Apple on Tuesday announced the latest iPad Air models.
The reveal of the new tablets came just a day after CEO Tim Cook alluded to an imminent product unveiling coming “this week” on social media.
Apple touted the new iPad Air as “faster, more powerful” tablets and “built for” the tech giant’s Apple Intelligence.
There will be two size options – 11 inches and 13 inches – for the new iPad Air model.
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Both will debut on March 12; however, Apple is taking pre-orders for the new tablets beginning Tuesday, the company said. The starting prices will be $599 and $799, respectively.
The new iPad Air tablets – which are lighter and thinner than the traditional iPad – feature Apple’s M3 chip, something that Apple said makes them “nearly 2x faster compared to the iPad Air with M1, and up to 3.5x faster than the iPad Air with A14 Bionic.”
The chip has enabled Apple to introduce its “advanced graphics architecture to iPad Air for the first time with support for dynamic caching, along with hardware-accelerated mesh shading and ray tracing,” it said.
Owners of the new iPad Air will also be able to make use of a slew of Apple Intelligence capabilities.
Among them are the “Clean Up” feature that “makes it easy to remove distracting elements in images” and the “Image Wand” that facilitates “more visually engaging” notes “by turning rough sketches into delightful images,” according to Apple.
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The company said users will have access to ChatGPT in “Writing Tools” and “Siri,” in addition to other Apple Intelligence features.
“For everyone from college students taking notes with Apple Pencil Pro, to travelers and content creators who need powerful productivity on the go, iPad Air with M3, Apple Intelligence, and the new Magic Keyboard take versatility and value to the next level,” Bob Borchers, Apple’s vice president of worldwide product marketing, said in a statement.
The company saw nearly $8.09 billion in net sales from its iPad category in the first quarter of fiscal 2025, marking a more than 15% jump year over year compared with fiscal 2024’s first quarter. Those iPad sales represented roughly 6.5% of its total $124.3 billion in revenue in the three-month period.
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Apple’s lineup of iPads consists of the traditional iPad, the iPad Pro and the iPad Mini in addition to the iPad Air.
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|---|---|---|---|---|
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Apple last released new iterations of the iPad Air in May of last year. It has been selling the tablet since 2013.
