Apple held its big iPhone SE 2022 event yesterday, on March 8th and during that event it also revealed a bunch of other hardware products. Those include a brand new iPad Air, known tentatively as the iPad Air 5. In many ways, it feels more like an iPad Pro Light or Mini.
Priced starting at $599 a pop, the device now sports an Apple M1 processor and 5G connectivity. It also brings the same design as the iPad Air from back in September 2020, but with updated internals. The device has a 10.9 inch Liquid Retina Display, which promises a peak brightness of 500 nits and HDR support. Apple didn’t mention anything about ProMotion, so we get standard refresh rate here. We do get the wide color gamut P3, True Tone and an anti reflective coating.
Inside we find an Apple M1 processor, the same CPU from the latest iPad Pro devices and also uses on some Mac products. It’s an octa core affair with the promise of being 60% faster than the Apple A14 Bionic, used on the last gen iPad Air. Camera-wise, there’s a 12 MP sensor at the back side, similar to the predecessor’s. Upfront we find a 12 MP shooter with support for Apple’s Center Stage feature.
The Power button is placed at the top side and integrates a Touch ID sensor for biometric authentication. There are also landscape stereo speakers here, an USB-C port with data transfers at 10 Gbps. The device is compatible with accessories like the Apple Pencil, Magic Keyboard, Smart Keyboard Folio and Smart Folio Covers. It’s available in 5 colors: Space Gray, Starlight, Pink, Blue and Purple. Storage versions are 64 GB and 256 GB.
