iPad Air (2024) Review: The most practical tablet that is ‘Pro’ enough

iPad Air 2024 Review: Why you should get the mid-tier iPad this year

When you want an iPad, you are presented with a well-rounded lineup that offers something for everyone, covering a range of price points. Want something under ₹40,000 that gets mostly everything done? You have the base 10th gen iPad, which is an even better deal after the recent price cut. Or, perhaps, you want the absolute cutting edge and the thinnest iPad with the best screen for content watching; in this case, you can buy the high-end iPad Pro OLED models.

Here, the iPad Air is the most ordinary of all. It doesn’t have a screen as good as the iPad Pro, and despite having the ‘Air’ moniker, it isn’t the lightest iPad anymore, with the iPad Pro taking that crown now. But what it does offer is a strong value proposition. Not only do you get a blazingly fast processor in the form of the M2, but the iPad Air also has everything you want from a tablet and more.

So yes, the iPad Air is the iPad that everyone should buy, and it happens to not cost an arm and a leg like the Pro. Here, I’ll tell you why it is the only iPad most people should get, and how it fares in day-to-day use.

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iPad Air’s screen is not OLED, but does that even matter?

Tl;dr: The new iPad Air offers a beautiful IPS display that unfortunately still comes with a 60Hz refresh rate, but for the most part, it stays perfectly legible in sunlight, is ideal for watching OTT content, and offers better black levels than previous generations.

The Long Answer: You have to know your use cases. If you are in the market for an OLED tablet, you likely have two use cases—watching content in the best way possible and being a creative who wants the most accurate colours for your workflow. Here, the iPad Air may not offer the best screen in the game, especially considering how you can get an OLED Android tablet like the Samsung Galaxy Tab S9 for around the same money. But hear me out—it does offer support for formats like Dolby Vision, and the 13” model that I’m reviewing here has a slightly higher peak brightness of 600 nits (vs 500 with the 11” model). This translates to an experience that you will be quite happy with. It also supports Apple Pencil Pro hover, which is another feature it shares with the more expensive iPad Pro.

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iPad Air 2024 Review: Performance, battery life, and more

Performance is where the iPad Air is in a league of its own with the Apple M2 chipset. It flies during everyday tasks such as browsing the web, navigating between apps, and the animations are buttery smooth. Sometimes, I fail to understand how it runs so smoothly on a 60Hz screen. Honestly, I don’t miss the 120Hz refresh rate because of how content I am with the overall fluidity.

That said, it isn’t just for everyday fluidity that Apple added the M2 chipset (also found in its Mac computers) for. Using the iPad Air 2024 for creative work, including video editing in apps like LumaFusion, or design work in Procreate was a breeze. I remember working on a project with five video layers of 4K 10-bit LOG footage, and it was a breeze—something I can no longer say for my ageing MacBook Air M1. Compared to my old iPad Air with the A14 SoC, it was leaps and bounds better, and that makes me think: for someone who is using a 3-4 year old iPad like the iPad Air 4, who wants to not spend too much money but still get a performance boost and the latest Apple Intelligence features, the iPad Air 2024 is a solid upgrade despite having more or less the same design language.

Coming to the battery life, I have no complaints. Like Apple claims, it can easily last 10+ hours for web browsing and watching videos, and these are respectable numbers. Of course, the standby time here is good as well. If I leave the iPad Air fully charged and unused for a day, it only tends to lose around 5-8% battery. That said, if you push it with intense edits on apps like Final Cut Pro, LumaFusion, or Adobe Lightroom, you can run out of charge in about 6-7 hours. Unfortunately, the iPad Air still only supports 20-30W of wired charging, and that means it can take a few hours to go from empty to fully charged.

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Apple Pencil Pro brings iterative updates but they make for a more immersive experience

I distinctly remember the first time I started using Procreate and the Apple Pencil Pro. It was the little things that impressed me—how well the barrel rotate feature works and how you get subtle haptic feedback when you double-tap on the Pencil Pro to change tools. These all make for a much better experience for digital artists. The barrel roll feature, which uses the built-in gyroscope to let you rotate the brush and even see the preview using the Apple Pencil hover, is, in my opinion, a big addition for artists. It lets them easily see what they are going to draw and brings fine control which was previously missing for the iPad + Procreate combo.

The design remains the same, but considering how comfortable the Apple Pencil 2 is, there was no need to change it for the Apple Pencil Pro. However, users must remember that this version only works with the iPad Air 2024 and the iPad Pro OLED models and will not work with older iPads despite looking the same. The magnet placement has changed, and that’s why it won’t pair to older iPads magnetically.

iPad Air 2024 is ‘pro’ enough

Barring a few things, such as the ProMotion technology, a LiDAR Scanner, and additional speakers, the iPad Air is just as ‘Pro’ as the iPad Pro. Yes, the current generation iPad Pro that was launched alongside the iPad Air has several extras, including being the thinnest iPad ever at 5.1mm, having an OLED display, and of course, the M4 chipset, but it also costs almost double ( ₹99,900) of what the base iPad Air retails for ( ₹59,900).

The natural question here is: is it worth spending ₹40,000 more for a product whose features you may not even use? Let me put it simply: if you are in the market for a tablet that can take care of your entertainment needs and let you do creative work, including using apps like Procreate, Final Cut Pro, or LumaFusion, the iPad Air will let you do all of that without skipping a beat.

In my immediate circle, there are hardly 1-2 people who may have the use case for the Pro model, but for the rest of them, I think the iPad Air is the one to buy. So yes, I’ll recommend the iPad Air to almost everyone who needs an iPad at the moment. Also, when you add up the accessory costs, it amounts to almost ₹75,000, and that is where you must look to draw the line if you want a reliable device that can do almost everything the top-end iPad can do.

That said, iPads are likely to remain secondary devices for most users, thanks to iPadOS. Apple seems to be aware of this and appears to intend to keep it that way to maintain the Mac’s distinct role. As a secondary device, you probably won’t need all the high-end features of the iPad Pro, such as LiDAR for design and architecture, or the M4 chip for faster Lightroom edits. For most purposes, the iPad Air should be more than sufficient.

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Verdict: Value for money tablet that most people should buy

As enticing as the new iPad Pro is, I still think most should just buy the iPad Air—primarily for the value it offers. That said, even if you leave aside the value factor, the iPad Air 2024 is a well-balanced product with performance that will leave most Android tablets in the dust and is only second to the iPad Pro, and a good screen that remains enjoyable in most scenarios. Yes, you will miss OLED if it is a screen type that you often use, which is likely nowadays. But it can be overlooked considering how accurate the display is and the overall experience you can derive from the iPad Air.

Also, it goes without saying, but it’s the little things that make for an overall well-polished device—right from the front camera that is placed on the side now to how well the stereo sound is tuned from the speakers. For ₹59,900, or ₹79,900 (for the 13″ model) it is a real value, and I don’t think you should buy anything else in this price bracket.