It’s a good time to pick up one of Apple’s latest M1-equipped iPad Air models, as they’ve dropped back down to all-time low prices. The 64GB WiFi model is now on sale for just $500, or $99 (17 percent) off, while the 256GB is available for $650, also $99 off the regular $749 price. Those are substantial savings on one of Apple’s best iPads to date.
The M1 chip gives the 2022 iPad Air a substantial performance boost over the previous model, so it’s a solid choice for content creation, gaming and other demanding apps. Throughput is also boosted thanks to the 10Gbps USB-C ports that have double the bandwidth of the last model. At the same time, battery life remains unchanged at an excellent 10 hours. All of those things make the 2022 iPad Air future-proof and helped it garner a top-notch 90 score in our Engadget review.
It has more than speed going for it. You get a 10.9-inch liquid Retina LCD display with Apple’s True Tone feature for optimizing the screen’s color temperature based on ambient light, to start with. It also comes with an improved 12-megapixel ultra wide front camera and supports the same accessories as the last model (keyboard cases, Magic Keyboard and Apple Pencil).
The main downsides are the relatively miniscule 64GB storage on the budget model, lack of Face ID and pricey accessories. Still, it’s a huge leap over the previous model, and the $99 discount makes it a solid buy.
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