Our Verdict
The iPad Air M2 may not be a massive upgrade to the previous generation, but with a new bigger size and an excellent Apple Pencil upgrade, it’s the iPad that will suit most people looking for a capable tablet that doesn’t break the bank.
- Super speedy performance
- Apple Pencil Pro support
- Larger size available
- Reasonable price
- Fiddly fingerprint reader
- 60Hz refresh rate
- Only supports the old Magic Keyboard
The Air range of Apple devices has always been about lightness combined with enough specs for the average user. The MacBook Air’s 2023 outing does this perfectly, offering two sizes and adequate power for most people. The latest iPad Air (M2) follows this with a new 13-inch model, yet it sits a little differently in the iPad lineup.
This new iPad Air has a few features inherited from the last couple of iPad Pros, making the device feel like the ultimate tablet. It’s feature-rich with more than enough performance to make Apple’s own alternatives much less appealing.
The better screen and speakers on the new Pro feel like an indulgence. The A14 chip in the current base model makes multitasking a pain. So, the new iPad Air sits right in the Goldilocks zone. With the new Apple Pencil Pro and the power of the M2 chip, the latest Air offers a Pro-ish experience without the Pro price. So, is it the best iPad you can buy today? Let’s get into it.
Why you can trust our advice ✔ At Pocket Tactics, our experts spend days testing games, phones, tech, and services. We always share honest opinions to help you buy the best. Find out how we test.
Price and availability
The new iPad Air range starts at $599 for the 11-inch model and $799 for the 13-inch. Both these models come with 128GB storage, upgradeable up to 1TB (at an eye-watering £100 per additional 128GB). All models have 8GB of RAM, regardless of storage configuration. This starting price matches the Samsung Galaxy Tab S9 range, while Honor, Lenovo, and OnePlus all offer cheaper tablets with some tradeoffs.
The new iPad Air is available from Apple directly or various online retailers like Amazon, Walmart, and others. You can get it in four different colors: Space Grey, Blue, Purple, and Starlight. The model reviewed here is the 13-inch M2 iPad Air with 256GB of storage in Space Grey.
11-inch iPad Air M2
- 128GB – $599
- 256GB – $699
- 512GB – $899
- 1TB – $1,099
13-inch iPad Air M2
Specs
Features
In terms of features, the new iPad Air doesn’t seem to gain all that much. The biggest improvements will come with the latest iPadOS in a few weeks. But what you can get your hands on at the time of writing offers enough compared to the previous iPad Pros that it definitely feels like a worthwhile upgrade for anyone not on an M-chip iPad.
Apple Pencil Hover, a feature that shows a preview of where your pen will write before you do, is a wonderfully useful tool for any note-takers out there. Of course, you need to invest in the $129 Apple Pencil Pro or $79 USB-C model to make the most of this, but knowing what your notes or brushstrokes will look like before starting helps you do so more speedily.
If you go for the more expensive Apple Pencil Pro, it also comes with a few neat features for artists and creatives. With Barrel Roll enabling you to rotate your pen or brush to get the perfect mark as well as the squeeze gesture to bring up a menu right where your pen is, it’s easily the best stylus on the market right now and a vital investment for anyone planning to use their iPad as a digital canvas.
Design
The new iPad Air is basically the same as the old iPad Air in terms of design. The 11-inch models have exactly the same dimensions, almost identical weights, and the same screens. With the same fingerprint sensor on the lock button, you could easily mistake this for the previous model. The only important difference is the front-facing camera, which now sits on the landscape side of the iPad instead of the portrait. This is a great improvement, one we’ll delve into in more detail later.
But that’s just the smaller model. The exciting thing about the new iPad Air is the 13-inch model. It’s the first big tablet Apple has made that isn’t a Pro. If you don’t need Pro performance but want that bigger screen, this is, of course, the one to go for.
As an owner of both the big 13-inch Air and the 11-inch base model iPad, both sizes are great for different reasons, and while this isn’t a size guide, here’s my two cents: if you’re going to use any professional app (i.e. Final Cut Pro, Logic Pro) or most of your time will be spent making digital art, get the bigger model. Almost everybody else will be fine with the 11-inch.
