I tested the i Pad Air with M4, and Apple just stretched the value proposition even further | Tech Radar

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I tested the i Pad Air with M4, and Apple just stretched the value proposition even further

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The i Pad Air with M4 isn't a reinvention of the tablet, but it meaningfully improves what was already one of Apple’s best devices. With the powerful M4 chip, 12GB of RAM, and improved connectivity, the new Air again blurs the line between this model and the i Pad Pro while maintaining a much more approachable price.

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Apple i Pad Air 13-inch (2026) review: One-minute review

Apple’s i Pad Air has long been the 'pro model for most people,' and the 2026 refresh keeps that reputation intact. There are no real design changes this year, but Apple gives the tablet a fuel injection of performance thanks to the M4 chip under the hood, more RAM, and improved connectivity.

This means the i Pad Air keeps pace in terms of having Apple’s latest silicon while still sitting below the i Pad Pro in price. In everyday use the 13-inch i Pad Air absolutely flies, whether you’re juggling multiple windows in i Pad OS 26, editing photos or videos, gaming, or pairing it with the Magic Keyboard to act as a laptop replacement.

The display remains the same excellent Liquid Retina panel that was introduced in 2024, and while it still tops out at 60 Hz rather than the i Pad Pro’s 120 Hz Pro Motion, it’s a large, vibrant canvas for work, entertainment, and Apple Pencil note-taking.

If you already own an M3 or even M2 i Pad Air, this probably isn’t a must-have upgrade. But for anyone coming from an older i Pad, or buying their first Air, the M4 model continues to hit a sweet spot of power, portability, and price.

Simply put, the i Pad Air with M4 remains the i Pad most people should buy. I just hope Apple continues this trend of squeezing more value out of the device. The consistent silicon upgrades keep the i Pad Air feeling fresh for years after release, giving it plenty of headroom for new apps and features. I do wish Apple had take the same approach it did with the i Phone 17e by bumping the starting storage, though.

And bear in mind that — as I note in every i Pad review I write — you’ll want to factor in the cost of accessories like the Apple Pencil and the Magic Keyboard. Both are excellent companions for the i Pad Air, but deciding whether to add one or both ultimately comes down to your needs and your budget.

Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 6. 5G Sub-6 Ghz and Gigabit LTE on Cellular models.

Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 6. 5G Sub-6 Ghz and Gigabit LTE on Cellular models.

Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 6. 5G Sub-6 Ghz and Gigabit LTE on Cellular models.

Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 6. 5G Sub-6 Ghz and Gigabit LTE on Cellular models.

Apple i Pad Air 13-inch (2026) review: Price and availability

Apple is continuing a welcome recent trend with the latest i Pad Air, upgrading the processor, and some other features, without raising the starting price. The 11-inch i Pad Air and 13-inch i Pad Air still start with 128GB of storage, but can be configured up to 1TB.

The 11-inch i Pad Air starts at

What's new about Apple’s 2026 i Pad Air — aka the i Pad Air with M4 or i Pad Air (M4) — is mostly a matter of what’s under the hood. With the same four colors available — Blue, Purple, Starlight, or Space Gray — it keeps a nearly identical build and design language to 2025’s i Pad Air with M3, and largely the same look introduced with the 2024 i Pad Air with M2.

That’s not a bad thing at all — amid a sea of other mid-range tablets, Apple is still opting for a premium aluminum build that feels plenty portable. Even though the i Pad Air is no longer the thinnest or lightest i Pad in Apple’s lineup — that honor goes to the i Pad Pro — the 13-inch variant remains easily portable, and the 11-inch model even more so.

I regularly go back and forth between either an 11-inch Air or Pro and a 13-inch, and I found myself right at home with the 13-inch i Pad Air. It’s the same footprint generation-over-generation at 280.6 x 214.9 x 6.1mm and 616 grams (617 grams for cellular), and I absolutely love the Purple shade, although another fresher shade joining the range – maybe a blush pink, as with the i Phone 17e, or citrus yellow like the Mac Book Neo, would have been nice.

Everything remains easy to reach in either orientation, and it’s clear Apple feels it's got the ergonomics right here, since the layout hasn’t changed. Touch ID is still fast and reliable for unlocking the i Pad Air, or authenticating purchases and other secure actions.

On the rear, the 12-megapixel rear camera remains in the top-left corner on the back, while Apple's Smart connector is along the right edge. This still lets the i Pad Air connect to Apple's Magic Keyboard, all without the need for traditional Bluetooth pairing or needing to recharge the accessory.

