M3 iPad Air Revealed
Apple has announced a major upgrade to its iPad lineup. The new iPad Air now features the powerful M3 chip, designed to take full advantage of Apple Intelligence. Meanwhile, the standard iPad gets an upgrade with the A16 chip and twice the base storage. These improvements offer consumers more value than ever.
The spotlight shines brightest on the iPad Air, now available in 11-inch and 13-inch models. The M3 chip delivers a significant performance boost. It nearly doubles the speed of its M1-equipped predecessor and is up to 3.5 times faster than the A14 Bionic. This results in smoother multitasking and faster content creation. Gaming also sees major improvements, thanks to the M3’s advanced graphics architecture. Features like hardware-accelerated ray tracing and mesh shading enhance visual quality and performance.
“iPad Air is so popular because of its unmatched combination of powerful performance, portability, and support for advanced accessories, all at an affordable price,” said Bob Borchers, Apple’s vice president of Worldwide Product Marketing.
Apple Intelligence Takes Centre Stage
A key feature of the new iPad Air is its integration with Apple Intelligence, Apple’s new personal intelligence system. This empowers users with tools like the Clean Up feature in Photos, natural language photo search, and Image Wand in Notes, which transforms rough sketches into polished images. Apple Intelligence also introduces Image Playground for visual expression, Genmoji for custom emojis, and enhanced Writing Tools.
Siri gets a significant upgrade with the ability to understand natural language, follow conversational flow, and answer intricate questions about Apple products. Notably, ChatGPT is integrated into Writing Tools and Siri, offering users access to its capabilities while maintaining privacy through obscured IP addresses and no stored requests.
Enhanced Accessories and iPadOS 18
The new Magic Keyboard for iPad Air enhances productivity with a larger trackpad, a 14-key function row, and a sleek, floating design. iPadOS 18 brings a suite of powerful features, including a revamped Calculator app with Math Notes, enhanced Notes with Smart Script, Audio Recording and Transcription, and customisable Home Screen options.
iPad Gets a Performance Boost
Apple also refreshed the standard iPad, now powered by the A16 chip and boasting double the starting storage at 128GB. The A16 delivers a 30% performance increase over the previous generation, making it up to 6x faster than the best-selling Android tablet.
Pricing and Availability
The 11-inch iPad Air starts at RM2,799 (RM2,569 for education), while the 13-inch model starts at RM3,699 (RM3,469 for education). The new Magic Keyboard is priced at RM1,299 for the 11-inch model and RM1,399 for the 13-inch model.
The updated iPad with A16 starts at RM1,599 (RM1,509 for education) for the Wi-Fi model and RM2,299 (RM2,209 for education) for the Wi-Fi + Cellular model.
Both the new iPad Air and iPad are designed with environmental sustainability in mind, featuring recycled materials and aiming for carbon neutrality by 2030.
Customers can order the new iPad Air and iPad soon on the Apple Store, the Apple Store app, and at Apple Authorised Resellers.
