Rumors uncertain whether iPad Air 7 will run the M3 or M4 chip
iPad Air 7 should be releasesr this spring in March or April, but will the tablet be powered by Apple’s older M3 processor or the current M3 chip?
Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman “wouldn’t be surprised” if the next iPad Air ran Apple’s latest M4 processor, but reputable leaker Evan Blass, who has a pretty good track record with these things, says the company will opt for its M3 chip instead.
The last two generations of iPad Airs used older Apple silicon. If history is anything to go by, there’s no reason to believe that a seventh-generation iPad Air would be equipped with the current M4 chip, and I’ll explain why.
Will iPad Air 7 run Apple M3 or M4?
But first, Gurman doesn’t think Apple will keep the next iPad Air one to two steps behind iPad Pro, its most powerful tablet. Here’s what he wrote in a recent edition of his Power On newsletter on Bloomberg:
The new iPad Airs — code-named J607, J608, J637 and J638 — will be more about specification upgrades than design changes. The current version, introduced last year, has the M2 chip. I wouldn’t be terribly surprised if the 2025 models get bumped up to the M4, matching the iPad Pro. That would mean the Pro has less of an edge over the Air, but that shouldn’t be too shocking. Most Macs rely on the same chip family, and iPads could do the same.
Leaker Evan Blass, however, doesn’t think iPad Air 7 will skip the M3 and go straight for M4. Blass shared on his X account some source code referencing unreleased iPads that he says suggests iPad Air 7 will be powered by the M3 chip, not M4.
In my view, the next iPad Air will run the M3 chip. This is Apple’s consumer tablet that doesn’t need the latest and greatest silicon. Besides, an M4 iPad Air wouldn’t maintain a clear performance gap between it and the iPad Pro lineup.
For example, the sixth-generation iPad Air (the current model) arrived in May 2024 with the M2 chip, which debuted two years earlier in the MacBook Air and 13-inch MacBook Pro laptops. The previous fifth-generation iPad Air, released in March 2023, was powered by 2020’s M1 chip.
Apple is expected to release iPad Air 7 and iPad 11 in March or April, along with a seasonal refresh of the Apple Watch bands and perhaps a new iPhone colorway.
Source link: https://www.idownloadblog.com/2025/01/20/apple-m3-m4-ipad-air-7-chip-speculation/
Leave a Reply