Less than a year after upgrading its iPad Air with the M2 chip, Apple is already back with an enhanced version. Today, the company announced an all-new iPad Air, complete with the M3 chipset. But the updates don’t stop there—the company also unveiled a long overdue refresh of its base iPad model, adding an A16 chipset and double the storage. All tablets are available for pre-order today and will ship on March 12.
The seventh-generation iPad Air doesn’t have any noteworthy hardware upgrades. As with its predecessor, you’ll have the choice between an 11-inch and 13-inch display sizes—both of which have slim bezels, Touch ID integrated into the top button, a 12-megapixel landscape selfie camera, and a 12-megapixel rear camera.
You’ll find the significant changes under the hood. Apple updated the tablet with an M3 chip, which the company first debuted back in 2023, alongside the 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pro and 24-inch iMac. It’s since made its way to last year’s MacBook Air (13-inch and 15-inch). It’s not the latest chip (Apple launched the M4 back in May), but it’s still considered powerful and fairly new.
Equipped with an 8-core CPU and 9-core GPU, Apple claims CPU performance is up to 35 percent faster than the iPad Air with M1, while graphics are up to 40 percent faster. The M3 also supports features like mesh shading, ray tracing, and dynamic caching for graphics-intensive tasks.
The company says the Neural Engine is also up to 60 percent faster compared to the M1 for “AI-based workloads.” This will help to power Apple Intelligence—the company’s suite of AI features like Mail Summaries, Smart Replies in Messages, Writing Tools Cleanup in Apple Photos, Genmoji, and more. You can read all about these features and more in our roundup of macOS Sequoia features.
Apple also released a new version of its Magic Keyboard case for the iPad Air. It comes with the same upgrades you’ll find on the latest version for the iPad Pro, including a larger built-in trackpad along with a row of keys for functions like screen brightness and volume control. It’s a bit more affordable this time around too, starting at $269 for the 11-inch tablet and $319 for the 13-inch version. As with the M2 iPad Air, it’s compatible with the Apple Pencil Pro and Apple Pencil (USB-C) as well.
