During the Peak Performance event underway at the moment, Apple has finally unveiled its new fifth-generation iPad Air, the flagship tablet of the mid-range offer of the Cupertino house. After years as a protagonist, in fact, the Air series has given way to the Pro range in the higher segment, going to play an even more interesting role in a more accessible price segment, without however bringing strong compromises in terms of design and performance.
Precisely on the design front, we find the less marked differences compared to the last generation; the body of the fifth-generation iPad Air takes up the lines of its predecessor, leaving some of the key features unchanged, including the presence of the double stereo speaker and the USB Type-C port.
So if the design remains unchanged, if not for the new ones, the main novelty of iPad Air 5 lies in the introduction of a new SoC that allows the Apple tablet to make a clear leap forward in terms of performance. The possibility had already been anticipated by the rumors of this morning and actually, it seems that Apple has chosen to equip the new Air with one of its most performing mobile chips, or the famous M1.
This allows Air to reach the same performance level as the iPad Pro 2021, which guarantees unprecedented power and longevity for a tablet in this price range. M1 allows the iPad Air 5 to rely on the octa-core CPU and the particularly advanced GPU of the chip to offer a marked generational leap compared to its predecessor.
The arrival of M1 is also accompanied by a revision of connectivity since now the Air series can also count on the 5G modem that we previously saw debuting on the iPad in last year’s Pro models.