The M3 iPad Air Isn't the Upgrade I Wanted

Apple releases a new iPad Air equipped with M3 chip, with the price unchanged! But the necessity of upgrading is doubtful.

The new iPad Air continues to use 11-inch and 13-inch screen sizes, and the price is still starting at $599 and $799, respectively. However, for most users, the need for upgrades is not very high.

The iPad product line is currently a bit confusing, and the iPad Air is in an awkward position between the entry-level iPad and iPad Pro. Last year, the iPad Air was updated to the M2 chip and added a 13-inch screen version, which was launched simultaneously with the new entry-level iPad. Although we expect support for OLED screen, headphone jack, a second USB-C port and even MagSafe charging, this update focuses on chip upgrades.

Same design

The design of the new iPad Air is not surprising. It still offers 11-inch and 13-inch screen options, Touch ID on the power button, stereo speakers and a USB-C port for charging and data transfer. It supports Apple Pencil Pro and USB-C Apple Pencil (need to be purchased separately), but the headphone jack is still missing.

Unfortunately, the iPad Air still uses the same IPS LED “Liquid Retina” display as the previous Air models, rather than the upgraded OLED panel used on the latest iPad Pro. The IPS screen is pretty good, but it would be even better if you could see an OLED screen on an iPad with a starting price of less than $1,000.

M3 chip upgrade

The main upgrade lies in the M3 chip, which is roughly the same as the chips in Mac models such as the 2024 M3 MacBook Air, 2023 24-inch iMac, etc. This is the first iPad to use an M3 chip, as the latest iPad Pro jumps directly from the M2 chip to the latest M4 hardware, while the entry-level iPad models use low-power A-series chipsets.

Apple said that this iPad is nearly twice as fast as the M1 iPad Air and 3.5 times faster than the older iPad Air equipped with the A14 Bionic chip. Performance improvements are particularly noticeable in gaming, video editing, and other applications that benefit from stronger CPU and GPU performance. It also supports the same Apple Intelligence features as other M-series iPads, allowing you to summarize notifications, use more powerful Siri, rewrite and summarize text, and other actions that use AI models on your device.

If you are just using your iPad for normal tablet tasks such as streaming, web browsing, and casual gaming, the processing power improvement won't make much difference. iPadOS is still too closed to applications that make the most of the hardware – web browsers, software development IDEs, emulators, and virtual machines with custom engines are still mostly banned from listing on the App Store. Unless you are playing state-of-the-art mobile games or using Final Cut, the iPad Air experience from several generations ago is similar.

Related News: Apple's entry-level iPad storage space doubles

But the cheapest iPad lacks something important.

The M3 with a more powerful 8-core CPU has a multi-threaded CPU workflow that is 35% faster than the iPad Air with the M1. The M3 is equipped with a 9-core GPU and has 40% faster graphics performance than the M1. The M3 also introduces Apple's advanced graphics architecture to the iPad Air for the first time, and supports dynamic caching and hardware-accelerated grid shading and ray tracing."

Price and time to market

The 11-inch iPad Air Wi-Fi version with M3 chip starts at $599 and the Wi-Fi Cellular version is $749. The 13-inch Wi-Fi version starts at $799 and the Wi-Fi Cellular version is $949. This is the same price as the previous iPad Air, and the basic storage capacity is also 128GB.

You can buy the new iPad Air through the Apple Online Store, and pre-orders are now available and will be officially released on March 12. It will also be available soon at third-party retailers such as Amazon and Best Buy. Education customers can buy the 11-inch model for $549 and the 13-inch model for $749.

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