Apple iPad Air (M2)

The iPad Air (M2) is the model that turned Apple's mid-range tablet into a two-size family. Announced on 7 May 2024 and in customers' hands from 15 May, it carries the Apple M2 chip, a redesigned 11-inch body and, for the first time in the Air line, an additional 13-inch version. This page is based on the published specifications and Apple's own launch information, and it tries to separate what the company states from what simply follows from the hardware.

Where it sits in the lineup

Apple positioned the iPad Air between the entry-level iPad and the iPad Pro. The Air has always offered more than the base model, but with the M2 generation it also gained the one thing buyers had long asked for: a larger screen without paying Pro money. Apple says the 13-inch model offers 30 percent more screen area than the 11-inch one. In the United States the 11-inch Wi-Fi model started at $599 and the 13-inch Wi-Fi model at $799, with cellular versions at $749 and $949 respectively.

Later generations have since taken over the same slot, and you can read about them on the pages for the iPad Air (M3) and the iPad Air (M4). Above it sits the iPad Pro (M5), and below it the iPad (A16). If you are weighing the M2 model against its direct successor, the side-by-side table iPad Air (M2) vs iPad Air (M3) lists the differences, and the rankings show where each tablet lands overall.

Design and display

The 11-inch model uses a Liquid Retina IPS panel measuring 10.86 inches diagonally, with a resolution of 2360 x 1640 at 264 pixels per inch. Apple lists a brightness of 500 nits, wide P3 colour, True Tone and a fully laminated, anti-reflective surface. The body measures 178.5 x 247.6 mm, is 6.1 mm thick and weighs 462 grams, the same for the Wi-Fi and the cellular version. It comes in four finishes: blue, purple, starlight and space gray, all in an enclosure Apple describes as 100 percent recycled aluminium.

The published technical page for the 13-inch model is not reproduced here, so the only figure we can quote for it is the 30 percent larger screen area from Apple's announcement. What that means in practice is more room for split-screen work, drawing canvases and timelines, at the cost of a heavier device that is less comfortable for one-handed reading.

One design decision deserves attention: the front camera has moved to the landscape edge. Apple fits a 12-megapixel ultra-wide camera there with Center Stage, so that in a video call with the tablet docked to a keyboard your face is centred as it would be on a laptop. The tablet also has a Touch ID sensor in the top button rather than a face-recognition system, and landscape stereo speakers with Spatial Audio; the 13-inch model is stated to deliver double the bass.

Performance and software

The Apple M2 has an 8-core CPU, a 9-core GPU and a 16-core Neural Engine. Apple states that the M2 iPad Air is nearly 50 percent faster than the M1 iPad Air in productivity and creative tasks, up to three times faster than the model with the A14 Bionic, and that its Neural Engine is 40 percent faster than the one in M1. These are manufacturer figures from Apple's own testing in March and April 2024, so treat them as indicative rather than as independent measurements. Apple's support page lists 8GB of RAM for the 11-inch model, with storage options of 128GB, 256GB, 512GB and 1TB.

At launch the tablet ran iPadOS 17. Apple highlighted lock-screen customisation, interactive widgets, Stage Manager for windowed multitasking, Freeform and Live Captions, and it also brought Logic Pro and Final Cut Pro to the platform as subscription apps. Connectivity is Wi-Fi 6E with Bluetooth 5.3, and cellular models support 5G with eSIM only; there is no physical SIM tray. The USB-C port supports charging, DisplayPort and USB 3 speeds up to 10 Gb/s, and one external display of up to 6K at 60 Hz can be connected.

Camera

The rear camera is a single 12-megapixel wide lens with an f/1.8 aperture, up to 5x digital zoom and Smart HDR 4. It records 4K video at up to 60 frames per second and 1080p slow motion at 120 or 240 fps. That is a camera designed for scanning documents, capturing whiteboards and occasional snapshots, not for replacing a phone. The front camera, the 12-megapixel ultra-wide unit on the long edge, is the more important one for daily use because it is the one pointed at you in meetings.

Battery and charging

Apple does not publish a milliamp-hour figure for its tablets. The support page gives a capacity of 28.93 watt-hours for the 11-inch model and the usual claim of up to 10 hours of web browsing or video playback on Wi-Fi, or up to 9 hours of web browsing over cellular. As always with such numbers, they come from Apple's own test conditions. The tablet charges through USB-C, and the box contains a USB-C cable and a 20 W power adapter in the United States listing; check your own region's page, as the contents vary.

Accessories

The M2 generation is also the first Air to support the Apple Pencil Pro, which Apple prices at $129 and which attaches magnetically to the side of the tablet to pair and charge. It adds a squeeze gesture, a haptic engine, a gyroscope for barrel-roll control, hover detection and Find My support. The cheaper Apple Pencil (USB-C), at $79, is also supported. For typing, Apple launched a Magic Keyboard with a floating design, a built-in trackpad, backlit keys and USB-C pass-through charging at $299 for the 11-inch size and $349 for the 13-inch, plus a Smart Folio at $79 and $99. These accessory prices matter: a tablet with a Pencil Pro and a keyboard costs considerably more than the $599 starting price suggests.

Who it is for

The iPad Air (M2) suits people who want a tablet that behaves like a small computer for drawing, note-taking, study or light video editing, but who do not need the Pro's higher-end display and camera system. Students, illustrators who already use an Apple Pencil, and travellers who want a large canvas for reading and sketching are the clearest fit. Anyone who mostly streams video and browses will probably be well served by a cheaper model. Shoppers used to Android spec sheets should also note that Apple rates its tablets in watt-hours and hours of use rather than in mAh.

Compromises

Several things are worth weighing. The display is an IPS LCD with no OLED option, and Apple does not state a refresh-rate figure for it in the sources reviewed here, so we do not give one. The rear camera is a single lens. Cellular is eSIM only, which complicates things where carriers do not yet support it. The accessories add significant cost, and the Pencil Pro works only with the newer iPad models Apple lists as compatible. Finally, because newer Air models have since arrived, the M2 version is best judged on price: it makes sense if it is available at a clear discount compared with its successors, and less so at a similar price.

For a hardware comparison against an Apple model one step down, see iPad Air (M2) vs iPad (A16).