In terms of durability, the 13-inch model feels very sturdy, with a lovely finish on the sides in this Space Grey color. My biggest issue with the current lineup is that you can’t get the Air in silver. Only the base model and the Pro offer that colorway. As any black MacBook Pro users likely know, these coatings can get tiny chips and wear down over time, showing the metal below, so I’ve had a silver-only rule for Apple purchases for a while now. Sadly, I have to break it here.
Display
The display on the new Air is the same as the old Air, so that’s not an interesting or possible point of comparison. What is, however, is how it fares against its iPad siblings. In the younger corner, there’s the 10th-gen base model iPad. Now, if you compare models on Apple’s website, the screens are technically identical except for two things: the Air’s is fully laminated and boasts an anti-reflective coating.
In my experience, the latter only makes a small difference, but the former is vital to having a more luxurious tablet experience. The base model iPad has a slight gap between the glass and the screen, one that I cover in my iPad 10th gen review, and it makes it feel like a cheaper bit of kit (which of course it is, but…).
Meanwhile, its big brother’s best offering is, for sure, its display. The new iPad Pro has a 120Hz tandem OLED display, offering 1,000 nits peak brightness and an HDR content peak at 1,600 nits. That’s pretty unbelievable on a large tablet display, and when combined with the true blacks and better color accuracy, it goes a long way toward making a case for the more expensive model.
However, is it really worth it for $500 more? That’s up to you, but unless you’re working in an environment with lots of direct light or need a super color-accurate display, the Air’s display is still wonderful. Colors are clear and bright, the 60Hz refresh rate is enough for most, and watching videos and editing photos is by no means a chore. It looks great.
Performance
The iPad Air’s performance with the M2 chip is likely its biggest selling point. Whether you’re loading up dozens of tracks in Logic Pro with all the hungriest plugins available or editing 4K video in Final Cut, it doesn’t really miss a beat. You can have over a hundred layers in Procreate or animate in Procreate Dreams, and nothing seems to bother it. Better yet, you can flick between these apps, and the device rarely shuts them down in the background, so you can multitask easily.
The only time I’ve noticed it gets slightly hot is when playing games, but this ain’t no Candy Crush. We’re talking Assassin’s Creed Mirage and Resident Evil Village, which, while not as pretty as your Xbox Series X, definitely look good enough when you consider the portable package. Still, it shouldn’t get too toasty while running most of the best iPad games.
The biggest limitation is easily the software. iPadOS isn’t open enough for you to truly push the device to its limits. Unless you have a clear and specific scenario where you know the power of the iPad Pro will benefit you, there isn’t a tangible difference between the M2 and M4 chips.
Meanwhile, the base model iPad is too limited for decent multitasking, with apps closing in the background due to its lower power. So, unless you’re just in the tablet market to read a few magazines and watch some YouTube videos, it’s a bit too limiting. This helps the M2 iPad Air stand out. As I said earlier, it’s in the Goldilocks zone: not too much, not too little; just right.
Battery
While battery comparisons from Apple say there’s no difference between the various iPad models (they can all do “up to 10 hours of surfing the web on Wi‑Fi or watching videos”). In reality, this isn’t the case. Comparing the base model iPad to the 13-inch iPad Air, the Air easily lasts a full day, while the base model struggles.
This isn’t a completely fair fight, of course, given the base model has a smaller battery. However, I suspect the power efficiency gains from the M2 chip help the Air run longer. While I don’t have an 11-inch Air to compare to the base model, I’d bet good money the former will outlast its little brother.
What this means in practice is that, if you use your iPad Air daily for work, school, or whatever else (as I do), you just need to charge it every evening. On occasion, when I’m screen sharing about 6 hours a day while teaching at a school, the iPad gets perilously close to zero battery. But it still hasn’t died on me, and I’m still happy to risk leaving the charger at home every time.
