Hands On: Apple iPad Air M4 Is the Tablet Everyone Actually Needs
Apple has a habit of doing something peculiar and infuriating in equal measure: it builds a product so well-balanced, so shrewdly positioned, that it makes everything around it look slightly confused. The iPad Air M4 — available in India from Rs 64,900 for the 11-inch, Rs 84,900 for the 13-inch — is exactly that product. It arrives cheaper than the new MacBook Neo (Rs 69,900), carries a considerably more powerful chip, adds a touch screen the Neo entirely lacks, and then has the audacity to last ten hours on a single charge while you edit 4K video at 35,000 feet.My test unit was the 11-inch Wi-Fi + Cellular 1TB in Space Grey — Rs 1,29,900, the configuration a travelling professional actually buys rather than the one that looks good in a press release headline. Five days across airports, hotel rooms, and a vacation that turned out to be significantly less restful than planned — because once you have something this capable in your hands, work has a way of finding you.
iPad Air M4 — India pricing, all SKUs Available from 11 March 2026
11-inch model
StorageWi-FiWi-Fi + Cellular128GBRs 64,900Rs 79,900256GBRs 74,900Rs 89,900512GBRs 94,900Rs 1,09,9001TBReviewedRs 1,14,900Rs 1,29,90013-inch model
StorageWi-FiWi-Fi + Cellular128GBRs 84,900Rs 99,900256GBRs 94,900Rs 1,09,900512GBRs 1,14,900Rs 1,29,9001TBRs 1,34,900Rs 1,49,900Education pricing
Education
11-inch Wi-Fi 128GB
Rs 59,900
Education
13-inch Wi-Fi 128GB
Rs 79,900
Accessories
Magic Keyboard 11-inch
Rs 26,900
Black and white options
Magic Keyboard 13-inch
Rs 29,900
Black and white options
Apple Pencil Pro
Rs 11,900
Compatible with both sizes
Apple Pencil USB-C
—
Also compatible
The Pricing Paradox That Keeps Me Up at Night
The M4-powered iPad Air starts at Rs 64,900 in India — a full Rs 5,000 below the MacBook Neo, which starts at Rs 69,900 and runs on the A18 Pro chip from the iPhone 16 Pro series with 8GB RAM and 256GB storage. The iPad Air, with a more powerful chip and more RAM, costs less than Apple's cheapest laptop. This is either a masterclass in product strategy or a Freudian slip from Cupertino's pricing committee. It is almost certainly the former.
What makes this genuinely interesting rather than merely curious is what those two products represent. The MacBook Neo targets students and first-time Mac buyers, handling everyday tasks like browsing, office apps, streaming, and light photo editing. The iPad Air M4, by contrast, is aimed at people who consider "light editing" to mean Final Cut Pro at a café table. They are very different products at nearly the same price. And in India's tablet market, where the consumer segment grew 20.5 per cent year-on-year in the first half of 2025 even as overall volumes corrected, that Rs 5,000 gap will be the loudest conversation Apple has started in years.
The cellular radio on the test unit uses Apple's C1X modem, and the difference over a congested airport Wi-Fi network is immediately legible. Pages load with the brisk indifference that makes you question why you ever trusted a hotel router. In raw silicon terms, this is a Ferrari GTO sharing a car park with a spirited but ultimately sensible hatchback.
M4: The Chip That Changes the Conversation
The M4 iPad Air delivers up to approximately 30 per cent faster performance than the M3, with 12GB of unified memory — up from 8GB — and memory bandwidth increasing to 120GB/s. To understand why that matters, consider the MacBook Neo's engine room: an A18 Pro chip with a 6-core CPU and 5-core GPU, paired with 8GB of RAM. The iPad Air M4 fields an 8-core CPU with three performance cores and five efficiency cores, a nine-core GPU, and a 16-core Neural Engine. In raw silicon terms, this is a Ferrari GTO sharing a car park with a spirited but ultimately sensible hatchback.
Out in the real world — which currently involves editing a reel on a flight, updating a draft in a hotel room, then watching something on the return leg — this gap is entirely measurable the moment you open an app. When I loaded a project in LumaFusion, the Air blitzed through the timeline. Render previews that would have induced a minor existential crisis on a lesser machine finished with the kind of unfussed efficiency that makes you forget you are working on a tablet. The MacBook Neo would have managed, but the Air finished. There is a difference.
With M4, the iPad Air is up to 2.3 times faster than iPad Air with M1, and benchmarks show the M4 CPU running 17.3 per cent faster in single-core performance and 7.9 per cent faster in multi-core versus the M3 model. More interestingly, Apple gives M4 iPad Air owners 12GB of RAM versus either 8GB or 16GB on the iPad Pro M5 — meaning certain configurations of the Pro carry less memory than the Air. That is the kind of detail that causes product managers to lose sleep.
