Wi-Fi 6E and Bluetooth 5.3

This year’s iPad Air joins the iPad Pro by getting Wi-Fi 6E and Bluetooth 5.3 support. The M1 iPad Air only had Wi-Fi 6 and Bluetooth 5.0, despite Apple adding the newer technologies to the iPad Pro only a few later.

How much these improved wireless specs matter will depend on what you plan to do with your iPad Air, but Bluetooth 5.3 could make a big difference if you like listening to music from your tablet, as it’s more reliable and theoretically offers support for better codecs. None of those codecs are available in iPadOS yet, but at least you’ll be ready when Apple decides to add them.

Along the same lines, Wi-Fi 6E will only be useful if you have a Wi-Fi 6E router at home or regularly visit places where the newer Wi-Fi technology is available. If so, you’ll see improved performance and battery life when working over Wi-Fi as the M2 iPad Air gets access to a whole new 6 GHz frequency that’s off-limits to Wi-Fi 6 and older technologies.