Alongside 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 covers two distinct models: the 11-inch iPad Air, starting at ₹64,900, and the 13-inch iPad Air, priced from ₹84,900. The introduction of the M4 processor brings the iPad Air into parity 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 a 9-core GPU) adopts what Apple claims is 30% faster performance than the iPad Air with the M3 chip. Much 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 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.”
Apple said the 9-core GPU of M4 means the iPad Air supports second-generation hardware-accelerated mesh shading and ray tracing for incredible graphics performance. The M4 is as much as 4x faster in 3D pro rendering with ray-tracing performance than the iPad Air with M1.
Another benefit is the additional memory, which Apple says is 50% more than before — that means 12GB of memory is now available, alongside a higher bandwidth of 120GB/s, particularly for running AI models faster. The16-core Neural Engine is 3x faster than that of M1.
The iPad Air refresh with the M4 chip is a significant step forward for the product line. Its predecessor, released in early 2025, featured the M3 chip, which supported the initial rollout of Apple Intelligence but lacked the M4’s advanced capabilities at the time.