Camera
While the main camera on the back of the iPad Air is little more than a glorified document scanner, it takes nice enough pictures if you ever need it in a pinch. There are a few years’ worth of iPhones that do a better job, so I recommend you start there if you want fancy snaps.
The front-facing camera is, of course, very important on a tablet. For years now, Apple has bafflingly left the camera on the portrait side of its iPads, meaning you’re always off-center when on a video call. Now, for the first time, the whole lineup has the cameras centered on the landscape side, making for perfectly framed video calls.
Combine this with Center Stage, a feature that follows your face and frames it neatly, as well as various clever background blurring features, and it’s an ace tablet for video calls. The quality is good, but not great. However, given the usual limitation of online calling is internet speed, this only really affects how happy you are with the selfies. All in all, the cameras do the job more than well enough, and the Pros don’t offer a notable upgrade in this area, either.
Accessories
While we’ve briefly touched on the Apple Pencil Pro, it’s important to note how the new iPad Air fits into the wide and confusing range of accessories Apple offers. The brand currently sells three different iPad keyboards, four different Apple Pencils, and various folios on top of that. And the iPad Air M2 only works with a specific set.
Firstly, it doesn’t work with the brand new haptic Magic Keyboard, just the old (yet still mightily expensive) clicky one. This might be good; perhaps you have an old iPad and don’t need to upgrade your accessories to get the M2. (I mean, if I was looking at a 13-inch iPad Air plus Magic Keyboard combo to buy brand new, I would just buy a MacBook Air.)
Unfortunately, the same doesn’t apply to the Apple Pencil. While there are two options, the Apple Pencil Pro is really the only one you should get. You can get the USB-C Apple Pencil, but this doesn’t offer pressure sensitivity, which completely defeats the object of the pencil. At that point, you may as well buy whatever is compatible and cheapest on the internet, or just use your finger. Sadly, if you have the original or second-gen Apple Pencil, it’s a no-go with this new iPad.
The good news is that Apple has redesigned the new folio cases excellently. Now, when standing the device up, you can adjust the angle at which it’s held, with a variable range of motion across quite a wide area. These folio cases were already mightily clever, offering a case that actively encourages you to remove the device from it, and they’re even better now.
Should you buy the iPad Air M2?
Yes, of course you should. Wait, let’s back up a bit. Do you want an iPad? Yes? Then get this one. No? Then go away; why are you here? If you want a tablet, you should probably get an iPad. Android’s tablet OS is not as polished as iPadOS, and given the fact that a tablet is usually a longer-term investment than a smartphone, you’ll want the OS support Apple offers far into the future.
Why shouldn’t you buy an iPad Air? Two possible reasons: you will only use your iPad for web browsing, video watching, and magazine reading, and you’ll never need to multitask. If that’s you, get the base model iPad 10th gen. The other reason is if you’re actually a professional and know what benefits the higher-end model will bring, either from its better screen or stronger performance. Still, there are so few pros that don’t just get a MacBook as it’s more flexible, so that’s a small group.
You should get the Pro if you’re rich, have a very good reason, or just hate fingerprint sensors. If I’m honest, that’s my only problem with the Air. The fingerprint sensor isn’t good enough, so maybe, just to avoid that finicky unlocking procedure and endless instructions to ‘try again’, $500 extra for a tablet with FaceID doesn’t seem so bad.
Alternatives
If our iPad Air (M2) review hasn’t sold the tablet to you, check out some suggestions for alternatives below.
Samsung Galaxy Tab S9
The Samsung Galaxy Tab S9 is not quite as powerful but still powerful enough, and the larger model, the Plus, offers a wider screen if that’s of any use to you. I recently played around with a Tab S9, and it’s a beautiful piece of kit. Still, Android’s tablet OS is a hard sell for me, so it all depends on your preferred operating system.
iPad Air M1 (2022)
If you don’t need the bigger iPad or the Apple Pencil Pro, then it’s probably best to just get the older, 11-inch-only M1 model (if you can find it for a good price). The difference in power isn’t going to be a big deal to most people, and other than that, it’s pretty much exactly the same.