Apple has announced the new iPad A16 and iPad Air.
The first tablet – which will cost $329 – will be doubling its storage and will come with 128GB of memory instead of 64GB, which has been used as the base storage on the entry-level iPad since the 9th Generation iPad in 2021.
The new iPad will also get the more efficient A16 Bionic chipset, which was first introduced with the 2022 iPhone 14 Pro and will boast up to 50 per cent better performance compared to the previous 10th Generation iPad, which came with the A14 Bionic chip.
Apple has also upgraded Apple Pencil support for both the Lightning and USB-C variants of the styluses with the iPad A16, with the second generation stylus now being able to magnetically attach to the side of the device.
However, doing so does not charge the Apple Pencil, and will instead need to get powered up by plugging it into the iPad’s USB-C port.
While iPad A16 has received several meaningful upgrades to its storage and chipset, the tablet will be missing out on Apple’s artificial intelligence software Apple Intelligence.
That however, is not the case for the new iPad Airs – which come with 11-inch and 13-inch screen sizes – with both devices being able to run Apple Intelligence.
Other upgrades to the iPad Airs – which start at $599 and $799 respectively – include the more efficient M3 chip, which Apple says will be nearly two times faster than the M1 iPad Air.
The two devices will retain their Liquid Retina displays – which are laminated while the iPad A16’s screen is not – and will also support the new Magic Keyboard, which offers a larger trackpad and a dedicated 14-ket function row for accessing features like volume and screen brightness.
