Every year or so, Apple shuffles the iPad Air forward by one chip generation. The M4 was in last year’s iPad Pro, now it’s here. Price stays put, design stays put, and Apple calls it a day. That’s the short version.
The longer version is that two things changed this time that don’t usually change — the RAM went up by a meaningful amount, and Apple ripped out the Qualcomm wireless chips and put its own in. Those two things, more than the chip itself, are what make this particular refresh more interesting than most.
Announced March 2; pre-orders March 4. In stores March 11. 11-inch and 13-inch, same as before. ₹59,900 is where it starts in India for the base 11-inch Wi-Fi.
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The Chip: Apple M4
It’s a binned M4 — 8-core CPU, 9-core GPU. The iPad Pro got the full 10/10 version last year. Apple always does this with the Air and it never really matters for the people buying it. Thirty percent faster CPU than the M3, twenty percent faster GPU. If you’re coming from an M1 Air the jump is much harder to ignore — more than double the speed overall, and about four times the 3D rendering performance Apple claims.
Upgraded RAM
This one’s worth stopping on. The M3 Air had 8GB. This has 12GB, with bandwidth going from 100 to 120GB/s. The practical side of that — apps actually stay open when you leave them. On the M3, heavy apps would reload constantly when you switched back to them. That’s less of a problem with more memory sitting there. It also means the on-device AI stuff in iPadOS 26 runs without the stutter the M3 sometimes showed when juggling multiple tasks. The Neural Engine is three times faster than the M1’s, which feeds into all of that.
Wireless — This Is the Quiet Win
The M3 Air used Qualcomm for Wi-Fi and Bluetooth. The M4 Air uses Apple’s N1 chip instead — same one that went into the iPhone 17 lineup and last year’s iPad Pro. Wi-Fi 7, Bluetooth 6, better 5GHz stability. AirDrop and Personal Hotspot have never been iPad strong suits, and switching to Apple’s own silicon is usually when that kind of thing actually improves rather than just being promised to.
Cellular models get the C1X modem — Apple’s own, same as what’s in the iPhone 17e — replacing another Qualcomm part. Fifty percent faster cellular speeds and thirty percent less modem power draw, per Apple. The efficiency number is the one to care about. A modem that sips less battery over a long day on the road is something you feel without needing a benchmark to prove it.
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The Screen, The Cameras, The Build
Liquid Retina LCD, same panel as the M3 Air. 11-inch at 2360×1640, 13-inch at 2732×2048. P3 colour, True Tone, 500 nits, laminated, anti-reflective. No OLED. No 120Hz. Those live on the Pro and they’re staying there.
Coming from a Pro display, you’ll clock the 60Hz when scrolling. Coming from an older Air you won’t notice because nothing changed.
Cameras — 12MP wide on the back, 12MP front in the landscape bezel with Center Stage. Apple hasn’t touched iPad cameras in this kind of refresh in years, and they didn’t here either. The landscape front camera is still the sensible choice it was when Apple introduced it; holding an iPad sideways for a video call and having the camera face you properly rather than shooting up your nose is the kind of thing that seems obvious once you’ve had it.
Same flat aluminum chassis as before. Touch ID on the top button. USB-C with Thunderbolt 3 and USB 4. The Magic Keyboard for iPad Air fits, Apple Pencil Pro, and Apple Pencil USB-C both work. Blue, purple, starlight, space gray.
India Pricing
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- 11-inch Wi-Fi: ₹59,900 / ₹69,900 / ₹89,900 / ₹1,09,900 across 128GB, 256GB, 512GB, and 1TB.
- 13-inch Wi-Fi: ₹79,900 at the bottom, ₹1,29,900 at the top for 1TB. Cellular is about ₹15,000 more at each step.
Base is still 128GB — worth knowing because the iPhone 17e jumped to 256GB base this same week at the same price. iPad Air didn’t get that. If most of your stuff lives on iCloud, you’ll be fine at 128. If you’re someone who keeps things locally, just go to 256GB now.
The Actual Verdict
M1 or M2 Air — upgrade, it’s worth it. The chip gap is real, the RAM difference is real, and you’re getting Apple’s own wireless hardware instead of Qualcomm’s. Hard to argue against.
M3 Air — skip it. Screen’s the same, body’s the same, cameras are the same. The M3 wasn’t slow. Unless you hit the RAM ceiling regularly or the cellular battery drain has been a specific complaint, there’s no compelling reason to move.
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First iPad Air, or upgrading from something old — buy it. Apple held the price, put better hardware in, and didn’t break anything that worked. That’s the whole job.
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