Apple, via Newsroom, kicks off its “big week”:

Apple today announced the new iPad Air featuring M4 and more memory, giving users a big jump in performance at the same starting price. With a faster CPU and GPU, iPad Air boosts tasks like editing and gaming, and is a powerful device for AI with a faster Neural Engine, higher memory bandwidth, and 50 percent more unified system memory than the previous generation. With M4, iPad Air is up to 30 percent faster than iPad Air with M3, and up to 2.3x faster than iPad Air with M1. The new iPad Air also features the latest in Apple silicon connectivity chips, N1 and C1X, delivering fast wireless and cellular connections — and support for Wi-Fi 7 — that empower users to work and be creative anywhere. Available in two sizes and four gorgeous finishes that users love, the 11-inch iPad Air is super portable, and the 13-inch model provides an even larger display for those who want more space to multitask.

A small but meaningful speed bump, but it’s the memory increase to 12GB (from 8GB), plus the added N1 and (for cellular-equipped devices) C1X chips, that really stand out. Otherwise, it’s basically the same as the M3 iPad: same colors (blue, purple, starlight, and space gray), storage options (128GB, 256GB, 512GB, and 1TB), and form factors.

Pricing starts at $599 for the 11-inch and $799 for the 13-inch, with a $50 discount for education. Preorders start Wednesday, March 4, with availability starting Wednesday, March 11.

One curiosity: both the M3- and M4-powered iPads Air sport an 8-core CPU, however, the M3 splits its cores evenly between performance and efficiency. The M4 gives up a performance core in exchange for an efficiency core: 3 performance, 5 efficiency. I wonder if the trade-off was for cost, battery, heat, or yield, and how a 4/4 M4 would perform by comparison.

(It’s worth noting that the no-adjective iPad (with an A16 chip) is still the only iPad in Apple’s lineup incapable of using Apple Intelligence. Will that finally change this week? It’s been 16 months since I first anticipated an Apple Intelligence-capable iPad “nothing,” and a year since Apple updated it (via an “also”) to the A16. It’s starting to get embarrassing.)