The new iPad Air 4 (2020) was unveiled at Apple’s September event alongside the new iPad 8 and plenty of other gadgets. This is the fourth generation of Apple’s mid-range ‘iPad Air’ line.
While most iPad Air tablets seem like plus-size versions of the entry-level iPads, the new iPad Air 4 seems more like a ‘lite’ version of the iPad Pro models. It’s got some impressive specs, and could win over many creatives and professionals.
This is the follow-up to the iPad Air 3, hence why some call it the iPad Air 4, though that’s not what Apple is calling it – they’re just referring to it as the ‘iPad Air (2020)’. Still, as the fourth-generation model, we’re going to call it the iPad Air 4 to remove confusion.
To help you get your head around this tablet, we’ve compiled all the information we have on it so far including the iPad Air 4’s price, release date, specs and features.
Cut to the chase
- What is it? Apple’s newest mid-range tablet
- When is it out? Sometime in October
- How much will it cost? Starting at $599 / £579 (about AU$820)
iPad Air (2020) release date and price
The new iPad Air price is $599 / £579 (roughly AU$820) and will be available to buy from ‘next month’, meaning some time in October 2020. That’s quite a hike over its predecessor, but it seems like we’re getting a big specs jump too.
The iPad Air 3 started at $499 / £479 / AU$779 for a version with 64GB storage, and $649 / £629 / AU$999 for 256GB. The price went up $130 / £120 / AU$200 for each for the LTE version, instead of Wi-Fi.
We’ve only got the iPad Air 4’s starting price right now, but we’ll update this piece as soon as we find out what storage versions it comes in.
iPad Air design and display
The iPad Air has a flat edge, an all-screen display, a single rear camera and some subtle edge buttons – it looks a lot like an iPad Pro, which is different to previous iPad Airs, which looked like large versions of the entry-level slates with big bezels and physical front buttons.
The screen uses Apples Liquid Retina display tech, which is a fancy form of LCD. It has a resolution of 2360 x 1640 and it’s 10.9 inches across, which isn’t quite as big as the iPad Pro models as the smallest size of that is 11 inches.. There are plenty of screen technology features here to improve the visuals too, like True Tone display which subtly tweaks the display depending on what environment you’re in.
The iPad Air 4 is the first Apple tablet with a fingerprint sensor built into a button on the side, which is an intriguing move from Apple. Some other slates from the company had fingerprint sensors built into the home button on the front, but we haven’t seen side-mounted scanners from Apple before.
There’s a USB-C port here, like in iPad Pro models, which should make charging and data sending much faster. It’s great for professionals who want to plug external monitors or hard drives into the tablet
The iPad Air 4 works with the Magic Keyboard and the second-generation Apple Pencil – that makes it the first tablet outside the Apple Pro range to use this newer stylus. It attaches to the top of the tablet magnetically, which is how it charges.
iPad Air specs and features
The chipset inside the iPad Air 4 is the A14 Bionic, which we’re expecting to see in the iPhone 12. It’s the first 5nm chipset in an Apple mobile tablet, and it sounds like the fastest tablet Apple has put out yet. We’ll definitely run some benchmark tests as soon as we get the slate into our labs, to see if this claim is true.
Apple says the graphics performance of the tablet is 30% faster, though it doesn’t say compared to what. It does say the slate is twice as fast as your average HP laptop though.
Apple rarely announces the battery capacity of its devices when they’re launched – we’d expect to find that out when the iPad Air is available to buy, as people will inevitably take it apart to see what’s inside.
Finally there’s a 7MP f/2.2 front-facing camera and 12MP f/1.8 rear camera which sounds good enough for video calls and other forms of communication like that.