One of the unsung uses of the iPad is as a personal LTE hotspot. It's rather easy to set up the device as a hotspot for a MacBook if you need to work away from Wi-Fi, although you'll need to keep an eye on your data usage. Last year, Anand Lal Shimpi at Anandtech discovered that an LTE iPad 3 could work as a wireless hotspot for 25.28 hours, downloading data at 50 KB/s. Shimpi repeated his test with the new iPad Air and discovered that even despite having a much smaller battery, the iPad Air can run for 24.08 hours as a hotspot at twice the throughput rate (100 KB/s).
The iPad Air battery is quite a bit smaller due to the slim profile of the device -- it's a 32.4 Wh battery compared with the 42.5 Wh battery built into the third-genera
