Unlike games, utility apps are a far more niche product, where they’re the best thing ever created for certain individuals or of absolutely no use to others.  Air Display falls neatly into that category, as it’s an application which lets you use your iPad or iPhone as your computer’s second monitor.

To use Air Display you’ll need the app on your iPad (obviously), but you’ll also need to visit Avatron’s website and download a small program for your computer, which acts as the server.  Both devices will need to be connected to the same Wi-Fi network, so there won’t be any display sharing while you’re at Starbucks if your computer is at home.

When you first start up the Air Display app, it provides clear instructions on where to find this program, and after a brief installation, it’s ready to go.  Well, nearly anyway.  It didn’t work for us on our initial test, so we headed over to Avatron’s website to seek assistance and found a help page almost straight away.  Amongst all sorts of techy things that we didn’t want to get involved with, it was suggested we turn off OS X’s firewall.  A brief visit to System Preferences later and Air Display was up and running.

On your computer, there is a small Air Display icon that lets you select which device you want to share with and adjust a few preferences, and on the iPad, it’s simply a case of opening the app.  Control of the iPad’s window can be done both with touch and with your mouse pointer.  Touch works as you would expect, but we can’t hide the geeky enjoyment that zipping the mouse pointer to the right of the main screen and on to the iPad’s screen gave us!

Working with Spaces on a Mac also provided some interesting results.  Opening the Spaces page saw, in our case, four windows all doubled up, with one acting for the iPad and the other for the Mac.  Placing an open program into the iPad’s Space saw it appear instantly on screen, making this a quick way of transferring content over, otherwise windows can be slid over to the right of your monitor and onto the iPad.

Air Display Providing Firefox on the iPad

The performance is almost faultless, it’s very smooth and every command sees an instant response, so Air Display is never frustrating to use.  It starts up and is connected to your laptop in moments too, and the lack of messing around with configuration tools ensures that when you want to use the app, you’re doing so with the minimum of fuss.

At this stage, if Air Display is for you, then you’ve probably already got a task in mind.  In all honesty, we struggled a little and aside from finding a Flash video or two to run on the iPad, it didn’t instantly fit into our lives.  Avatron suggest using Air Display for applications that don’t currently have a presence on the iPad – iChat for example – or for graphic artists, musicians and programmers who want the extra screen real estate.

The fact we couldn’t find a purpose for Air Display doesn’t matter, as it performs the tasks for which it has been created to do so well, we really wanted to find something just to enjoy using it!  Air Display costs $9.99/£5.99, which is a little expensive, but if you already have an iPad to hand, it’s a lot cheaper than going out and buying another monitor, especially if it’s only going to be used occasionally.

Overall: 4/5.

Additional: If you’re already using Air Display, or have read this review and purchased a copy, tell is in the comments what you’re using it for.

*Air Display need Mac OS X 10.5.8 or 10.6 or later, or Windows XP, Vista or 7 to operate.*