Apple's M3 iPad Air: Fast Performance, Stunning Graphics

Apple’s new iPad Air packs a serious punch with its M3 chip, delivering double the performance of the M1 version. The tablet keeps its familiar 11-inch and 13-inch Liquid Retina displays while adding graphics muscle for 4K video editing and ray tracing. A redesigned Magic Keyboard ($269) and features like Clean Up tool and Genmoji round out the package. Starting at $599, it hits stores March 12, 2025. There’s more to this M3 beast than meets the eye.

Apple’s latest iPad Air is taking a massive leap forward with its new M3 chip, and the numbers are staggering. The new tablet delivers nearly twice the performance of its M1 predecessor and leaves the A14 Bionic version in the dust – we’re talking 3.5 times faster. That’s not just marketing fluff; the M3 chip packs an 8-core CPU, 9-core GPU, and a 16-core Neural Engine that means business. The improved performance is complemented by a larger trackpad keyboard for enhanced productivity. The new Magic Keyboard is priced at $269 for accessories.

Apple’s M3-powered iPad Air delivers mind-blowing speed, doubling M1 performance and leaving older models eating silicon dust.

The graphics capabilities are where things get seriously interesting. Apple’s thrown in some fancy features like dynamic caching and hardware-accelerated mesh shading. Plus, there’s ray tracing support – because apparently, we all need cinema-quality lighting effects while doodling in Procreate. Graphics-intensive tasks run up to 4x faster, which is perfect for those who’ve been dying to edit their 4K vacation videos on a tablet. The cutting-edge 3nm fabrication process enables these impressive graphics improvements without draining battery life. The Neural Engine performs 60% faster AI workloads compared to the M1 chip. The device comes in stunning blue, purple, starlight and space gray finishes.

Speaking of showing off, the iPad Air keeps its familiar 11-inch and 13-inch Liquid Retina displays. They’re still rocking P3 wide color, True Tone, and that anti-reflective coating that makes outdoor use actually bearable. The physical design hasn’t changed – because why fix what isn’t broken?

The M3 iPad Air comes with some neat party tricks in the intelligence department. There’s a Clean Up tool in Photos that magically zaps away photobombers, and natural language search for finding that one beach photo from three summers ago. The Image Wand feature in Notes turns your kindergarten-level sketches into something actually presentable.

Oh, and you can now create custom emojis with Genmoji, because apparently, the world needs more emojis.

Connectivity-wise, Apple’s not messing around. The USB-C port supports 10Gbps data transfer, and there’s Wi-Fi 6E for those blessed with compatible routers. The cellular models get 5G support, and everything works with the new Magic Keyboard and Apple Pencil options – both the fancy Pro version and the USB-C variant.

Here’s the part that’ll make your wallet sweat: pricing starts at $599 for the 11-inch model and $799 for the 13-inch version. Storage options range from a modest 128GB to a roomy 1TB.

If you’re already reaching for your credit card, hold your horses – pre-orders don’t open until March 4, 2025, with devices hitting stores on March 12. At least that gives you time to start saving up.