The M3 iPad Air isn’t a big update, that much is obvious. It’s a spec bump update to a popular product in a mature product line. We’ve seen this pattern for decades in the traditional PC space, no big deal. Keeping devices up-to-date is good because people upgrade at different times.

What excites me most is that we’re getting this update less than a year after the iPad Air’s last update. Let’s hope this means Apple is beginning to take the iPad Air more seriously.

Video Review

Key Points

Pros	Cons
Great performance with the M3 chip	Its time for more “Pro” features to trickle down to the iPad Air, like Face ID or Promotion
Improved graphics with compatible games	Color selection remains subpar
$400 less expensive than the iPad Pro	The iPad Air gets warmer than the iPad Pro when plugged into a display

Who is the iPad Air for in 2025?

The iPad Air serves as that sweet spot in the iPad lineup for that person that wants to do more with their tablet than just watch videos and play games. Of course, the Air is great for those uses too. For a device that can easily serve as either a supplementary device to a traditional PC or a primary one on its own, the M-Series chip in the Air will handle almost anything you throw at it with ease.

As we’ve seen with the M-Series Macs, and before that with the iPad Pro, Apple’s more advanced chips offer not only a lot of power-efficient performance, but they stay viable for years and years. With the occasional battery replacement, the M3 iPad Air could last you for something like 5, 6, or 7 years. And starting at $599, that presents an amazing value for iPad users.

In short, the iPad Air is for the iPad user that wants to do a little more.

Hardware

The model I picked up was the base 11-inch Air with 128 GB of storage and 8 GB of RAM.

The design remains unchanged from the Air’s redesign in 2020, which itself is the same design as the 2018 iPad Pro. Despite its age, this design still looks modern and sleek. The Sky Blue color is the same as the M2 Air, and is only blue in perfect lighting. Otherwise, it looks silver or gray.

The iPad Air retains a laminated Liquid Retina Display with 500 nits of brightness on the 11-inch model and 600 nits of brightness on the 13-inch Air. Colors pop on images, videos, and games. The display doesn’t compare well to the Ultra Retina XDR display in the iPad Pro, but it really doesn’t have to at the iPad Air’s price point. I actually didn’t find myself missing the iPad Pro’s screen as much as I thought I would. It’s a very good screen.

Touch ID in the top button remains fast, and maybe even preferable to Face ID in some scenarios like laying in bed, or using your iPad while in the Vision Pro experience.

There’s a high-quality landscape-oriented 12 MP front camera (which the MacBooks are only now getting), and 12 MP rear camera that can record in 4k.

The USB port supports USB 3.1 Gen 2 with transfer speeds up to 10 Gbps.

The two-speaker setup produces a fair amount of sound in a device as thin of a profile as the Air. It doesn’t compare well at all to the four-speaker audio of the iPad Pro, but on its own, it sounds fine.

My Experience with the M3 iPad Air

Design

People have complained in the past about the Air name, and how the iPad Air weighs more than the iPad Pro, and “Air” is supposed to mean “the thinnest and lightest one”. Interestingly, even though the iPad Pro is technically lighter, the Air feels…less dense, if that makes sense? The Air feels ever so slightly lighter than the Pro, and I’m not exactly sure how this is..

Thermals

It was something of a surprise to many that Apple put the M3 in the new iPad Air. The M3 uses the same CPU cores as the A17 Pro chip from the iPhone 15 Pro, and it was known to run a little hot. My experience with the M3 Air so far is that it doesn’t get noticeably warmer than my M1 iPad Pro, but it does feel a little warmer than my M4 iPad Pro. While running games like Genshin Impact, the tablet does get fairly warm on the bottom right side (if held in portrait). The only time it got concerningly warm was when plugged into my Thunderbolt dock. This sometimes happens to iPad Pros as well, but the Air gets warmer in this scenario.

Peformance

I’ve been putting the Air through its paces with the stuff I normally do. I started by testing video creation, which is the most intensive tasks I do on my machines. Exporting my PowerBeats Pro 2 review, which was a 10 minute 4k video, we can see that the export times for the Air fall between the M1 and M4.

iPad Pro (M1 chip)	8 minutes, 58 seconds
iPad Air (M3 chip)	5 minutes, 20 seconds
iPad Pro (M4 chip)	4 minutes, 49 seconds

In this particular export, the M3 was roughly 10 percent slower than the M4, which really isn’t bad at all. And it’s also interesting to see how far we’ve come from the M1, which really wasn’t that long ago.

Next up was gaming. Since one of the big focuses of the M3 was an improved graphics architecture, it stands to reason that games would perform and/or look at least marginally better than the M1 or M2 Airs.

Playing Genshin Impact at default settings was a smooth experience with very little for frame drops in my experience. As I increased the game to max settings, the Air did begin struggle a bit more. It definitely wasn’t hitting a consistent 60fps with everything cranked up, but the game was still enjoyable to play.

