Along with the new iPhone 17e—Apple’s first major product launch of the year—the tech giant has refreshed the iPad Air lineup with the powerful M4 chip. The update includes two different models: the 11-inch iPad Air ₹64,900 and the 13-inch iPad Air is priced at ₹84,900. The introduction of the M4 processor brings the iPad Air on par with the current 7th generation iPad Pro and the latest MacBook Pro and Mac mini models.
The iPad Air with the M4 chip (which has an 8-core CPU and 9-core GPU) boasts Apple’s claimed, 30% faster performance than the iPad Air with the M3 chip. Like the iPhone 17e, the new iPad Air also gets the C1X cellular connection chip on cellular-supporting models, as well as the N1 connectivity chip and support for the upcoming Wi-Fi 7 standard.
“iPad Air gives users more ways than ever to be creative and productive, offering powerful performance and incredible versatility to help them turn their ideas into reality,” said Bob Borchers, Apple’s vice president of Worldwide Product Marketing. “With its stunning performance thanks to M4, incredible AI capabilities and 26 game-changing iPadOS features, there has never been a better time to pick up or upgrade to iPad Air.”
Apple said the M4’s 9-core GPU means the iPad Air supports second-generation hardware-accelerated mesh shading and ray tracing for incredible graphics performance. The M4 is up to 4x faster in 3D Pro rendering with ray-tracing performance compared to the iPad Air with the M1.
Another benefit is the extra memory, which Apple says is 50% more than before – this means 12GB of memory is now available, with a higher bandwidth of 120GB/s, specifically for running AI models faster. The 16-core Neural Engine is 3 times faster than the M1.
The iPad Air refresh with the M4 chip is an important step forward for the product line. Its predecessor, released in early 2025, had the M3 chip, which supported the early rollout of Apple Intelligence but lacked the advanced capabilities of the M4 at the time.