The Apple logo is centered on the back of the i Pad, though it's oriented to be in the proper position when it's held vertical, in landscape it's sideways — either way round it offers some neat reflections and sits flat with the matte aluminum finish.

Ultimately, if you liked the design of the previous i Pad Air, or the one before that, you’ll feel right at home here.

Arguably, the most important part of any i Pad is the display, and that's even more the case with the 13-inch i Pad Air. There are no changes generation over generation here — in fact, this is the same display Apple introduced when it first introduced a larger 13-inch i Pad Air in 2024.

That’s not a bad thing, though, as the 13-inch i Pad Air affords you an expansive canvas on which to work. It’s only gotten better since true multitasking landed with i Pad OS 26, and it's also excellent for watching films or TV shows (anyone else catching up on Scrubs on Disney+ or Hulu right now?).

The 13-inch Liquid Retina display is excellent (Apple is still rounding up from a 12.9-inch screen measured diagonally). It’s not quite as impressive as the i Pad Pro’s Dynamic OLED panel with a 120 Hz Pro Motion refresh rate, but it goes the full mile for productivity and creative tasks. Whether I was watching a film, editing in Final Cut Pro, overlapping windows to write this review, browsing the web, or gaming, everything looked great here.

Colors are vibrant and punchy, but I especially like writing with the Apple Pencil Pro on the 13-inch i Pad Air and seeing the inky black handwriting appear. Of course, you can make that pop even more by changing the color of the pencil in Notes, Notability, or Good Notes — take your pick of your preferred note-taking app.

Just like the previous two generations, the 13-inch Liquid Retina display offers a 2732 x 2048 resolution at 264 pixels per inch with a maximum brightness of 600 nits. The anti-reflective oleophobic coating is pretty essential here on the 13-inch – and the same goes for the 11-inch Air – helping repel fingerprints and reduce reflections from natural light.

As I wrote in 2025, the main miss here is a higher refresh rate. The 13-inch i Pad Air still tops out at 60 Hz, while Apple reserves the adaptive 120 Hz Pro Motion display for the i Pad Pro lineup. Then again, if you’re not coming from that device — and I don’t see why you would be — it likely won’t be a major issue, and Apple is clearly adding value elsewhere, as in the jump to the M4 chip.

Front camera is still in a better spot, and supports Center Stage

If you’re picking up a 13-inch i Pad Air for the first time, or upgrading from an older model, you’ll be happy to know the front-facing camera is in a much better spot than on older models. Like the previous 13-inch i Pad Air, the 2026 model with M4 keeps the 12-megapixel front camera on the long edge, which makes it far more usable for Face Time and other video calls when the tablet is docked in a Smart Cover or the Magic Keyboard.

In landscape mode, the camera sits centered along the top edge, which means you’ll appear properly framed on video calls or when recording self-tapes. It also works nicely with Apple’s built-in Center Stage technology, which keeps you in frame as you move around. That’s helpful if you tend to pace during meetings, or if you’re on a Face Time call while cooking in the kitchen, and moving around to slice and dice ingredients. Image quality here is solid, and you can enable effects such as Portrait mode and Studio Light in i Pad OS.

On the back is the same 12-megapixel rear camera as last time. It’s perfectly fine for snapping quick photos or scanning documents, though I’m not that sure many people are bringing a 13-inch i Pad Air along specifically to capture the world. Either way, here are a few shots I captured.

Apple i Pad Air 13-inch (2026) review:: Software

Works well with the optional Magic Keyboard or Apple Pencil

i Pad OS 26 was a game-changing update for the entire i Pad lineup, but you can really feel the difference on a larger 13-inch i Pad Air or Pro. I remember buying the original 12.9-inch i Pad when it first launched and ditching my Mac Book Pro, hoping to use the i Pad as my one device while in college — it wasn’t easy back then, but i Pad OS 26 makes it a lot more achievable.

And I’ve been pushing i Pad OS 26 pretty hard on the i Pad Air (M4, 2026). I’ll dive more into performance below, but this thing really does fly. The main feature of i Pad OS 26 is proper window multitasking. I can open Safari and resize it from the bottom corner, then pull Messages into a floating window, do the same with Pixelmator Pro, and continue stacking apps however I see fit. It’s not exactly the Mac experience like for like, though the familiar red, yellow, and green window controls appear in the corner and you can enable a top menu bar, but the system still feels purpose-built for the i Pad’s more flexible way of working.

