Apple iPad Air M4 First Impressions: the $749 tablet that makes the Pro hard to justify

Apple iPad Air M4 11-inch

By Merry

At a glance

  • It costs $749.00 at Best Buy for the 128GB Wi-Fi model, checked 11 November 2026 — $300 more than the plain iPad at $449, and $450 less than the 11-inch iPad Pro M5 at $1,199.
  • It is whether $300 buys anything you will actually feel, and whether $450 saved costs you anything you will actually miss.

Checked 11 November 2026 - Best Buy

Products in this article: iPad Air M4 - plain iPad - iPad Pro M5

The 11-inch iPad Air M4 sits in the most awkward spot in Apple’s tablet range, and that is exactly why it is worth a proper look. It costs $749.00 at Best Buy for the 128GB Wi-Fi model, checked 11 November 2026 — $300 more than the plain iPad at $449, and $450 less than the 11-inch iPad Pro M5 at $1,199. The question is not whether the Air is good. It is whether $300 buys anything you will actually feel, and whether $450 saved costs you anything you will actually miss.

The chip is the whole point

Inside is the M4: an 8-core CPU, a 9-core GPU with hardware-accelerated ray tracing, a 16-core Neural Engine and 12GB of unified memory, on Apple’s own spec sheet. That is the same chip that ran the last iPad Pro, and it changes what this tablet is for. The plain iPad’s A16 is fine for watching, reading and browsing. The M4 is for the work the Air is actually bought for — editing video, drawing with the Apple Pencil Pro, running a keyboard and a second display, and doing it without the tablet slowing down halfway through.

It also brings Apple Intelligence, which the A16 iPad does not have, and the accessories that make the Air a laptop stand-in: Apple Pencil Pro and the Magic Keyboard for iPad Air both work here, and the USB-C port runs at up to 10Gbps with external-display output up to 6K. Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 6 come through Apple’s N1 wireless chip. None of that shows up in a photo of the tablet. All of it shows up the first week you use it as a work machine.

The screen is where the money stays saved

What $749 does not buy is the Pro’s screen. The Air’s 11-inch Liquid Retina display is 2360×1640 at 264 pixels per inch and 500 nits — bright, sharp and colour-accurate, with P3 wide colour — but it is a 60Hz LCD. No ProMotion, no OLED, no 120Hz scrolling. If you have spent time on a ProMotion screen you will notice it the first day, in the way lists and web pages move. If you have not, you will not miss what you have never had, and for notes, reading, drawing and video the panel itself is genuinely good.

That is the Air’s deal in one sentence: Pro power, ordinary screen. Apple has drawn the line exactly there, and it is the only line that matters when you are choosing between this and the Pro.

The rest of the tablet

The rest is the familiar Air formula, unchanged in the ways that count. It is 6.1mm thick and weighs 464 grams, so it disappears into a bag next to a laptop. The battery is 28.93 watt-hours, rated at up to 10 hours. There is a 12MP Wide rear camera with an ƒ/1.8 aperture that shoots 4K video, and a 12MP landscape front camera with Center Stage, which keeps you framed on video calls — the camera sits on the long edge, where it belongs on a tablet you use sideways. Touch ID lives in the top button; there is no Face ID. Storage runs from 128GB to 1TB, and the base 128GB is the one to think twice about if you shoot video — it fills up faster than the price suggests.

CompareIdea verdict

The pick: the 11-inch iPad Air M4, for anyone who wants a full-size iPad that can genuinely work. If your tablet is for notes, drawing, editing and everyday work — and you want the Pencil Pro, a real keyboard and a chip that will not feel old in two years — this is the iPad to buy, and the $749 Best Buy price, checked 11 November 2026, is the right one to pay. The trade-off is the screen: 60Hz LCD, no ProMotion, and 128GB of storage at the base price. If the tablet is mainly for watching and browsing, save the $300 and buy the plain iPad at $449. If you already own a 120Hz screen and cannot go back, that is the one reason to stretch to the Pro at $1,199 — and the only one.

Price: $749.00 at Best Buy, 11-inch iPad Air M4, 128GB Wi-Fi, Space Gray, in stock, checked 11 November 2026.

Sources

Last updated: 11 November 2026

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