Apple iPad Air 11" M3 (2025)

The Apple iPad Air 11" with the M3 chip, released in spring 2025, has established itself as the absolute "sweet spot" in the Apple tablet lineup by April 2026. With the leap to the extremely powerful M3 processor (including hardware ray tracing) and a standard 8 GB of RAM, Apple has made the Air ready for all local "Apple Intelligence" features. While the design and the 60 Hz display remain unchanged, the tablet benefits greatly from the support of the Apple Pencil Pro and the ideally positioned landscape front camera. For those who do not necessarily need the expensive OLED display or the 120 Hz refresh rate of the Pro models, this is likely the most sensible and future-proof iPad for work and leisure.

Classification and target audience

The iPad Air 11" M3 is aimed at students, ambitious hobby creatives, and power users who find the base iPad (10th Gen) too weak and not future-proof enough, but who shy away from the massive price increase to the iPad Pro. In the current market (April 2026), it is the golden mean in the iOS ecosystem and competes directly with premium Android tablets like the Samsung Galaxy Tab S10 or the Google Pixel Tablet 2.

Display and housing

The proven design of the Air series has been consistently maintained and is available in fresh colors (Space Gray, Polar Star, Violet, Blue):

• Housing & Biometry: The ultra-thin aluminum housing (only 6.1 mm thick) still houses the lightning-fast Touch ID sensor in the power button at the top (Face ID remains exclusive to the Pro models).
• Display: The 11-inch Liquid Retina LCD display delivers sharp 2,360 x 1,640 pixels. A massive advantage over the base iPad: The display is fully laminated (no hollow typing feel), offers a significantly larger color space (P3), and features an anti-reflective coating. The only compromise to absolute top class remains the refresh rate, which is still limited to 60 Hz (no ProMotion).

Performance and hardware

Under the hood, the iPad Air now plays in the desktop league thanks to the Mac processor:

• Processor: The Apple M3 chip (8-core CPU, 9-core GPU) is a true performance beast. With hardware-accelerated ray tracing and the 16-core Neural Engine, demanding 3D games, professional video editing (ProRes), and especially AI tasks run absolutely smoothly.
• Storage & Battery: Apple has finally raised the extremely limited entry-level size to a contemporary 128 GB (optional up to 1 TB available). The battery delivers the reliably promised 10 hours of runtime from Apple when surfing or watching videos.
• Connectivity: Wi-Fi 6E and Bluetooth 5.3 are standard. For the cellular models (5G), Apple now consistently relies solely on eSIM – a physical SIM slot is no longer present.

Cameras and accessories

Here, Apple has finally eliminated the major design flaws of previous generations:

• Landscape camera: The 12-megapixel front camera is now finally located on the long side of the housing (landscape). This makes video calls (with Center Stage) much more natural when the keyboard is attached, as you are no longer awkwardly filmed from the left side.
• Apple Pencil Pro: The M3 Air supports the Apple Pencil Pro (as well as the cheaper Pencil with USB-C). The Pro stylus brings brilliant features like haptic feedback, rotation (barrel roll), and the "squeeze" gesture for professional drawing and navigation. Important note: The older Apple Pencil 2 is no longer compatible here!
• Keyboard: The tablet can be magnetically connected to the proven Magic Keyboard (with floating design and integrated trackpad), which instantly transforms it into a top-notch laptop replacement.

Software status

The device was originally shipped with iPadOS 18 and runs effortlessly on the very latest iterations of the operating system as of April 2026. Thanks to the M3 chip and 8 GB of RAM, the tablet is fully compatible with "Apple Intelligence." This means: The device's internal text summarization, image generation, and a deeply integrated, context-based Siri assistant work lightning-fast and locally, without users having to offload data to the cloud.

Conclusion and price-performance ratio

With a fair suggested retail price of €649 (128 GB, Wi-Fi) at launch, the street price in the open market has often settled at very attractive €540 to €580 by April 2026. For this price, the iPad Air 11" M3 is probably the most sensible Apple tablet on the market. You get desktop performance, support for the best stylus in the industry, and all the new AI features in an extremely lightweight housing. If you do not necessarily rely on a 120 Hz OLED display, you should save the hefty premium for the Pro model and confidently go for this one.