CompTIA A+ Core Series (1101 & 1102): What’s New?

It doesn’t matter if you’re a student, a young professional, or someone who’s been working odd jobs for 20 years and suddenly wants to work in IT, landing your first job in IT is rough. Fortunately, there’s the A+ certification from CompTIA – everyone calls it your foot in the door. But maybe you heard? There’s a new A+.

In April 2022, CompTIA introduced new exams (220-1101 and 220-1102) and in October, they retired the old versions altogether! So, is the new A+ still worth earning? What’s on the new A+ exams that weren’t on the old ones? Worry not: CompTIA is just keeping its certification current with the times, and you can learn all about the changes here.

Build a Strong Foundation With CompTIA Training

If you’re new to IT or need to diversify your existing skillset, CompTIA is a great starting point. Because CompTIA certifications are vendor-neutral, you can broadly apply the knowledge and skills they validate regardless of what products or services your organization uses. 

CBT Nuggets online CompTIA training can help you learn the fundamentals of areas such as networking, security, and the cloud. Once you’ve got the basics down, you can branch out to more specific vendors or specialized career paths. Our CompTIA training will help you build the foundation for a successful IT career.

Not a CBT Nuggets subscriber? Sign up for a 7-day free trial to get a feel of what it’s like to learn IT with us. Explore all of our CompTIA training and start learning skills that can boost your career no matter what stage you’re at!

What is CompTIA A+?

The A+ is an early-career, vendor-agnostic IT certification – one of the Information Technology (IT) industry’s most recognized certifications for IT employees getting their first foot on the career ladder. The certification and its exams are maintained by CompTIA, a non-profit organization that aims to lead and advocate for the IT industry worldwide. From system administrators to field service technicians to cybersecurity associates, the A+ is the first step that many IT employees take in their careers.

In order to earn the A+, you have to pass two exams, which cover all the bases of IT fundamentals. Passing the two exams, 220-1101 and 220-1102, is like getting your driver’s license and memorizing a map of a city. When you have the A+, an employer knows you understand a little bit about every section of IT (the map) and how to perform basic tasks in maintenance and troubleshooting (driving the car).

Should You Earn the A+?

There are very few entry-level IT certifications that are more respected than the A+. It’s great for new IT employees, but it’s especially good if you’re trying to get started in an IT career field. Getting your first job in IT can feel like a paradox: you can’t get an IT job without experience, but you can’t get IT experience without a job. 

The new CompTIA A+ is vendor-agnostic, so it represents a basic level of familiarity and experience with nearly any hardware or software combination – a proficiency that many employers look for. That’s why if you’re trying (or especially if you’re struggling!) to get a job in IT, yes, you should probably earn the A+.

Related: 5 SaaS Jobs the New CompTIA A+ Can Prepare You For

What’s Different About the New A+?

In April 2022, CompTIA updated the two exams for the A+. CompTIA released 220-1101 and 220-1102 in April 2022 and then in October 2022, they retired 220-1001 and 220-1002 completely. As of this writing, the original A+ exams are retired, and the new exams are the only ones you can take.

Since it’s vendor-agnostic, the A+ has always been focused first on practical skills and a general understanding of the landscape of technology. That means an emphasis on creative problem solving with an understanding of what a piece of technology adds to the network or device, not memorization of a checklist. The new A+ doubles down on that skill set but emphasizes that management and troubleshooting are increasingly happening in virtualized, remote locations.  In a blog post, CompTIA explained that the new A+ is focused more on supporting a hybrid workforce than it was in the past. According to CompTIA, people earning the A+ are going to be getting jobs on networks that are more dynamic than in the past. As such, the new A+ is focused on software as a service (SaaS) models and applications (for example, Outlook or Salesforce) and troubleshooting and remedying network and hardware issues remotely rather than assuming everyone will always be in the office.

In addition to that, the new A+ emphasizes what they call “changing core technologies” – the tech that is rapidly defining modern businesses and networks: data management, scripting, cloud virtualization, and IoT devices and their security. The new A+ also re-emphasizes all the major OSs (Windows, Linux, MacOS, Chrome OS), their use cases and how to keep them working.

Are the New CompTIA A+ exams Harder?

The new CompTIA A+ exams 220-1101 and 220-1102 aren’t significantly more difficult than their earlier versions, but that doesn’t mean they’re easy. Taken together, the two new CompTIA A+ exams cover 8 fundamental IT domains: mobile devices, networking, virtualization & cloud, hardware, operating systems, security, software, and operations.

The new A+ exams are also still vendor-agnostic. That means you’re learning broad, general skills that apply in most settings, and not learning just one piece of hardware or software. That’s great for employers, but it can be a lot harder for students. Becoming a vendor-agnostic IT professional means learning all the ins and outs of managing and troubleshooting lots of different technologies. Trying to prepare for the new CompTIA A+ without a good online course that covers the 220-1101 and 220-1102 exam objectives will be difficult, and long. 

How Long Will it Take to Earn the New A+?

CBT Nuggets recently surveyed hundreds of IT professionals with their A+ to find out how long it takes to earn the A+, along with nearly a dozen other popular certifications – you can read about it here. Now, we don’t have enough data from people who’ve earned the new A+ yet to confirm that the timeframe is identical, but experiences with the new cert shouldn’t be radically different. And about half of everyone who earned the A+ took less than 6 weeks to prepare for the first of the two exams, but about a quarter took more than 5 months. 

Since you have to pass two exams to earn the A+, it could take as long as eight months to fully prepare. With the right resources and training, you could probably knock that down to four months. If you have prior training and education in IT and you took a good CompTIA A+ online course, you could probably prepare for both exams of the A+ in under 3 months.  The IT field covers many different jobs, technologies, and skills. There are entry-level and extremely advanced jobs in networking, security, device management, mobile integration, virtualization, and everything in between. The new A+ from CompTIA doesn’t just cover all those topics and aspects of the IT industry, but it’s vendor-agnostic, so it prepares you to work with technologies from any manufacturer or developer. CompTIA’s A+ has always been a great idea for new IT employees, and the new version of the A+ is better than ever. CompTIA’s new A+ is simply a necessary evolution that keeps people who earn the A+ relevant and ready to work in any field of IT. Get started with CBT Nuggets today and learn everything CompTIA!