A New iPad Air

The iPad Air may finally be moving to an annual update cycle, with a new version expected to arrive in the next few months. The current M2 iPad Air was announced on May 7, 2024, so we wouldn’t expect a new model much sooner than that. Still, that’s a nice improvement, considering the iPad Air has typically gone up to two years between new releases. The M1 iPad Air that preceded the current model was announced on March 8, 2022, alongside the current iPhone SE, and the two models before that came in September 2020 and March 2019.

The new iPad Air is expected to be primarily a spec bump over the current model. It will almost certainly still feature a Liquid Retina LCD screen; an OLED iPad Air isn’t expected for another couple of years. The biggest change will be the chip inside, but the jury’s still out on whether it will move to an M3 or skip that and move to an M4.

There’s a case to be made for both. The M3 chip was produced using an “N3B” process that was inefficient at best. It’s unlikely that Apple plans to continue manufacturing these older chips. However, it might still have a pile of surplus inventory that it can use in an iPad Air, much like it did with the A17 Pro in last year’s iPad mini, which used the same N3B process. Those A17 Pro were “binned” chips that were unsuitable for the iPhone 15 Pro models, and an M3 iPad Air might find itself with a similarly scaled-down chip compared to what Apple used in its Macs.

While moving to an M4 chip might seem odd in light of the M4 iPad Pro, it’s not unreasonable when you consider that Apple’s MacBook Air and MacBook Pro ultimately end up using the same M-series chips. With a Tandem OLED display, Face ID, and an exceptionally thin design, the iPad Pro already sets itself apart from the iPad Air in enough ways that it wouldn’t matter for both to use the same M4 chip.