Apple has announced a minor update to its iPad Air line up almost exactly a year after the last version was released. Today, the iPad Air gains the firm’s M4 processor, the same chip found in the current MacBook Air.

The tablet also has more memory than the previous generation, with Apple confirming 12GB RAM in these new models. It’s rare for Apple to divulge how much RAM its iPhones and iPads have, but in the age of demanding apps and Apple Intelligence, Apple AI tools, our gadgets need all the RAM they can get.

The new iPad Air will be available to pre-order on Wednesday, March 4, and will cost from £599, the same starting price as the outgoing M3 version. Considering Samsung just launched its Galaxy S26 phones with noticeable price increases, that’s no mean feat.

£599 will get you 128GB storage on the 11-inch version, with Apple continuing to sell a 13-inch version of the iPad Air from £799. Both models are available with storage options up to 1TB and with cellular eSIM capabilities.

The tablet remains available in four colours: space grey, blue, purple, starlight.

Apple says the M4 iPad Air is up to 30 percent faster than the M3 version, and up to 2.3 times faster than the M1 version.

In practical use, you may not notice these gains depending on your usage, but it’s certainly good to see Apple offer a year-over-year chip upgrade without raising prices.

Today Apple also launched the iPhone 17e, replacing the iPhone 16e, and notably priced it at the same £599 but doubled the base storage to 256GB from 128GB, a perk not afforded to the new iPad Air.

“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 blazing performance thanks to M4, incredible AI capabilities, and game-changing iPadOS 26 features, there’s never been a better time to choose or upgrade to iPad Air.”

The iPad Air sits between Apple’s entry-level £329 iPad, which has the ageing A16 chipset, and the iPad Pro, which starts at £999 and has the M5. The iPad Air is geared towards those who want more performance than just having a Netflix machine – say for editing photos or for use with Apple’s more advanced Apple Pencil Pro – but don’t need the full bells and whistles of the iPad Pro, which is also expensive due to its razor-thin design.

This is also the first generation of iPad Air to use Apple’s own connectivity chips, the N1 and C1X, as Apple moves to use its own in-house silicon for Wi-Fi and modem chips, rather than buying components from partners like Qualcomm.

As you’d expect, these slates also run iPadOS 26, Apple latest version of its iPad software. Notably, it brought proper desktop windowing to iPad for the first time, as well as Apple’s somewhat controversial Liquid Glass UI designs, which uses a lot of transparent elements compared to the older iOS 18.