Design and display
New Apple products tend to come with tweaks to the design, compared with the previous version, even if it’s just an update to the colours. Not this time, though. Apple’s current colours have been proving popular, the company says, so, it’s stuck with blue, purple, starlight and space grey for the latest generation of iPads.
The display remains the same as before, too, with 11in and 13in versions. This is no bad thing, though, as Apple has consistently had gorgeous iPad Air displays – expertly optimised LCD screens with faithful colours and decent contrast. The 11in screen is big enough but the 13in adds an extra-immersive feel – and a little extra weight. Every other aspect of the two iPad Air size models, apart from the price, is identical.
Magic Keyboard and Apple Pencil
For some of the iPad’s many apps, the experience is improved with accessories, and this year’s iPad Air release is accompanied by an updated Magic Keyboard. Last year, the iPad Pro had a major redesign of its keyboard, with a metallic surface around the keys. It introduced a row of function keys, too.
The area around the keys here hasn’t changed but the new Magic Keyboard has introduced the useful function key row, for both iPad sizes. The keys are similar in comfort and responsiveness to those on a Mac, which is to say, very. They are backlit, too, like on a Mac laptop. There’s also a large trackpad, while the wrap-around design protects the iPad hidden within, and the magnetic attachment makes the keyboard easy to attach or remove in an instant.
The iPad Air, like every current iPad, is also compatible with two styluses, each of which is a version of what’s called the Apple Pencil. In this case, the two you can choose from are the Apple Pencil (USB-C) and the top-of-the-range Apple Pencil Pro. The latter offers superb precision and extra capabilities, enabling you to easily write in apps such as Notability, or scribble equations in Apple’s Notes app, for instant maths calculations.
Apple Intelligence
The suite of Apple Intelligence AI features is growing, and they are compatible with this iPad. They also worked on the iPad Air with the M2 chip but here, combined with the M3 processor, there seems to be a greater responsiveness and immediacy – not that there was much hanging around before.
This means, when you’re asking the iPad to rewrite an email, for example, it happens almost instantly, so that missive you wrote in anger can be tempered into something more professional or even friendly (while you privately hang on to your righteous indignance). Meanwhile, long email chains can appear with brief summaries at the top, and Smart Reply helps you quickly draft a response to an email that includes questions.
Then there’s Genmoji, which creates original emoji from scratch, based on images or text input – if you have need for a picture of a dalmatian puppy in a top hat on skis (and who wouldn’t?), the iPad will immediately comply.
Apple Intelligence automatically builds access to ChatGPT into Siri and writing tools. The system always checks with you before accessing ChatGPT, so you know where you are, and you can ask 30 questions a day for free.
Note that every iPad apart from one is now compatible with Apple Intelligence. The exception is the just-updated regular iPad, an omission explained perhaps by that tablet’s much lower price.
Performance
The big news here is the move from the (already very fast) Apple M2 processor to the even speedier Apple M3 chip. Apple compares the speed boost to an earlier iPad, the one with the M1 chip, saying the new tablet has a main processor (CPU) that’s 35 per cent faster, and a graphics chip (GPU) that’s 40 per cent faster.
Whichever iPad you’ve used in the past, unless it’s the very latest iPad Pro, this will be faster. In practice, you may not notice that much difference, though, because Apple has consistently optimised performance on every iPad.
However, as more power-hungry apps arrive, and as Apple Intelligence grows, it’s worth having the headroom that will allow those more demanding features to continue to work at lightning speed.
Battery life
Battery life is around 10 hours. I could be talking about almost any iPad, from any generation, as Apple has been consistent in delivering strong battery life since the first iPad arrived in 2010. This is almost always enough. The nature of iPad use is different from the iPhone, for instance, so, even if you’re using it as a thin, light laptop with the Magic Keyboard, it will serve you well throughout a longish day.
