A new wave of Apple tablets is hitting stores on March 12. The new iPad Air upgrades to the potent M3 processor to support Apple Intelligence, the suite of AI features that the company is deploying to compete with Google’s Gemini, Microsoft’s Copilot and other players in the increasingly crowded space. We ran down all of the upgrades in our iPad Air preview, but if you’re here you probably have only one question: How can I get one at launch for the best price? Read on, friends.
(Credit: Apple)
How to Preorder the 13-Inch iPad Air M3
Both sizes of the new iPad Air come with the M3 chip, an 8-core CPU with 4 performance cores and 4 efficiency cores which incorporates a faster Neural Engine to support additional artificial intelligence features in iOS, as well as improved performance for gaming and creativity. The rest of the hardware remains the same as the last release — you can read our review, which includes an Editors’ Choice award, here.
The largest model of the new Air slates retails at a starting base price of $799 for the Wi-Fi only model with the minimum 128GB of storage. Upping to include cellular service and as much as 512GB of storage will cost you $1,249. We’re not seeing any price drops or bundles ahead of launch, which isn’t surprising, so where you preorder from won’t make a difference there. Right now Amazon and the Apple Store have preorders up at matching prices
At Best Buy, you can trade in an earlier tablet to get up to a $350 discount on the new iPad Air M3. We’d expect similar deals from the major phone carriers to be unveiled soon.
(Credit: Apple)
How to Preorder The 11-Inch iPad Air M3
For $200 less, you get a slightly smaller screen but all of the functionality and fun of the 13-inch model.
The $350 trade-in offer is good for the smaller version as well.
(Credit: Apple)
How to Preorder The 11-Inch iPad A16
The new model of the base iPad has a similar upgrade, this time to the A16. This processor delivers a noticeable jump in performance while still maintaining the all-day battery life the tablet is known for. According to Apple, it’s nearly 30% faster than the previous generation, and 50% faster than the a13 Bionic chip. The baseline model comes with Wi-Fi connectivity and 128GB of storage, but you can upgrade to include both a cellular antenna and up to 512GB, which is the largest we’ve seen for this model of the tablet. Here’s our review of the current model for comparison.
Recommended by Our Editors
Best Buy has the iPad A16 for preorder as well, with up to $175 off for trade-ins.
We’ll be putting these new iPad models through their paces in full reviews very shortly, but we don’t expect them to stay on shelves long, so early adopters should jump on preorder opportunities now.
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About K. Thor Jensen
Contributing Writer
