Review: Apple iPad Air (2026, M4)

The iPad Air has always had to walk on egg shells. It can’t step on the toes of the iPad Pro or MacBook Air. It can't go cheaper either, so as not to offend the base iPad. That's not to mention the brand-new MacBook Neo, which has been stealing the limelight and was introduced at the exact same price as the iPad Air. With all those competing products muddying the waters, you might be wondering where the iPad Air fits these days.

The 2026 iPad Air is the latest refresh in Apple’s iPad lineup, bringing the M4 chip into the mix. That is in line with the way Apple keeps the iPad one generation behind the MacBooks and iPad Pro. Is it a boring update? Absolutely. But the iPad Air remains a highly enjoyable tablet to use.

More Than You Need

Photograph: Luke Larsen

In many ways, the iPad Air is the ultimate iPad. You might think that would be the iPad Pro, but given the price and advanced feature set, the iPad Pro really makes sense only for professionals who have a specific use case for the M5 performance, HDR-capable OLED screen, and more powerful USB-C port. Unless you plan to do something like bring your iPad out to a video shoot to handle multiple 4K live video streams, the iPad Pro is probably overkill. I’m not saying you won’t enjoy the insane brightness of the tandem OLED for videos, games, and movies—it just won't be a deal-breaker for most people.

In terms of staying true to the intent of what the iPad has always been, the iPad Air reigns supreme. Even the M4 in the iPad Air is a bit overkill for what the vast majority of people will use an iPad for. You don’t need a chip that powerful to browse the web, do FaceTime calls, play Apple Arcade games, or try your hand at drawing in Adobe Illustrator.

You'll never feel the M4 iPad Air slow down in any of those tasks, and there's still plenty of headroom for more. The 12 GB of unified memory (up from 8 GB in the previous generation) that comes standard gives even more assurance that you won't be bottlenecked. If you intend to use the iPad Air as your main device, whether that’s for school or work, there’s plenty of performance here to last many years. That's especially true now with the windowing and cursor updates in iPadOS 26, which make it feel more like a Mac than ever.

If there's a noticeable difference with the M4 over the M3, it's definitely on the GPU front. I had just the game in mind to try on it: Oceanhorn 3, one of the most graphically intense Apple Arcade titles to come out recently. Unlike many mobile games, it offers some different preset graphics settings to change between, which is helpful for trying to test the limits of the performance. In the Balanced mode, which sets the render scaling to 60 percent, the frame rate felt nice and smooth. At 80 percent scaling, though, the frame rate dropped, and it felt choppy. For reference, the M4 in the 13-inch MacBook Air performs stronger in some gaming benchmarks, up to 13 percent in 3DMark Steel Nomad Light, for example.

GPU performance isn’t only about gaming, though, as it also speeds up everything from video rendering and 3D modeling to on-device AI processing. If you're coming from an M1 or M2 iPad Air, you'll feel the difference. Then again, are people using the iPad Air for such tasks? Those don’t sound like things you casually do on a tablet on the go. But hey, you can do whatever you want with your iPad, and the M4 iPad Air just happens to allow you to do quite a lot. My guess, though, is that most people will be hard-pressed to fully utilize the capabilities of the M4—again, outside of playing a game.

Photograph: Luke Larsen

There are a few practical reasons to buy this over the much cheaper base iPad. If you plan on using your iPad for any amount of “real work”—or even just activities you would normally do on a laptop—the iPad Air M4 is the one you want. If you do want to occasionally work on this thing, opt for the larger 13-inch screen, which is what I tested.

Beyond performance and screen size, the iPad Air also gets you better accessories, such as the Magic Keyboard and the Apple Pencil Pro over what you can get with the base iPad. I'm not someone who will be able to appreciate the Apple Pencil Pro over the standard model—outside of the addition of Find My, which is an awesome addition. My wife, however, is an artist who actually did. She spent some time testing out the Apple Pencil Pro while illustrating in Procreate. In the past, she has used a paperlike screen protector to replicate the texture of writing on a physical surface on the iPad. The Apple Pencil Pro, though, adds haptic feedback (as well as features like barrel roll and squeeze) to create that same sensation. She came away impressed.

But the main thing the iPad Air gives you is that you can use the Magic Keyboard, as opposed to the Magic Keyboard Folio. Especially on the 13-inch model, this is a larger, more comfortable keyboard with key spacing and keycap size that's close to a MacBook. The other options are a bit more scrunched. My one constant complaint about even this Magic Keyboard, however, is the tiny palm rests. I don't mind the smaller trackpad, but having my palms hang off the edge of the keyboard is uncomfortable.

Still Not a MacBook

Photograph: Luke Larsen

The iPad and MacBook do exist as separate products, but the price and features of the iPad Air make it comparable in terms of use case with the MacBook Air. When you combine the Magic Keyboard with the $799 13-inch model, that’s already more expensive than the 13-inch M5 MacBook Air. You have less storage and memory too. Of course, you can find cheaper third-party keyboards, but the Magic Keyboard is really the best option.

There’s a lot I like about the design of the iPad Air and the Magic Keyboard over a standard laptop. I appreciate how high up the screen sits, which is more ergonomically comfortable than a clamshell laptop like the MacBook Air. The angle of the tilt is comfortable for watching shows or viewing content. Quick access to the touchscreen is great, too. While the speakers and front-facing camera are on par with the MacBook Neo, you get the world-facing camera on the iPad Air when you need it.

I also adore the screen of the iPad Air compared to the MacBook Air. Nothing has changed, but when you stack this up against either the MacBook Air or MacBook Neo, it comes out on top. It still comes in either the 11-inch or 13-inch size. The 13-inch model that I tested has a resolution of 2732 x 2048 pixels, giving it a super-sharp pixel density.

If you’re coming from a MacBook Air, the iPad Air's screen really jumps out. It's 15 percent sharper, and it’s also equivalent to what you get on the iPad Pro, only without more premium features like tandem OLED and a 120-Hz refresh rate. I do miss having that higher refresh rate, as it makes all the animation feel snappier and more responsive. But overall, the screen is really what the iPad is all about, and it still looks great, despite having not been updated since 2024. Having a touchscreen and the ability to remove the iPad and use it as a true tablet is, obviously, the major advantage over a MacBook. It's a far more versatile device, especially for trips or lounging on the couch.

Photograph: Luke Larsen

When you do actually sit down to work, the MacBook has faster USB-C ports, a headphone jack, and a much better trackpad. While neither have Face ID, having to reach up to touch the power button on the side of the iPad is much less convenient than having it on the keyboard like MacBooks do. I won't go into all the details as to how these two products differ, but suffice to say: The iPad Air will always be a more niche device rather than a primary computing device.

Assuming you're set on an iPad, you might be wondering if buying a 2025 M3 iPad Air is a better option. After all, you likely won't see a huge difference in performance with the M4 model in the way that most people will use it. But unless you're willing to buy a refurbished model, the price between the two right now is marginal. Best Buy is selling the M4 11-inch iPads for only $10 more than the M3 model. The bump to 12 GB of RAM and the M4 chip is worth way more than $10.

So, if you want an iPad that you can occasionally get some work done on, the M4 iPad Air is the best option, even if it's a fairly basic update this year.