That flexibility really shines on the 13-inch display. I can use my finger, the Magic Keyboard’s trackpad, or an Apple Pencil — whichever input works best for what I’m doing. During testing I edited video in Final Cut, wrote and organized this review in Pages, Google Docs via Safari, and Notes, edited photos in Pixelmator Pro as part of Apple Creator Studio, played games like Real Flight Simulator and Disney Dreamlight Valley, took notes during meetings, Face Timed with friends and family, and watched plenty of videos.

I did a lot of that undocked, but I also spent time using Apple’s Magic Keyboard. For the i Pad Air it now comes in black as well as white, and pricing remains at

For most of this review period I actually pushed my Apple Mac Book Pro (14‑inch, M5) to the side and used the i Pad Air with the Magic Keyboard instead. No, the keyboard isn’t included, and it does add to the price, but it really does unlock a more complete working experience.

Similarly, the Apple Pencil Pro — priced at

Apple Intelligence is also supported here. You’ll see Siri’s full-screen edge glow when asking for help with a long press or by saying “Hey Siri,” — the much-anticipated AI-powered Siri is still on the way, but when it does arrive, the i Pad Air will support it. In the meantime you can already use Apple’s AI features to clean up unwanted objects in Photos, solve math problems in Notes, and access a growing set of other tools that should expand further over time.

Apple i Pad Air 13-inch (2026) review: Performance

M4 chip lets you complete most, if not all, feasible tasks on the i Pad Air

Keeps things fast today, with no concerns about the future

As the name suggests, the i Pad Air’s performance is where the real changes lie this year. On the cellular model I’ve been testing there are three upgrades, while the Wi-Fi model gets two. Let’s start with the chip under the hood — and credit Apple for sticking with a steady upgrade strategy.

Apple shipped the i Pad Air with the M2 chip in 2024, and with the M3 in 2025; and now in 2026 both the 11-inch and 13-inch i Pad Air move to the M4 chip with 12GB of RAM, up from 8GB previously. So while this does mean that if you have an M3 i Pad Air you likely don’t need to upgrade — and the same goes for the M2 edition — Apple is steadily keeping this i Pad up to date with its latest silicon, ultimately making it more appealing, and better value for someone approaching the i Pad Air fresh today.

Inside, the M4 chip features an eight-core CPU with three performance cores and five efficiency cores, a nine-core GPU, and a 16-core Neural Engine. Regardless of size, it’s paired with 12GB of RAM, and hardware-accelerated ray tracing is supported here as well, which can benefit gaming and creative tasks like video editing or 3D rendering. Memory bandwidth also jumps to 120GB/s, up from 100GB/s previously.

As with the previous generation and the M3, Apple’s decision to bring the M4 chip to the i Pad Air really raises the question of whether most people need the i Pad Pro for performance alone. The Air sits comfortably above the base i Pad in this respect, and feels incredibly capable for heavy multitasking, creative work, and gaming.

As I always do, I tried to throw a lot at the 13-inch i Pad Air with M4, and I struggled to slow it down. Even when exporting a video in the background while launching a game and running Face Time in a floating window, the tablet remained smooth and responsive. The i Pad Air simply flies — whether you’re using it as a media consumption device or pairing it with the Magic Keyboard as your main computing machine. The M4 chip also runs silently, and stays cool even while handling heavier workloads.

In everyday use, the i Pad Air with M4 rarely feels limited by its hardware. Ultimately, the best compliment I can give it is that whatever I threw at the tablet — within the confines of i Pad OS 26 on a 13-inch display — it handled it effortlessly.

Apple’s M4 chip also performed well in our benchmark tests. In Geekbench 6, the 13-inch i Pad Air with M4 scored 3,745 single-core and 13,342 multi-core. That’s a solid jump over the i Pad Air with M3, which scored 3,023 single-core and 11,716 multi-core, and the M2 model’s 2,591 single-core and 10,046 multi-core. The M3 model was already very fast, so you won’t see dramatic gains year over year, but if you’re upgrading from an M1 Air, an entry-level i Pad, or even an older i Pad Pro, the improvement will be noticeable.

Apple i Pad Air 13-inch (2026) review: Battery and connectivity

C1X Modem makes for speedy 5G speeds, if you opt for cellular

Unlike the i Phone, Apple actually shares the exact battery size inside the i Pad Air — and other i Pads — along with its estimates for playback and use. The battery sizes remain unchanged generation over generation, with the 13-inch i Pad Air packing a 36.59 Wh battery and the 11-inch model coming in at 28.93 Wh. That’s not a bad thing, as neither M3 model struggled with battery life.