I also looked at Assassin’s Creed Mirage as a test game because 1) Apple advertised it as supporting ray tracing for the iPhone 15, so I assume it does for iPad, and 2) we don’t have Assassin’s Creed Shadows on iPad yet, (but it is coming, in theory).

The experience was much the same as Genshin Impact. With default settings (which seemed pretty low to me), the gameplay was very smooth, and the game looked good. Cranking up settings really impacted frame rate, so even with the M3’s improved graphics, you’ll need to compromise on some of the graphics settings.

Of course, I’ve done other things you’d do on a computer, like writing blog posts, responding to email, and web browsing. No issues there, but that’s the same story across the entire iPad lineup.

Its worth noting that another thing the M3 brings is an improved media engine with AV1 decode support. This brings more efficient streaming of content from services like YouTube or Netflix that are defaulting to using the AV1 video codec. This is one of those things that you don’t really notice, but in theory, will contribute to better battery life if you watch a lot of AV1 encoded video on your iPad.

Keyboard

I didn’t bother getting the new Magic Keyboard for iPad Air, because I mostly do most of my writing at my desk connected to my Thunderbolt dock, which works pretty well with my Nuphy Air 75 keyboard. But I did play with it when I went to the Apple Store.

The new Magic Keyboard for iPad Air adds a function row and a bigger trackpad than the old iPad Pro keyboard that was available for the iPad Air.

On the downside, the keyboard is not backlit and doesn’t come in colors other than white (my favorite).

This keyboard is $30 cheaper than the previous Air keyboard, which makes is still too expensive, but also is the best keyboard experience available.

What Stayed The Same

Much of what made the M2 iPad Air a great buy has stayed the same. We still have:

• 8 GB of RAM
• 128 GB starting storage, with configurations up to 1 TB
• Muted color selections
• USB port with support for USB 3.1 gen 2
• 12 mp front camera, and back camera with support for 4k video recording

My Hope For the iPad Air

Apple gave us the iPad Air’s reason for being during 2024’s iPad event video:

iPad Air is designed to deliver advanced features pioneered on iPad Pro, and make them available at an even more affordable price

– John Ternus

The iPad Air is possibly the best value iPad available today, but I can’t help but wish Apple took the product a little more seriously.

Look at how the MacBook Air is positioned in the MacBook lineup. Despite every one of its specs being worse than the MacBook Pro, The MacBook Air has its own unique value proposition. It prioritizes size and weight, and for some users, those are more important than specs.

The iPad Air doesn’t have any features that are as unique and intentional. It reuses the 2018 iPad Pro’s design, and it’s not appreciably lighter than other full-size iPads.

Which brings me to my other hope. Apple talks about how the Air brings Pro features to a lower price point, but it feels like that feature migrations stopped happening years ago. It seems silly to me that after almost seven years, Face ID is still exclusive to the iPad Pro. Same with Promotion. There were rumors of Apple looking into 90hz displays for some of its non-Pro devices. If that’s true, it obviously didn’t happen in time for this refresh. I understand the idea of product segmentation, but I think the Air is overdue for some more “pro” features trickling down from the iPad Pro. Face ID, if nothing else.

Buying Recommendation

If you have an M2 iPad Air, upgrading is not even worth considering, unless you really want the ray tracing support for the few games that will bother implementing it.

If you have an M1 iPad Air, things start to get a little more interesting since you’d gain:

• Apple Pencil Pro support
• Relocated front camera
• Faster USB port
• Better performance
  

But even then, if you’re happy with how your M1 Air is handling your workflows, keep on going with the M1.

For users on an A14 Air or older, or coming from a base iPad, this iPad is going to give you the best bang for your buck. You’ll get:

• Better display
• Faster performance
• 8 GB of RAM
• Magic Keyboard and Apple Pencil Pro Support

I’ve seen a few people considering upgrading from an older iPad Pro to the M3 iPad Air. To each their own, but there are so many downgrades, assuming you’re coming from a 2018 or new iPad Pro, that I personally wouldn’t consider it. You lose:

• Promotion
• 4 speaker audio
• Face ID
• Thunderbolt support (on M1 and new Pros)
• No Flash/flashlight (for walking around in the dark!)

I felt the absence of all of these features, except for Thunderbolt support, over this past month.Maybe they aren’t as impactful for you, but I would find it really hard to switch to the Air full time.

Verdict

The iPad Air isn’t much of an upgrade over last year’s model. It remains one of the cheapest entry points into Apple’s M-Series chips and has more than enough performance for productivity and gaming-based workflows. While it doesn’t compare very well to newer iPad Pros, at $400 less than the Pro, the M3 iPad Air is one, if not the, best value in the iPad lineup.

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