Apple iPad Air M3

The latest digital art resources are put to the test by the ImagineFX team...

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The 2025 edition of the iPad Air, its 13-inch incarnation at least, feels like an iPad Pro. It has the same flat sides and heft in the hand but has the powerful M3 chip inside.

The extra processing grunt means apps like Affinity Photo and the iPad versions of Photoshop and DaVinci Resolve absolutely fly, and the Apple Pencil Pro makes it ideal for sketching. There's a keyboard case that turns it into a kind of laptop, and the USB-C port means there's no scrabbling for a compatible charger. It's not cheap, but with a surprisingly reasonable starting price (though you're going to want to upgrade the base specs, which gets expensive fast), this might be the best tablet for creatives right now.

TOP OF THE RANGE

Apple makes great tablets. There's no need to say anything else. The 2025 edition of the iPad Air retains the design of the 2024 model, with flat sides and rounded corners.

It's a restrained design, with all the attention focused instead on the screen. As your primary method of interacting with a tablet, this is to be expected, and the rest of the iPad fades into the background when you're engrossed in the display. The edges of the iPad Air are broken by the little plastic sections that denote the points at which antennas pass through the metal to get a better signal, and there are four speakers split between top and bottom. The USB-C port sits where you'd expect it to, and there are the usual volume rocker and lock buttons too, the latter doubling as a fingerprint reader.