The Nexus 9 and iPad Air 2 both made their debuts earlier this week, adding two premium tablet options for customers. The debate over Android and iOS has been prominent for a few years, but now that the playing field is level in terms of functionality on both platforms  what do both tablets offer from a hardware perspective?

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Design

The iPad Air 2 trimmed 18 percent off the original iPad Air, thinner than a pencil at 6.1mm. This beats HTC's Nexus 9, which did not focus so heavily on thinness. Both tablets are lightweight, although we expect the iPad Air 2 will once again beat out its Android competitor.

In terms of design, the Nexus 9 is a minimalist beauty, with a soft-touch back and metal frame. The front has good bezels for holding the tablet, but not the best choice aesthetically. The iPad Air 2, on the other hand, is classic Apple - anodized aluminum on top of an anti-reflective coating.

Apple's refined style is more than HTC's minimalist look - but this is a subjective view - what's not subjective is the thinness and lightness going in the iPad Air 2's favor.

Display and Performance

Both tablets have a display resolution of 2048x1536, but the Nexus 9 is going to look a little sharper due to the 1.1-inch size difference.

Performance-wise, the iPad Air 2 packs a new A8X chipset, featuring a 64-bit CPU and 2GB of RAM. Compare this to the Nvidia Tegra K1 CPU and 3GB of RAM, and there is a clear winner here - the HTC Nexus 9. Not only does the Tegra K1 blow all of the other current mobile processor out the water in graphical performance, but the Nexus 9 has another gigabyte of RAM to utilise.

Apps Store

Apple announced 675,000 apps available specifically for iPad, a higher number than Google has previously touted on Android. The age old argument against apps, for Android fans, is the experience on Android is better due to customization, but that is not true on iOS8.

If apps is what someone is looking for, both will fill his or her needs. The main difference is iPad specific apps are more readily available, while the Android is hard pressed to find good tablet ports of apps, that make use of the larger display size.

Overall

Price should play a factor in any comparison, and the Nexus 9 is $100 cheaper than the iPad Air 2. Is this enough to consider the Nexus 9 over the iPad Air 2? Perhaps yes - the Nexus 9 is an excellent tablet for almost every task and will last as long as the iPad Air 2.

TagsNexus 9, iPad Air 2, Nvidia Tegra K1, iOS8