Apple Just Announced the IPad Air M4.
Apple is gearing up for a series of product announcements on Wednesday . So, naturally, the company unveiled two of those products on Monday. The iPhone 17e , Apple’s newest “affordable” iPhone, essentially upgrades its processor to the A19. Similarly, the company is updating its iPad Air lineup with the M4 processor. However, if you were hoping for other major iPad Air updates, you’ll have to wait a bit longer.
The iPad Air is the same, only now with the M4 processor.
If you put the iPad Air M4 and iPad Air M3 side by side, you might confuse them. That’s because Apple hasn’t changed much in the overall design or appearance of these tablets. The 11-inch M4 Air looks identical to the 11-inch M3 Air, as do the two 13-inch versions.
Perhaps the only new feature in the M4 Air is the M4 processor itself. It’s not Apple’s newest chip—that’s the M5—but the M4 is one generation newer than the M3, so some performance gains are expected. The M4 chip in the Air features an eight-core CPU with three high-performance cores and five efficiency cores, a nine-core GPU, 120 GB/s of memory bandwidth, and 12 GB of RAM. That’s one fewer high-performance core than the M3 Air, but one more efficiency core. More significant is likely the 4 GB increase in RAM, as the M3 Air only ships with 8 GB. The new Air will be able to run more tasks simultaneously without having to refresh apps or pages in iPadOS.
We won’t know the exact impact of these performance changes until testers get their hands on the iPad Air M4. However, Apple claims the new iPad is 30% faster than the previous generation and up to 2.3 times faster than the iPad Air M1. (Apple typically compares its latest products to products from several previous generations, as the differences between generations are often more subtle.) In my opinion, this is definitely not an iPad that Air M3 users should upgrade to, but it will likely be a good option for those with an older Air—or an older iPad—to upgrade to.
In addition to the M4 chip, Apple’s iPad Air integrates the N1 chip and the C1X modem. The N1 chip is included in all iPad Air models with the M4 processor and supports standards such as Wi-Fi 7, Bluetooth 6, and Thread, the smart home standard. When you purchase an iPad Air with cellular support, you get the C1X, Apple’s proprietary modem, which the company claims is 30% more efficient than the modem in the iPad Air with the M3 processor.
Other than those points, this is the same iPad Air as the M3. It comes in 11- or 13-inch variants, with 12-megapixel rear and front cameras; a USB-C port and Touch ID; the same battery life (Apple claims 10 hours of video playback); and both models still start with 128GB of storage. And, notably, it still lacks the high-res 120Hz display, opting for a standard 60Hz display. That’s disappointing.
How to buy an iPad Air M4
The iPad Air M4 is available for pre-order on March 4, starting at $599 (the same starting price as Apple’s recently announced iPhone 17e) for the 11-inch model with 128GB of storage. The 13-inch model with 128GB of storage starts at $799. Adding cellular data increases the price by $150. Apple says the iPad Air M4 will officially launch on Wednesday, March 11—the same day as the iPhone 17e and the Samsung Galaxy S26 series .