A bigger screen, a better chip, but otherwise it’s the same iPad Air we’ve come to know and love
The iPad Air was never the absolute best iPad you could buy, but we loved it because it could handle most of the things people wanted to do on an iPad with style and at a much more affordable price point than a top of the range iPad Pro. Now, Apple has updated the iPad Air with a nice big 13-inch screen, a zippy M2 processor for lag-free app interaction, good speakers and a slim frame, so let’s take a closer look at what it offers.
Price and spec
The new iPad Air comes in two different sizes: the same 10.9-inch size it always had (now referred to simply as ‘11- inch’), and an all-new 13-inch model.
The 11-inch model star ts at $599 for 128GB of storage, double the base storage of the last-gen M1 iPad Air for the same star ting price point, which is great. $699 gets you 256GB, $899 gets you 512GB, and $1,099 gets you 1TB. It costs $150 to add a cellular connec tion into the mix.
The bigger 13-inch iPad Air star ts at $799 for 128GB of storage. 256GB costs $899, 512GB costs $1,099, and 1TB costs $1,299. Again, add $150 on top to get a cellular connec tion.
Note that cellular options are handled exclusively by the eSIM system now — you won’t be able to put a physical SIM card in the iPad Air 6, and will instead have to ac tivate it with a carrier plan via the set tings sof tware.
That 13-inch model is an exciting addition to the iPad Air range from a cost perspective, as previously you would have had to stump up a good chunk of change more to get a screen size that big on an iPad by purchasing an iPad Pro, whether you needed its other high-end features or not. It’s not like-for-like screen tech — there’s no OLED or ProMotion in the 13-inch Air — but if it’s just those screen real estate inches you’re worried about, this is a way to nab those on a relative budget.
For this review, we’re looking at the 13-inch iPad Air in a purple finish, with 1TB of storage and cellular connec tion. That configuration would cost you $1,449 and represents the top-of-the-line for the iPad Air.
Design
If you’ve seen an iPad Air before, you know what to expec t; 2024’s Air doesn’t look all that dif ferent at first glance. There are a few key dif ferences compared to the first generation, but most people would need to inspec t the old and the new side-by-side to spot them.
It’s still a thin and light tablet — the 11-inch model measures 247.6mm x 178.5mm x 6.11mm, and weighs 462g, while the new 13-inch model measures 280.6mm x 214.9mm x 6.1mm, and weighs 617g (618g for the cellular model).
Even in its new big screen size
