- 11- and 13-inch iPad air tablets Get M3
- This adds support to new magic keyboard
- Prices are unchanged since last models
Not even 24 hours after Tim Cook teased, “There’s something in the air,” Apple has just made its next generation iPad Air official. Along with getting M3 chip, it is still in several fun, poppy colors and now supports the ‘new’ magic keyboard that was originally launched with the iPad Pro M4.
Now this is a fairly early update to the iPad Air, considering it was upgraded to M2 chip and an updated design on May 7, 2024. It is still clearly popular within the lineup and is now getting an even more powerful chip to make all kinds of tasks even more fluid.
It is still available in either an 11-inch or 13-inch size, so you can choose what best suits your needs and there is no price increase year over year. The 11-inch model starts at $ 599 in the US, while 13-inch is $ 799 (start), both start at 128 GB of storage and come in blue, purple, star light or space gray.
The screens are still liquid retina screens, which means no dynamic OLED like on the iPad Pro. However, they offer a pulsating and crispy experience with an anti-reflective coating standard. They also support P3 -wide colors and real tone, which automatically adjusts the color temperature to your space. The whole thing is pretty nice to have, and given that this still supports the Apple Pencil Pro, you can hover across the screen to see what influence a pen had to have before you commit to it.
What m3 means
As far as the M3 chip goes, it is an 8-core CPU split between 4 performance, 4 efficiency kernels, a 9-core GPU with support hardware-accelerated beam pores and a 16-core neural engine. Plus, Apple has even confirmed that the new iPad Air Ships with 8GB of RAM out of the box. It is sufficient to say that this should be plenty of power for everyday performance in iPados 18, for stage manager Multitasking experience and for Apple Intelligence features. Remember that iPad air with M2 was not a slouch, but this should further secure the device in the future.
The iPad Air still sticks with a touch ID sensor baked in the power button for easy approval or locking, but it holds the 12-megapixel front-facing camera in the horizontal location, which means this device is best used in landscape mode.
And that is why reducing the smart, more MacBook-like magic keyboard that premiered in 2024 to iPad Air makes so much sense. It still offers close to a full -size keyboard with 14 feature keys to quickly adjust things like brightness, playback, microphone and volume, but it also offers a larger index field.
True to the older smart keyboards and any magic keyboard offered by Apple, you don’t have to worry about charging this accessory or an annoying mating process as it has a smart plug built -in. Interestingly, the base is still the only model that supports the two -part magic keyboard so it adheres with the floating design here on the iPad Air. It’s priced at $ 269 for the 11 -inch iPad Air and a little more for $ 319 for 13 inches, but only comes in white.
Finishing iPad air at the back is still a 12-megapixel camera to take photos or videos. As far as this update goes, it’s pretty much focused on giving iPad Air even more ceiling height and better performance everywhere with permission from the M3 chip. In the press, Apple does not call for its benefit gains on the M2-powered iPad Air, but on older models, there promises up to twice faster than the M1 iPad Air and a jumped three and a half times faster than the A14 Bionic model.
We go practically and test the new iPad Air with M3 as soon as we can, but for now, if you’re sold, it’s up to pre -order right now and will formally launch on March 12. But if you were hoping for one more thing, Apple also gave Entry-Level iPad a bit of a spec bump, but perhaps most importantly the price kept the same.
