iPhone Air: Unboxing and First Impressions

In this episode, David Nason unboxes an iPhone Air and gives his first impressions of the device. Apple’s thinnest phone to date, the iPhone Air was released alongside the iPhone 17, 17 Pro and 17 Pro Max in September 2025. Our thanks to Apple for providing this device for review. This and future reviews of the device are entirely independent with no editorial input from Apple.

Key Points:

• Despite the coverage I’ve seen and heard, I was still somewhat blown away by just how thin this device is.
• It is significantly thinner than the iPhone 15 Pro.
• While the screen is slightly larger, it doesn’t immediately feel like a much larger device due to the thin build.
• Set up went smoothly, including transfer from physical SIM card on my existing phone to the eSIM on the Air.
• During set up and initial use, the fact that it has only a single speaker does not appear to be problematic. This is only navigating the phone with VoiceOver, and in a quiet environment however, so more real world use is needed in order to make a full judgement.
• Seems nice and responsive, but of course it’s only a very first impression. Battery too will be an important aspect to test in the coming weeks.

Transcript

Disclaimer: This transcript was generated by AI Note Taker – VoicePen, an AI-powered transcription app. It is not edited or formatted, and it may not accurately capture the speakers’ names, voices, or content.

Dave: Hey there, David Nason here. I hope you are keeping well. I am with you today to take a look at the new iPhone Air which came out in September 2025. Apple have kindly sent me one to review. The one they sent me is the space black model with 512 gigabytes of storage.

Dave: The phone I am coming from myself is an iPhone 15 Pro so I'll quickly compare the two as well in terms of their size and weight and that kind of thing so firstly let's take a look at the box that they came in so you can see that the iPhone 15 Pro box is significantly higher um or thicker than the Air so the Air is in a much thinner box the Air is in a slightly longer box but that makes perfect sense as well because it is a bigger screen size as well so that's how the two compare but now I'm going to move the old one aside and open up the iPhone Air box so just do the tabs at the back and off the lid.

Dave: And the phone is sitting on top and there are very little things in the box. So we have the phone sitting on top, which I'll come back to in a second. And then we have a USB-C cable and a few little pieces of paper, that kind of thing. As with previous models in recent years, there's no charger, but we do have the USB cable and that is all that is in the box. It's a nice threaded cable as well.

Dave: Good so let's move the box aside and the phone as soon as I picked it up I'd say straight away and I it's it's lighter and thinner than I even expected it to be coming from the 15 Pro which you know compared to a Max I can see how with the Pro Max I could see how it'd be significantly thinner and feel significantly smaller but even compared to the regular Pro the regular 15 Pro in my case this really does feel a lighter but just really really thin it's incredible so I'm going to pick up the iPhone 15 Pro beside it.

Dave: And if I put them down flat beside each other I can tell how much thicker the iPhone 15 Pro is and it's not a thick phone and it's a little bit um the Air is a little bit taller so it does have that slightly bigger screen size but not significantly so it's just um it's just a little bit I think and yeah it is uh certainly lighter I'm just going to take off the screen cover here.

Dave: Okay, with that screen cover removed, I will say again just how struck I am by how thin this phone is. It's nice as well. So, so thin. The only place it's not thin is the top at the back where we have what Apple now called the plateau, which has replaced the old camera bump. So what's noticeably different, I guess, is that rather than just being a square in one corner, it is the whole way across the back of the phone. It doesn't go down that far though.

Dave: It's only about an inch in height. So it's not that disruptive. If we put it down on the desk, I guess it's actually less wobbly potentially as well because it's the whole way across the back. It's noticeably thicker, you do notice it there definitely, but the rest of the phone is super super thin. In terms of what it has down each side, then on the left hand side we have the action button of course, then the volume up and volume down buttons.

Dave: On the bottom, just a microphone and the USB-C port. The right hand side then we have the camera which is the camera button which is quite flush actually with the side of the device and then above that the power button and then nothing really on the top so that is it there's no sim tray this phone is e-sim only so that's how the phone looks and feels really really nice really light and it's just striking how thin it is and I know everybody is saying this and then I hadn't I didn't intentionally not picked one up until I received this one uh so this is my genuine first impression of how the phone actually feels and it is incredibly light and more so even than or an incredibly thin feeling.

Dave: Much more so even than I expected and because I'm coming down to say from a 15 Pro rather than say a Pro Max so yeah, really really interesting and after this I will get this phone set up and have a look at how it performs.

Dave: Okay, and we are back as I have now set up the new iPhone Air and it is ready to use. I transferred apps and settings and so on from the iPhone 15 Pro and it all went perfectly well. One thing I did notice is that it did not automatically prompt me during the setup process to transfer my phone number my sim card over to the new phone as I thought it would during the setup process but once set up I had to go into the settings app and select this option to transfer but when I did that it was very very simple I was transferring from a physical sim on my 15 Pro to a e-sim on the iPhone Air and it was very simple process, took about one, two minutes max and it was done.

Dave: So that's good to see that that was quite an easy process and the network is now working on my new iPhone Air. In terms of performance, it's obviously just new. I've just looked around on the home screen really so far and it does seem very responsive. But then the iPhone 15 Pro is also quite responsive when it comes to just basic things like that on the home screen.

Dave: We will of course see over time how it performs over the next couple of weeks and how battery comes into play and that kind of thing as well. And yeah, am I happy with the performance? So I'll be back to talk more about it from that perspective. The other interesting piece was around the speakers because prior to getting this phone, one of my concerns would have been whether the fact that it is a mono speaker, only has the one speaker rather than the stereo speakers.

Dave: Know could be an issue so it has the top speaker on the phone but doesn't have any speaker on the bottom of the phone as the 15 Pro and all other iPhone models in recent years have but actually I was halfway through the transfer process or the setup process before I even remembered it and even then it wasn't so much that I noticed this just that I remembered this.

Dave: So certainly in this quiet environment, and that is probably a factor or could be, but here at home in this environment, I didn't really notice the fact that I was only getting sound from the one speaker using voiceover. Again, we'll see if when I'm out and about using the phone and that kind of thing, will I notice it more? Will it be a problem? Time will tell. But certainly that's a good start that it didn't jump out to me that the sound was much worse or anything like that.

Dave: I do have the volume level a little bit higher, about 20% higher to get roughly the same level of sound. So maybe that suggests something. But nonetheless, I think that's a good sign. Of course, if you're playing music and that kind of thing, you probably will notice the difference that bit more. But certainly for just general use with voiceover in this environment, it's a good start for that speaker.

Dave: And really I think that is it for this initial impressions of the iPhone Air. I will of course be putting the phone through its paces in real day-to-day use over the coming weeks and indeed months to see how it performs. But in terms of initial impressions, I really like the phone. Physically it's so thin, so light, even though it's a slightly bigger screen than the 15 Pro.

Dave: It doesn't so far really feel it I think I can still reach everything pretty much as easily partly because of that thinness so I've never been a fan of very big screen phones but this probably feels like a smaller phone than it is because of that you know thin and light design so really interesting how it gets on in terms of performance and can I actually use this as my main phone um and yeah look forward to getting to grips with this phone over the coming weeks thanks so much and I'll see you in the next one.