Well, fuck me. I sure called that one wrong. When I wrote, just last week, that another “iPad Air is unlikely, since the 6th-generation iPad Air was just released in May 2024, and iPads don’t typically have annual refresh cycles,” I wasn’t expecting Apple to Tekken-sweep my legs out from under me and announce a new iPad Air this week.
My foolery is your gain. If you’re in the market for a new iPad Air, you can pre-order it now, starting at $599. Orders are set to arrive on customers’ doorsteps and in Apple Stores on Wednesday, March 12.
a surprise announcement
Tim Cook’s teaser video last week had left ambiguous the question of whether Apple would announce more than one Air device. And while we (as in, the whole internet) were correct that Cook was nodding toward the MacBook Air M4—it was announced today, also with a release date of March 12—the refreshed iPad Air snuck up on us.
Everything lately has been MacBook Air this, iPhone Air that. If the iPad has been on anyone’s mind these past few months, it’s the long-awaited 11th generation of the base-level iPad. The current 10th generation has been on sale since October 2022, and with the iPad Pro and iPad Air upgraded just last year, there hasn’t been much chatter that either would see much attention this year.
Given that the iPad Air is the mid-tier option between the entry-level iPad and the pricey iPad Pro, I can’t be toooo bothered by the fact that Apple chose to plonk the M3 Chip into the 2025 iPad Air, although it still feels like a bit like reaching into the bag and pulling out a slightly stale potato chip.
The M3 chip was released on the MacBook Pro M3 line back in November 2023, and the MacBook Air received it in March 2024. Both those lines have moved on since and now offer its successor, the M4 chip.
Comparing the iPad Air M2 and iPad Air M3, their screens, dimensions, weight, and even their chips’ number of cores (eight), RAM (8GB), and memory bandwidth (100GB/s) are the same.
The M3 chip adds hardware-accelerated ray tracing, though, and because Apple chips get a bit of a performance boost with every generation, we expect the iPad Air M3 to be a bit faster. Retailers are offloading their iPad Air M2s, which are showing a $100 discount to $499.
If saving $100 over the iPad Air M3 is worth the performance hit to you, then there are still a few retailers selling iPad Air M2s. I’d spring for the M3, though. It’s newer, so it’ll be worth more as a trade-in, and any performance boost is welcome.
colors and configurations
Space Gray, an Apple customer favorite, may have been phased on the iPad Pro, MacBook Air M4, and MacBook Pro M4 lines, but it lives on in the iPad Air M3, alongside blue, purple, and Starlight (gold).
Until I get my hands on one each, I can’t tell precisely whether the simply named “blue” of the iPad Air M3 is the same (or even close) to the brand-new Sky Blue of the MacBook Air M4, but I’d bet they’ll differ to some extent, given that Apple isn’t calling the iPad’s blue “Sky Blue.”
Like with the just-announced MacBook Air M4, Apple seems to have built up a stock of new iPad Air M3s in various configurations. Playing around with the build-and-order configurator, there was no change on the delivery/pickup date no matter how I optioned out an iPad Air in terms of color, storage capacity, or whether it included a cellular connectivity chip or not.
If you want anything but a base-level model, I’d recommend you make up your mind and pre-order it soon. If past Apple releases are anything to go by, the specced-out models tend to see their ship dates pushed back after the early birds start snapping them up.
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