2 weeks Ago
iPad Air 2025 with M3 chip and new Magic Keyboard Apple’s new iPad Air comes just ten months after the release of the last model, and the new one is just a silicon bump, meaning the only change is the chip got upgraded to a newer one. Otherwise, everything else from display tech to dimensions to construction are exactly the same. My initial reaction to this release was, “do we need a new iPad Air already? The last model isn’t even a year old?” But then I realized that’s the wrong way to look at it.
Apple’s iPads, especially the iPad Air which is the best selling model, are ubiquitous products around the world. So this new iPad Air powered by the M3 chip isn’t necessarily aiming at people who just purchased the M2 iPad Air within the last 10 months. Instead it’s aiming at people with an older iPad Air from 2022 or further back.
It’s also aiming at anyone who’s looking to buy their first tablet. That’s the level of mainstream success Apple has reached: its products are considered the “default purchase” — some people even call any tablet an “iPad,” for example — so this means there are always people on the market looking to buy one. Plus, the M3 chip does bring some noticeable improvements over the M2 chip, thanks to a stronger GPU that can handle hardware ray tracing much better.
The iPad Air with Apple Pencil And so the 2025 iPad Air will continue to top sales charts and continue to be the default tablet most people go for due to its attractive price. This tablet comes in two sizes — 11-inch and 13-inch — and priced starting at $599 and $749 respectively. Anyway, let’s say you’ve been living in a cave or just woke up from a seven-year-long coma and are unfamiliar with the design and hardware of the iPad Air, let’s do a quick recap: This is a tablet with an IPS LCD display panel housed in a unibody aluminum casing.
Construction is premium: buttons are clicky, body has seams, and everything feels sturdy. The IPS LCD panel looks good The screen looks very good for its price point. Of course an OLED panel in a flagship phone produces deeper blacks for more pleasing contrast, but this iPad Air screen still covers 100% of the DCI-P3 color gamut, and offers excellent viewing angles.
I do wish there was an option to add the anti-reflective nanotexture coating seen in higher-end iPad Pros and MacBook Pros. But again, at $599, this screen is very good. The bezels wrapping the iPad Air’s screen are fine for my eyes—they’re not thick or ugly, per se—but they can’t be called thin in 2025 when every other Android tablet offers more screen-to-body aspect ratio.
iPad Air The same goes for thickness — the iPad Air’s 6.1mm thickness isn’t bad at all, but every rival tablet is thinner. In fact, Apple’s own iPad Pro is thinner than the iPad Air, which is ironic.
The 11-inch model weighs about a pound (or 462g) and the larger 13-incher comes in at 1.36lbs (617g). There is no Face ID like on the pricier Pro iPads.
Instead you have to unlock using a fingerprint scanner embedded into the power button. Like I said, this is the exact same outer hardware Apple has used for a few generations now, so nothing new here at all. In fact, all the older accessories for the M2 iPad Air will work on this new model, and vice versa.
Running Final Cut Pro on the iPad Air The update comes in the M3 silicon. Now this isn’t Apple’s newest chip — the M4 is already out — but the iPad Air is positioned as a mid-range tablet in Apple’s iPad portfolio, so the strategy seems to be for it to use silicon that’s one generation older than the newest MacBooks and iPad Pros. This is absolutely fine.
The M3 is still a worldbeater chip that outperforms 99% of silicon powering whatever Android phone or Android tablet right now. The M3 is built on 3nm architecture, so it’s a clear jump over the 5nm M2. The lower nanometer count just means the transistors have become smaller, allowing more of them to be placed on the chip.
And the more transistors are in the chip, the more raw power it has. The M3’s 10-core GPU is 25% faster and more powerful than the M2’s GPU, which is a big jump for a year-on-year update. If you’re coming from an even older iPad Air, the jump is even bigger.
But the thing is, iPads have been smooth and fast enough for most normal tasks. If you’re using the iPad to watch Netflix or send emails, this extra power isn’t going to matter much. Instead, you’ll notice the extra juice if you play games, edit videos, or do graphics related tasks.
I am not much of a gamer, but I do edit videos, and I actually edited the below iPad Air review entirely on the iPad Air. The 11-inch screen felt a bit cramped, but otherwise, performance was absolutely fine. I was able to load multiple 4K video tracks on the iPad, scrub through the timeline without lag, and export at a very impressive time.
For gaming, the new M4 iPad offers dynamic caching and real-time ray tracing, so graphics in graphically intensive games will look better, and run at a higher frame rate. If you use the iPad Air for productivity, Apple has released a new keyboard for this tablet (it works with the older M2 iPad Air too). This is the redesigned Magic Keyboard with a thinner profile and a slightly less angular hinge.
New Magic Keyboard for the iPad Air I absolutely love this keyboard. In fact, I’ve been saying for years that I prefer the trackpad on the iPad Magic Keyboard than the trackpad on most Windows laptops. Apple’s trackpad just feels so precise and easy to use.
The keys are evenly spaced with over 1mm of travel. However, as before, I find the price of the Magic Keyboard too high. This thing retails for around $300.
For a keyboard to cost more than 50% of the actual tablet, with a silicon, display, speakers, memory, seems uneven to me. There’s also the Apple Pencil Pro which is still the best drawing experience on a mainstream tablet. iPad Air with Apple Pencil Pro The stylus has no visual lag, it supports over 4,000 levels of pressure, and I really enjoy sketching on it.
It also comes in handy when I need to make fine edits in Adobe Lightroom or Final Cut Pro. On the software front, iPadOS behaves like usual: it’s smooth, fast, has the best app ecosystem. I find that I can do most of my work on an iPad fine, as the ability to run apps in split-screen, or in window mode helps me multi-task.
There’s also Apple Intelligence, which Apple really wants to hype up. It’s fine. Apple Intelligence on the iPad Air offers generative AI photo editing, and the usual summarization or rewriting texts.
Siri is a bit smarter, able to understand follow-up questions. There’s Image Playground, which allows the user to generate AI art using text prompts or quick sketches. But the reality is, Apple Intelligence is lagging behind what Google is offering.
Gemini is even smarter, more aware of context than Siri. Google’s generative AI photo editing produces better results. Apple Intelligence's Image Playground The thing is though, Apple users are a loyal bunch, and many of them have not touched an Android device in years (or maybe ever).
So, Apple Intelligence being inferior to Google’s offering doesn’t matter to them. For them, Apple Intelligence is still something new, something that improves their iPad/iPhone/Mac experience from two years ago. Plus, I am confident Apple can eventually improve Apple Intelligence to a point that it catches up to Google’s.
The only minor weakness of the iPad Air comes in battery life. The 11-inch model I’m using can only last me about 8-10 hours of use depending on how heavy I’m pushing it. This isn’t bad to be honest — I use my iPad for productivity tasks like video editing, not just streaming Netflix.
And the 13-inch model will surely last another 2-3 hours on top of that. Otherwise, this is yet another tremendous do-it-all tablet. Of course the iPad Pro is even better.
Better screen, even more power for more intensive workloads. But the M3 iPad Air really is powerful enough for 99% of consumers. I produce YouTube videos for a living and this machine can handle that workload.
It just takes longer than if I were to do it on a MacBook or iPad Pro. But I’ll gladly sacrifice some time for the portability. I am frequently on the road for work trips.
If I’m on a trip in which I know I have to do work, but not a lot of work, then the iPad Air is perfect for me to take. But for next generation, I’m hoping Apple does more than a silicon bump. At least give us Face ID or a 120Hz display.
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