The new iPad Air has floated down from Apple’s spaceship headquarters in Cupertino, California. As CEO Tim Cook said Monday, “there’s something in the air.” Still, you may not be surprised to learn it looks very similar to last year’s model, though now it should be faster with an M3 chip rather than last year’s M2.
The 2025 model of the iPad Air starts at $600 for the 11-inch version and $800 for the 13-inch variant. Both come with M3 chips, the last-gen silicon featured in the 2024 MacBooks. Apple skipped a generation for its iPad Pro, shoving an M4 chip inside the 2025 model along with its ultra-thin frame sporting a pretty tandem OLED display. The new Airs, by comparison, include a similar thin frame to last year’s rendition.
M3 was a step up from M2 in many ways, especially with graphical rendering. Still, Apple is angling this device as the upgrade for people still using a M1 or A14 Bionic-level CPU. The company claims the M3 on iPad is two times faster than the version with M1. Apple also wants to promote these tablets for use with Apple Intelligence.
While last year’s M2 iPad Airs included the old version of the Magic Keyboard. The new iPad Airs can come packaged with a Magic Keyboard that includes the function row, so you better pretend your tablet is actually a MacBook. You’ll still have all the multi-tasking issues that come from iPadOS, but as somebody who appreciated the iPad Pro’s magnetically-attached keyboard, it’s not a bad thing to see it coming to Air.
Then there’s the new iPad updated with the A16 chip. The 10th-gen iPad’s new chip includes a 5-core CPU and 4-core GPU, alongside Apple’s 16-core neural engine. It was first featured in the iPhone 14 Pro and later came to the iPhone 15 and iPhone 15 Plus. The extra benefit of the new version is that it includes more storage at 128 GB for its base $350 starting price.
This is a strange development, considering the base iPad even with the upgraded chip it’s not technically available to receive Apple Intelligence. Meanwhile, the iPad mini from 2024 can receive Apple’s AI with the A17 chip also found in the iPhone 15 Pro.
This is a developing story. We will be updating with more information throughout the day.
