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I've used many iPads over the years, and one thing has become clear: the iPad Air is my personal ideal tablet. Testing the new M4 model only confirmed this fact. You can now pre-order the iPad Air starting at $599, with general availability on 3/11.
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The fact is, the iPad Air isn't the most powerful tablet on the market. But that means I don't ever worry about overpaying for excessive processing power, like I would with the iPad Pro. Yet the Air is still reliable enough that I can multitask with demanding apps without risking one of them crashing, unlike the base model iPad. It's the perfect middle-ground tablet.
The M4 processing power
As a writer who also does photography, video, and some graphic design on the side, I've found that the iPad Air is the most affordable tablet that can comfortably handle my workload without a single stutter. It starts at $599, $400 less than the iPad Pro, yet its M4 processor, faster connectivity, and 12GB of unified memory seem almost too good to be true for the price.
Geekbench 6 scores Starting price Single-Core CPU Benchmark Multi-Core CPU Benchmark GPU benchmark iPad Air (M4) $599 3,690 12,996 52,278 iPad Pro (M5) $999 4,153 16,414 75,259 iPad 11 $349 2,596 6,237 19,848 Samsung Galaxy Tab S10 FE+ $560 1,353 3,923 6,982
In benchmark tests measuring tablet performance, the iPad Air's M4 performed dramatically better than the similarly priced Galaxy Tab S10 FE+. I also included the iPad Pro with the latest M5 processor in the table above, but you can see that the iPad Air performs closer to the Pro at a similar price to the S10 FE+.
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If you wanted to compare these three tablets to laptops, the iPad Pro would be like a high-end laptop, while the iPad Air could perform like an ultrabook. The Tab S10 FE+, however, would be like a mid-range Chromebook in this comparison.
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