Apple Gives the iPad Air a Small Power Boost

Apple has kicked off the week with the announcement of a new iPad Air, now powered by the M4 chip. This is a fairly modest update, moving the device from the previous M3 to the M4, but otherwise keeping the same hardware and design. The company also announced a new price-friendly smartphone, the iPhone 17e.

It still comes in 11-inch and 13-inch sizes, and otherwise looks identical to the previous generation. The only other significant change is the switch to Apple’s N1 networking chip, which rolled out in the iPhone 17 and iPad Pro last fall. This is Apple’s home-brewed Wi-Fi and Bluetooth chip, which supports the latest Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 6 standards, not to mention Thread support for smart home control. It also has Apple’s custom C1X modem on the cellular models, meaning sub-6 5G support that’s more energy efficient than the modem inside the previous iPad Air.

The only other big upgrade is a bump from 8 GB of unified memory to 12 GB. This is a welcome change, as Apple hasn’t increased the price of the base configurations. It also comes at a time during a memory shortage crisis, but despite this, the M4 iPad Air still starts at $599 for the 11-inch model and $799 for the 13-inch. Storage options start at 128 GB and max out at 1 TB.

Courtesy of Apple

In Apple’s press release, the company highlights changes for buyers coming from older models like the M1 iPad Air, which came out in 2022, such as the 12-megapixel Center Stage camera. It’s located along the landscape edge instead of at the top, which is a much more natural spot for a webcam for video calls. It also features better landscape stereo speakers for that same purpose. That was all there on last year’s model as well, though.

The M4 chip isn’t the latest Apple silicon, as it’s still one generation behind what’s available in the M5 iPad Pro and 14-inch MacBook Pro. However, with M4, the iPad Air is up to 30 percent faster than the iPad Air with M3. Apple highlights a 2.3x gain in performance over the M1 and says it has “4x faster 3D pro rendering,” along with features like ray tracing.

You can view pricing and configurations right now, but preorders for the new iPad Air start at 6:15 a.m. PT (9:15 am ET) on March 4 and ship on March 11.

We expected an update to the base iPad as well, but for now, only the iPad Air is getting refreshed. That could change throughout the course of the week, though, as Apple is expected to make more product announcements this week—including MacBooks—ahead of its “Special Apple Experience” on March 4 in New York City.

This is a developing story.