The few new things in Apple’s midrange tablet

The iPad Air, the middle child of Apple’s tablet lineup, has been upgraded to the M4 chip with increased RAM and… Well, there’s not much else if I’m honest. At the very least, the new iPad Air M4 models remain the same price as the iPad Air M3, with the 11-inch version starting at $599 and the 13-inch version starting at $799. I would give Apple more credit if they had increased the starting storage or added literally something else.

If you put them side by side, you might not be able to tell the difference, but this upgrade would benefit creatives and professionals more than anything. There’s a significant performance increase between the M3 and M4, and the RAM increase does a lot of the heavy lifting, especially if you take advantage of Apple’s smarts.

If you’re using an M1-powered iPad Air or something even older, the new iPad Air M4 should be a compelling upgrade. Pre-orders begin at 9:15 a.m. ET on March 4, with units arriving a week later. We hope to have full reviews posted by then. But in the meantime, let’s see what the performance gains might look like and what we’re missing in this year’s iteration of the iPad Air.

iPad Air M4 vs iPad Air M3: Performance and Battery Life

The most significant difference between the two generations of iPad Air is their chipsets. The latest iPad Air launches with the M4 chip compared to the M3 chip in its predecessor, and its RAM increases from 8GB to 12GB.

I don’t put much stock in incremental chip increases because the performance gain is usually minimal. However, the M4 is up to 30% faster than the M3, according to Apple. This can be noticeable even to casual users, especially as the years pass and iPadOS becomes more and more demanding. For power users, this means that more demanding jobs, like video editing, will be noticeably faster.

For those who need the fastest internet speeds, the new iPad Air also features Apple’s N1 chip, which enables Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 6, the latest connectivity technology. However, I really don’t imagine the average user needs internet speeds of up to 46 gigabits per second compared to the iPad M3’s 9.6 Gbps on Wi-Fi 6. If you do, you’re in the tax bracket of an iPad Pro.

Now, despite the increase in speeds, battery life between the M4 and M3 models remains the same. Apple says all four models get up to 10 hours of battery life for surfing the web over Wi-Fi or watching videos (up to 9 hours on a cell phone). No complaints here.

iPad Air M4 vs iPad Air M3: design, display, audio and cameras

For better or worse, we’re not getting any change in any of these departments, which is why I’m lumping them together.

The iPad Air is available in blue, purple, beige and gray. The 11-inch option measures 9.74 x 7.02 x 0.24 inches and the 13 measures 11.04 x 8.46 x 0.24 inches. As their names suggest, they are both rather light, weighing 1.01 pounds (1.02 pounds for the M4) and 1.36 pounds, respectively. My only wish was that we had new colors that popped a little more.

Then there are the displays. All four versions of the iPad Air sport a 264 ppi Liquid Retina LED display. The 11-inch supports a resolution of 2,360 x 1,640 with a peak brightness of 500 nits, while the 13-inch offers a resolution of 2,732 x 2,048 at 600 nits. It would have been nice to see an OLED or even Mini-LED panel come to the iPad Air, which could have made the screen snappier and more dynamic. But it is more disappointing that we are stuck at 60 Hz unlike the Pro models which offer 120 Hz, making their visual experience smoother.

Both products feature landscape stereo speakers. The audio quality of the iPad Air M3 can’t measure up to that of the iPad Pro, so I doubt the M4 model will.

You won’t catch me taking photos with an iPad, but for those of you who do, the iPad Air M4 features the same 12MP cameras on the front and back as its predecessor.

iPadOS 26, Apple Intelligence and Apple accessories

Nothing huge happens to iPadOS or Apple accessories in the iPad Air update. Last year’s revamped Magic Keyboard still works with these new models, as does the Apple Pencil Pro. iPadOS 26, released last fall, was a major update but will still be quite familiar to anyone who has ever used an iPad. The new iPad Air M4 does, however, benefit from a significant increase in AI processing speeds, thanks to its new chip and a 50% increase in RAM. However, unless you are an experienced AI user, you probably won’t notice a difference.

That said, if your love language is spreadsheets, the full specs are below:

iPad Air M4 vs. iPad Air M3: Specs at a glance