Apple rates the i Pad Air for up to 10 hours of web browsing or video playback on Wi-Fi models, and up to nine hours of web use on cellular models. In my daily testing, the 13-inch i Pad Air generally made it through most of a workday without issue, though I did occasionally find myself reaching for a charger towards the evening if I wanted to keep using it later into the night.

Apple still ships the i Pad Air with a USB-C to USB-C cable and a wall charger in the box.

Complementing the M4 chip is Apple’s N1 chip, which enables support for Wi-Fi 7 alongside Bluetooth 6 and the Thread networking protocol. If you opt for the cellular model, you’ll also get the C1X modem — the same one found in the i Phone Air — for fast connectivity. Like all cellular i Pads, the i Pad Air is e SIM-only. I’ve been testing the 13-inch i Pad Air on Verizon and saw some impressive 5G speeds across New Jersey and New York City.

Apple i Pad Air 13-inch (2026): Should you buy it?

Apple putting the M4 chip inside makes the i Pad Air an easier recommendation as the 'pro' model for most folks.

Apple putting the M4 chip inside makes the i Pad Air an easier recommendation as the 'pro' model for most folks.

Still a modern, portable tablet, even with no design changes year over year.

Still a modern, portable tablet, even with no design changes year over year.

Display is still excellent, especially at the 13-inch size.

Display is still excellent, especially at the 13-inch size.

The two cameras on the i Pad Air are versatile, with the front-facing camera being excellent for video calls.

The two cameras on the i Pad Air are versatile, with the front-facing camera being excellent for video calls.

i Pad OS 26 is loaded with features, and the i Pad Air is able to take advantage of all of them, especially multitasking.

i Pad OS 26 is loaded with features, and the i Pad Air is able to take advantage of all of them, especially multitasking.

Apple continues to deliver on all-day battery life, and the C1X modem ensures fast 5G speeds, if the network is there.

Apple continues to deliver on all-day battery life, and the C1X modem ensures fast 5G speeds, if the network is there.

The M4 chip ensures you won’t have any concerns about power or performance, and makes this an especially good upgrade if you have an M1 i Pad Air or older, an entry-level i Pad, or another older tablet, and are craving more power.

The i Pad Air still offers plenty of power in two sizes at a lower price than the i Pad Pro.

If having the best visuals possible is your number one deciding factor, opt for the i Pad Pro with M4, and its excellent Dynamic OLED display.

If you don't need an i Pad to replace your laptop or your main device, consider the entry-level i Pad — it's excellent for most everyday tasks, and even for some more advanced ones

I spent six days testing Apple's 13-inch i Pad Air with M4, along with a Smart Folio, Apple Pencil Pro, and a Magic Keyboard. After unboxing it I set up the i Pad Air as new, downloading all my essential apps.

After that, I switched to the i Pad Air from a 14-inch Mac Book Pro as my main device for work and play. I threw many tasks into the mix, from productivity-themed ones like responding to emails, uploading articles to a CMS, writing, editing, editing photos and videos, playing games, plenty of video calls, and multitasking to test the M4 chip inside the i Pad Air. I also compared it to the entry-level i Pad, the previous-generation M3 and M2 i Pad Air, the i Pad Mini, and the M4 and M5 i Pad Pro.

Jacob Krol is the US Managing Editor, News for Tech Radar. He’s been writing about technology since he was 14 when he started his own tech blog. Since then Jacob has worked for a plethora of publications including CNN Underscored, The Street, Parade, Men’s Journal, Mashable, CNET, and CNBC among others.

He specializes in covering companies like Apple, Samsung, and Google and going hands-on with mobile devices, smart home gadgets, TVs, and wearables. In his spare time, you can find Jacob listening to Bruce Springsteen, building a Lego set, or binge-watching the latest from Disney, Marvel, or Star Wars.

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Key Takeaways

• I tested the i Pad Air with M4, and Apple just stretched the value proposition even further

• When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission

• The i Pad Air with M4 isn't a reinvention of the tablet, but it meaningfully improves what was already one of Apple’s best devices

• We spend hours testing every product or service we review, so you can be sure you're buying the best

• Apple i Pad Air 13-inch (2026) review: One-minute review