Apple has just launched a refreshed version of the iPad Air, armed with the M3 silicon. The design language remains unchanged, and there are 11-inch and 13-inch sizes up for grabs, once again. There is, however, a new Magic Keyboard designed especially for the new iPad Air.
The big draw, of course, is the upgraded M3 processor, which Apple claims is twice as fast as the older iPad Air model with an M1 chip. The M3 silicon comes with an 8-core CPU and a 9-core GPU.
Apple says the M3 chip offers up to a 35% performance boost in multithreaded CPU tasks compared to the M1-powered iPad Air, while graphics performance receives a 40% lift.
“M3 also brings Apple’s advanced graphics architecture to iPad Air for the first time with support for dynamic caching, along with hardware-accelerated mesh shading and ray tracing,” adds the company.
As a result, graphics-based rendering tasks are up to four times faster on the new iPad Air, which should help with AAA games based on the Metal framework that have arrived on the Apple Store in the past couple of years.
The AI accelerator engine atop the M3 is also faster, with Apple touting a gain worth 60% for AI-based workloads. On the software side, it runs iOS 18 with the full stack of Apple Intelligence features such as Siri-ChatGPT integration, Image Playground, Genmoji, and more.
What’s inside?
The new iPad Air is nearly identical to the iPad Air M2, except for hardware-accelerated ray-tracing, a ProRes encode and decode engine, support for AV1 decoding, and a media engine ready for Hardware-accelerated 8K HEVC, 4K H.264, ProRes and ProRes RAW.
These features are mostly tied to the M3 silicon upgrade, and targeted at folks who are eyeing demanding workflows such as video editing and playing next-gen games such as Resident Evil: Village and Death Stranding: Director’s Cut. I had a fantastic time playing these games on my M1 iPad Pro, and expect nothing different on the iPad Air.
You get an 11-inch (2360 x 1640 pixels) screen with 500 nits peak brightness on the smaller variant, while its larger sibling serves a 13-inch (2732 x 2048 pixels) display with a higher 600 nits brightness. Coming to stylus input, the new tablets support Apple Pencil Pro and Apple Pencil USB-C.
The M3 silicon also mirrors what the M2 chip had to offer viz. an 8-core CPU, a 9-core GPU, and a 16-core NPU. There’s 8GB of RAM inside the refreshed iPad Air, matching the entry-level iPad Pro with the M4 processor.
Battery life figures also remain unchanged. Apple claims up to 10 hours of web browsing or video watching on a single charge when tethered to a Wi-Fi connection, and nine hours in cellular mode.
There’s a 12-megapixel camera at the back, capable of recording up to 4K 60fps videos, and full-HD slo-mo videos at 240fps. The front camera also relies on a 12-megapixel sensor, but there’s no FaceID support here.
Biometric authentication on this one is handled by a TouchID button integrated in the power button. The new Magic Keyboard for iPad Air, on the other hand, features a floating design borrowed from its iPad Pro counterpart.
The keys offer 1mm travel and rely on the scissor mechanism. Up top is a 14-key function row and an extra USB-C port on the ridge for pass-through charging.
Price and market release
The 11-inch iPad Air starts at $599, while education customers can get it for $549. For the 13-inch variant, customers will have to part ways with $799, which is the same price tag as its predecessor.
Color options on the table are blue, purple, starlight, and space gray. As far as storage options go, the M3 iPad Air will be available in 128GB, 256GB, 512GB, and 1TB variants.
The new Magic Keyboard, on the other hand, will set you back by $269 for the 11-inch trim, while the 13-inch variant goes for $319.
Pre-orders of the new iPad Air model start today in the US, and it will start arriving at the doorsteps of customers March 12 onward.
