at 264 pixels per inch (ppi), Fingerprint-resistant oleophobic coating

Nokia 2520: 10.1” Full HD (1920 x 1080), 218 ppi, TrueColor, ClearBlack, IPS LCD, Corning Gorilla Glass 2, Wide viewing angle, Enhanced outdoor readability

Processor:

iPad Air: A7 chip with 64-bit architecture and M7 motion coprocessor

Nokia 2520: Quad-core 2.2 GHz, Qualcomm Snapdragon 800

Operating System:

iPad Air: iOS 7

Nokia 2520: Windows RT 8.1

Storage Options:

iPad Air: WiFi only and WiFi+cellular – 16/32/62/128GB,

Nokia 2520: 32GB, can be expanded with up to 32GB microSD, 2GB RAM

Battery:

iPad Air: Built-in 32.4-watt-hour rechargeable lithium-polymer battery, up to 10 hours of surfing the web on Wi-Fi, watching video, or listening to music, up to 9 hours of surfing the web using cellular data network

Nokia 2520: 8000 mAh, maximum standby time of 25 days, can be hooked to a Nokia Power Keyboard which gives the device an additional 5 hours battery life, fast charging, charges to 80 percent in just one hour.

Wireless and Connectivity:

iPad Air: 3.5-mm stereo headphone minijack, built-in speaker, microphone, nano-SIM card tray, Lightning connector, Wi‑Fi, digital compass, assisted GPS, cellular, Wi-Fi (802.11a/b/g/n); dual channel (2.4GHz and 5GHz) and MIMO, Bluetooth 4.0 technology

Nokia 2520: 2.5 mm Charging Connector, 3.5 mm audio connector, HDMI-D (micro), Micro-USB-AB, USB 3.0, Bluetooth 4.0, WLAN IEEE 802.11 a/b/g/n, WPA2-Personal, WPA2-Enterprise, NFC sharing and pairing

Camera:

iPad Air: 1.2MP FaceTime camera, 5MP iSight camera, 1080p HD, video recording, video stabilization, face detection, tap to focus, Five-element lens, Hybrid IR filter, backside illumination, photo and video geotagging, HDR photos

Nokia 2520: 6.7 MP rear camera with Zeiss Optics; front cam HD 2 MP wide angle, still image capture, video call.

Sensors:

iPad Air: Three-axis gyro, Accelerometer, Ambient light sensor

Nokia 2520: Ambient Light Sensor, Accelerometer, Gyroscope, Proximity Sensor, Magnetometer

Price and Availability:

iPad Air: Price starts at $499 and will be available on November 1.

Nokia 2520: Will initially be available for sale in the US, UK and Finland at an estimated price of $499.

Which Is Best?

This probably isn’t really a fair comparison since the Lumia 2520 is Nokia’s first effort at making a tablet, while Apple’s been there and done that. Among its disadvantages, Nokia’s tablet is notably heavier than the iPad Air, which means it won’t be comfortable to hold when used for long periods.  Still, the Nokia 2520 isn’t a bad device at all, if you don’t mind shouldering the extra weight, since it offers more productivity features thanks to the Windows RT platform (which comes complete with Microsoft Office and Outlook).

One key advantage of the Lumia 2520 you can purchase a Nokia Power Keyboard for $150, which not only provides a keyboard and a gesture trackpad, but also adds 5 more hours of battery life. This is in addition to the device’s ‘fast-charge’ feature that juices it up to 80 percent in just one hour, meaning that so long as you can find a plug socket somewhere, you can do more stuff while you’re on the go.

The Nokia 2520 may not be aa sleek as the iPad Air, but it does come in various colors, and it’s cheaper since the $499 price tag is for the 32GB version which offers both WiFi and Cellular connectivity, while the iPad Air’s price tag of $499 is for the 16GB WiFi only version.