Apple Tricked Us With The M1 iPad Air — Early Hands-On Impressions

A “new” old iPad Air, a sneaky, but clever move by Apple…

Should you get the new iPad Air? That’s probably the question on many folks’ mind, right after all the more important things in life. Getting the new iPad Air is beyond a first world problem right now. Having said that, it’s worth taking a closer gander at it, and I am doing just that.

I wasn’t planning to get it this year, but then Apple decided to throw in the M1 chip, and that got me convinced somehow. In all honesty, I rarely refresh my iPads. The last iteration I owned was the 3rd generation, which I traded in with a somewhat faulty display. Still got 100 bucks for it, though, so yay me!

My options were either this 5th generation iPad Air or last year’s iPad Pro, but no amount of reviews were able to convince me to go for the Pro. To truly appreciate the Pro, one will eventually resort to getting the magic keyboard folio thingy, and at that point it costs more than an M1 MacBook Air. This year’s iPad Air, however, is an odd duckling. It’s very much last year’s duck for all intents and purposes, just incredibly beefed up smarts. Looking at it side by side, it’s practically an iPad Pro with a few barely noticeable features missing like 120Hz refresh rate, Face ID, and a couple less…