Apple has just launched a refreshed version of the iPad Air, armed with the M3 silicon. The design language remains unchanged, with 11-inch and 13-inch sizes up for grabs, once again. There is, however, a new Magic Keyboard designed especially for the new iPad Air models.
The big draw, of course, is the upgraded M3 processor, which Apple claims is twice as fast as the older iPad Air model with an M1 chip. The M3 silicon comes with an 8-core CPU and a 9-core GPU.
Apple says the M3 chip offers up to a 35% performance boost in multithreaded CPU tasks compared to the M1-powered iPad Air, while graphics performance receives a 40% lift.
“M3 also brings Apple’s advanced graphics architecture to iPad Air for the first time with support for dynamic caching, along with hardware-accelerated mesh shading and ray tracing,” adds the company.
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As a result, graphics-based rendering tasks are up to four times faster on the new iPad Air, which should help with AAA games based on the Metal framework that have arrived on the Apple Store in the past couple of years.
The AI accelerator engine atop the M3 is also faster, with Apple touting a gain worth 60% for AI-based workloads. On the software side, it runs iOS 18 with the full stack of Apple Intelligence features such as Siri-ChatGPT integration, Image Playground, Genmoji, and more.
The 11-inch iPad Air starts at $599, while education customers can get it for $549. For the 13-inch variant, customers will have to part ways with $799, which is the same price tag as its predecessor.
The new Magic Keyboard, on the other hand, will set you back by $269 for the 11-inch trim, while the 13-inch variant goes for $319.
Pre-orders of the new iPad Air model start today in the US, and it will start arriving at the doorsteps of customers March 12 onward.
