The iPad Air has long been the one to buy out of Apple’s confusing tablet line-up. The iPad Pro is an incredible piece of kit, but hard to financially justify; and the standard iPad is cheap but lacks most of the modern functionality you might want to do on a tablet, and has a pretty subpar screen. The iPad Mini is great, but it’s also so much smaller that it’s not really the same category of device.

The iPad Air then was the one to buy for most people, coming with a great screen, handy stylus support, and a premium look, but without the painful prices of the Pro. That is if you were determined to buy new, and my recommendation was always just to get a refurbished iPad Pro. A 2022 iPad Pro is very similar to the current version, and can be bought renewed for only $580, which is almost half the retail price, and just under the price of a new iPad Air.

However, Apple has now announced a new iPad Air, hoping to sway people away from such ideas; and though there are some changes, these are very minor.

The Air now gets Apple’s M3 chip, increasing its power, but otherwise is unchanged. It does however get a new accessory, taken from the iPad Pro, which is the laptop-style “Magic” keyboard attachment. If you wanted to use the iPad Pro as an email-demolishing laptop alternative, this was a fantastic, but obscenely pricey accessory, and Apple is now introducing that functionality — and expense — to the iPad Air buyers.

The Air is available in four colors and two sizes — 11-inches and 13-inches — and the prices remain the same as the previous M2-powered version, with the smaller Air starting at $599, and the 13-inch version starting at $799. The new “Magic Keyboard” is $269 or $319 for each size.

With this update, Apple’s made their best value-for-money iPad even better, and the option of the “Magic” keyboard brings it closer to the iPad Pro; but this isn’t a huge change and my recommendation stands to look for renewed options.