Apple iPad Air M4 — full specifications As reviewed: 11-inch Cellular 1TB
Apple M4 chip
8 CPU cores
3P + 5E
9 GPU cores
ray tracing
16 Neural Engine
cores
12 GB unified
memory
120 GB/s memory
bandwidth
30% faster than
M3
Display
Size (11-inch)27.96 cm Liquid Retina
Size (13-inch)33.02 cm Liquid Retina
Resolution264 ppi
Refresh rate60Hz
Peak brightness600 nits
Colour gamutP3 wide, True Tone
Camera
Rear12MP, f/1.8
Video4K @ 60fps
HDRSmart HDR 4
Front12MP landscape
Center StageYes
Connectivity
Wi-FiWi-Fi 7 (802.11be)
BluetoothBluetooth 6
Cellular chipApple C1X
NetworkingApple N1 chip
PortUSB-C (USB 3)
Battery & charging
11-inch capacity28.93 Wh
13-inch capacity36.59 Wh
Wi-Fi enduranceUp to 10 hours
Cellular enduranceUp to 9 hours
Wired charging30W
Design
Thickness6.1mm
13-inch weight616g (Wi-Fi)
MaterialRecycled aluminium
ColoursSpace Grey, Blue, Purple, Starlight
BiometricsTouch ID
Storage & software
Storage options128GB · 256GB · 512GB · 1TB
OSiPadOS 26
Apple IntelligenceYes
Apple Pencil ProCompatible
Magic KeyboardCompatible
Review unit: 11-inch iPad Air M4 · Wi-Fi + Cellular · 1TB · Space Grey · Rs 1,29,900
iPadOS 26: The Software That Finally Earns It
iPadOS 26 ships on the iPad Air out of the box, bringing a more capable windowing system and a dedicated Preview app for PDFs and markup — two features that make this tablet feel more like a laptop alternative than any previous iPadOS release. The new windowing approach — apps resizing and overlapping with considerably more flexibility — transforms the experience the moment a Magic Keyboard is attached. I tested this extensively on the 11-inch in landscape mode with two apps running side-by-side: it is the closest Apple has come to making the iPad feel like a Mac while preserving everything that makes it fundamentally a tablet.
The 11-inch screen handles split view comfortably, though the windowing system's full range opens up further on the 13-inch, where the larger canvas gives Stage Manager room to breathe. The 11-inch model remains most natural running an app full-screen or with two apps side-by-side. For anyone who attempted serious multi-window work on a previous iPad Air and found it slightly treacly, the M4 generation is the version where it actually flows.
The Touch Advantage Nobody Talks About Enough
Here is what gets lost in the MacBook Neo versus iPad Air conversation: the Neo ships as a keyboard-and-trackpad-only device, with the touch layer reserved entirely for the iPad line. Paired with the Apple Pencil Pro (Rs 11,900 separately), the Air becomes something the entire MacBook lineup falls short of matching — a graphic artist's sketchpad that also runs Final Cut Pro. Paired with the Magic Keyboard (Rs 26,900 for the 11-inch), it becomes a credible productivity device. Remove both and it becomes the best reading and content consumption device in its price class. The MacBook Neo does exactly one of those three things.
This tripartite identity is the Air's genuine strength and its occasional identity crisis. The person whose productivity peaks at spreadsheets and slide decks is probably better served by the Neo — the Air's M4 firepower is disproportionate to browsing and email, in the same way a Le Creuset dutch oven is disproportionate to making instant noodles. But the video editor who travels, the architect sketching concepts between meetings, the student who reads, marks up, and writes: for that person, the Air is the only machine in this price band that makes complete sense.
Battery: The Quiet Superpower
Apple rates the M4 iPad Air for up to 10 hours of web browsing on Wi-Fi and up to 9 hours on cellular, with wired charging at 30W. Across five days of mixed use — video editing, writing, research, streaming on flights, and the inevitable doom-scrolling at three in the morning — this proved accurate for lighter workloads and somewhat optimistic for heavier ones. General productivity and media consumption comfortably reached the ten-hour mark, even on cellular.
The 30W charging earns its keep on airlines that permit in-flight device charging. A one-hour top-up through the USB-C port in the seat back returned the Air to a comfortable level, enough to see out a domestic sector with ease. Battery capacity is unchanged from the M3 generation, but the M4 chip's improved efficiency delivers consistent performance without compromising longevity. The improvement is invisible, which is exactly the point.
The Home AI Compute Angle
One dimension of the M4 Air that Apple keeps entirely quiet about: what it becomes when it goes home. For anyone building an Apple Silicon-based multi-device setup, the Air's M4 chip and 12GB of unified memory contribute serious AI compute capacity to that ecosystem when the device sits on a charging stand, integrated into Apple Intelligence's broader network. It is a compelling reason for heavy Apple Silicon Mac users to treat the Air as infrastructure — a permanent node in the home compute stack — rather than simply another tablet purchase.
The Market Context That Makes It Urgent
Apple held approximately 44.9 per cent of the global tablet market by end of 2025, a dominant position built largely on the iPad Air being the product that makes the most sense for the widest number of people. According to Counterpoint Research, iPad shipments are expected to grow approximately 10 per cent year-on-year in 2026, with premium models maintaining a strong share. The M4 Air is the engine of that growth — competing downward against Android tablets and upward against the MacBook Neo simultaneously, with the serene confidence that comes from knowing your chip architecture is two generations ahead of anyone near your price point.
Apple shipped 17.1 million iPads in Q4 2025, capturing 41.9 per cent market share with 8 per cent year-on-year growth, according to IDC. The M4 Air, landing in Q1 2026 at an unchanged Rs 64,900 for the 11-inch Wi-Fi base, sharpens that trajectory further.
The Right Buyer, and Who Should Look Elsewhere
The iPad Air M4 answers an extremely specific question: what do I buy when I want something more capable than a standard iPad and less expensive than an iPad Pro, with genuine laptop-replacement credentials for creative workloads and a touch-first identity when the keyboard comes off?
For the person whose definition of productivity peaks at spreadsheets and slide decks, the MacBook Neo or a base iPad remains entirely valid. For everyone else — the mobile creative, the travelling professional, the student who produces as much as consumes — the iPad Air M4, at Rs 64,900 base and Rs 1,29,900 fully loaded with cellular and 1TB as tested, is one of the strongest value propositions in Apple's current lineup.
The 60Hz display remains a legitimate grievance. Face ID remaining gated behind Pro pricing continues to feel incongruous at this price. Both fall short of altering the fundamental conclusion — and after five days with it, the MacBook Neo has spent most of its time sitting quietly in the bag.
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