According to recent reports from Bloomberg, Apple will be releasing another iPad Air with “internal improvements” as early as spring 2025.
The iPad Air was just refreshed with M2 earlier this year, meaning there’d be around 12 months between refreshes, rather than the typical 18-24 months between iPad Air refreshes. With such a short turnaround time, it leaves you wondering: what will Apple actually be updating in these iPads?
New Magic Keyboard
At the very least, Apple is reportedly designing a brand new Magic Keyboard specifically for iPad Air. Currently, the iPad Air uses the original Magic Keyboard design that was introduced in 2020 with the iPad Pro. Since then, the base model iPad has received a new Magic Keyboard Folio, and the iPad Pro has a new aluminum Magic Keyboard.
According to Gurman, the new Magic Keyboard should have a new function row, similar to the aforementioned iPad Keyboards. However, unlike the new iPad Pro Magic Keyboard, this Magic Keyboard for iPad Air will not have an aluminum top case.
Hopefully, this new iPad Air Magic Keyboard can have a lower starting price. Currently, the older Magic Keyboard and iPad Pro Magic Keyboard have the same starting price of $299 for 11″ and $349 for 13″, despite the fact that the iPad Pro Magic Keyboard is far superior.
New chip?
In Gurman’s initial report, no details were specified regarding the chip. However, it’s quite unlikely that Apple would update the iPad Air and leave the exact same chipset inside. That leaves a few possibilities:
- M2 chip w/ 10 core GPU
- M3 chip
- M4 chip (likely binned version)
Currently, the iPad Air has the M2 chip, although a binned version with a 9 core GPU. It’s possible that Apple could simply update the iPad to have the full 10 core GPU version of the M2 chip. It’d be a small update, but a possibility.
Apple could also implement the M3 chip in the next iPad Air, although that’s unlikely. Apple is seemingly trying to move away from the first generation 3nm process as quickly as possible, due to high costs and low yields. Maybe producing the M3 chip just for one mid range iPad would be fine, though cost is still a concern.
Last but not least, Apple could implement a version of the M4 chip in the iPad Air. Currently, the base model iPad Pros have an M4 chip with a 9 core CPU and 10 core GPU, whereas the iPad Pros with at least 1TB of storage have the full 10 core GPU and 10 core GPU.
Mark Gurman has previously reported that Apple is planning a binned version of the M4 chip with an 8 core CPU and 8 core GPU. Apple could choose to use this binned M4 chip in the next iPad Air. iPad Air and iPad Pro have never both contained the latest Apple Silicon, but perhaps the fewer cores would be good enough for Apple to ship the M4 in the iPad Air so soon.
Other potential improvements
This section is more speculative, but there are some improvements Apple has been making with other products that we could potentially see in the 2025 iPad Air:
- 600 nits of brightness standard (currently exclusive to the 13-inch M2 iPad Air, 11-inch model is still 500 nits)
- Wi-Fi 7 support, introduced on the iPhone 16 lineup
- Rear LED flash (introduced on iPad mini in 2021, still never implemented on iPad Air)
- Thunderbolt support (exclusive to iPad Pro currently)
- Better mic array
Are you looking forward to the new iPad Air refresh in 2025? Do you think this refresh will be worth it? Let us know in the comments.
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