Artist Review: M3 iPad Air 7 (2025)

The 7th gen iPad Air was released in March 2025 and uses the Apple M3 processor. The only upgrade over the M2 iPad Air 6 from May 2024 is just the processor upgrade.

Prices start from USD 599 and USD 799 for the 11-inch and 13-inch model respectively, and you get 8GB RAM and 128GB storage. For drawing purposes, I recommend increasing the storage to 256GB and that cost US$100 more. The iPad Air is significantly more affordable compared to the M4 iPad Pros with 256GB storage that start at USD 999 and 1299 respectively.

Price

Prices below are in US$.

LTE cellular models cost US $150 more.

Specifications

The maximum SDR brightness of the 11-inch is 500 nits and for the 13-inch it's 600 nits.

Bottom line: Consider the refurbished iPad Pro

The M3 iPad Air is a minor incremental update to the previous model. This is a good option for people who don't want to spend that extra USD 300-400 for the M4 iPad Pro with tandem OLED display. The drawing experience for the M3 iPad Air and M4 iPad Pro is almost similar.

If you still have an iPad that works, it's not necessary to upgrade unless your old iPad is faulty or too slow.

In my review for the iPad Air 6 (2024), I mentioned it would be better to spend a bit more to get a refurbished iPad Pro. For the iPad Air 7, my recommendation is still the same: Consider a refurbished iPad Pro if you have a bit more budget.

Look at the price comparison chart above. The price difference between the M3 iPad Air vs a refurbished M2 iPad Pro is less than USD 100. If you go with the iPad Pro, you will get:

• 120Hz instead of 60Hz refresh rate
• 4-way instead of 2-way speakers
• Face unlock instead of fingerprint unlock
• Thunderbolt USB-C port instead of USB-C 10Gbps
• An extra ultra-wide camera

Note that the M3 iPad Air uses Apple Pencil Pro while the M2 iPad Pro uses Apple Pencil 2. Go for M3 iPad Air only if you need the extra features from the Apple Pencil Pro, namely barrel rotation, squeeze shortcut and Find My. And note that the display of M2 iPad Pro still uses LCD instead of OLED.

Things included

• Tablet
• 20W USB-C charger (depends on country)
• USB-C to USB-C charging cable
• Quick start guide

Apple Pencil Pro is sold separately for USD 129.

Design

The M3 iPad Air is a well made tablet that looks good and has solid build quality. Bezels are thin. Corners of the body and LCD are rounded off.

There's a landscape 12MP front camera with auto-brightness that works well, but there's no face unlock.

The 11-inch and 13-inch weigh 460g and 617g respectively. The 11-inch is more portable and easier to handle with one hand. The 13-inch is much larger and is mostly a table-top tablet in my opinion. If you're looking for something that's easier to bring around, the 11-inch is a great option.

11-inch is still a good size to work on for drawing. Even with one column of palettes by the side, there's still a good amount of canvas space left. The 13-inch is better if you also intend to use split-screen mode, have reference images inside the drawing app, or want to use the tablet as a wireless external display.

Sides of the tablet are flat and edges are beveled. The power button has a built-in fingerprint scanner that works fast and effectively. Two sets of speaker grilles are located at the top.

Two more sets of speaker grilles are located at the bottom. This tablet has four sets of speaker grilles but only two speakers. When the tablet is held horizontally with the power button at the top, the sound comes out from the bottom two speaker, and those speakers can be covered by your hands.

Sound quality is good. Audio from the two speakers are loud, clear and has decent amount of surround.

The USB-C port supports USB 3.1 gen 2 transfer speed (10Gbps), 20W charging and video output.

Design on the matte textured metal back is clean without any labels. Pogo pin connectors for the Apple keyboard case are located at the bottom. The rear camera is also 12MP and there's no flash light.

Colours available are Space Gray, Blue, Purple and Starlight.

Display

The anti-reflective coating on the display does a good job at minimising the glare of reflections.

The display is bright, vibrant and sharp. Colours look good. The LCD supports wide colour P3. Brightness is up for 500 nits for the 11-inch and 600 nits for the 13-inch. Refresh rate is 60Hz. Viewing angles are good with minimal colour shift and drop in brightness.

Not having an OLED display is not really a downside in my opinion. A good LCD can still look great, and this iPad Air display looks great. If you want an OLED display, be prepared to spend at least US$400 more for the M4 iPad Pro.

The display is laminated so when drawing or writing, there's almost no gap between the line and the pen tip.

There's some latency if you're drawing fast but latency isn't really an issue. Latency difference between the 60Hz and 120Hz display isn't noticeable when actually drawing. In other words, you won't be missing much if you're buying the iPad Air instead of the M4 iPad Pro to save money.

The 11-inch iPad Air has a display aspect ratio that's almost 3:2 while the 13-inch model has a 4:3 aspect ratio. This aspect ratio make the tablet more usable in both landscape and portrait orientation. I prefer the 3:2 and 4:3 aspect ratio over the more common 16:9 or 16:10 aspect ratio used by most Android tablets.

16:10 aspect ratio is better for watching videos but more squarish aspect ratio are better for productivity, because when in landscape you get more vertical space to show more content, and when in portrait orientation it's not too narrow.

OS and software

I tested the tablet with iPadOS 18.5, and Apple will be releasing iPadOS 26 soon. The current iPadOS can feel quite limiting at times so hopefully the next version will provide more features and utility. I don't want to waste too much time talking about what it cannot do.

If you use a Mac, you can use SideCar which can turn your iPad Air into an external display. Mac users can also AirDrop to share files easily. If you use a Windows computer, you can use LocalSend for sharing files, and third party wireless display apps.

For backup options, you can use either iCloud (monthly subscription), a Mac or Windows computer (requires iTunes software). iCloud is a good backup option because it provides 100% backup automatically. Manual backup to a computer requires discipline.

There are many wonderful and capable drawing apps available from the Apple App Store. There are also graphic design apps that handle layout, typography and vector. For video editing, there's Final Cut Pro, DaVinci Resolve and LumaFusion. The availability of all these creative apps makes this tablet, and all iPad models, a versatile creative tool.

Below are non-exhaustive lists for some of the popular creative apps:

Drawing

• Procreate
• Medibang Paint
• Medibang Pro
• Clip Studio Paint
• Sketchbook Pro
• Tayasui Sketches Pro
• Concepts
• PaintStorm
• Infinite Painter
• Affinity Photo
• Adobe Photoshop
• Adobe Fresco
• ArtStudio Pro

Graphic design

• Affinity Photo
• Affinity Designer
• Vectornator
• Amadine
• Adobe Photoshop
• Adobe Illustrator
• Affinity Publisher

Photo and video editing apps

• Adobe Photoshop
• Adobe Lightroom
• LumaFusion
• DaVinci Resolve

I probably should also mention that the Apple M3 processor is very powerful and can handle graphics intensive games, and of course the processor will have no problems handling any drawing app no matter how demanding they are. 8GB RAM is sufficient for multi-tasking.

The M3 processor and 8GB RAM can definitely last for many years, so much so that you can just change the deteriorating battery in the future instead of getting a new tablet. My iPad Pro 2018 still works fine after a battery swap but it's no longer as responsive as the newer tablets, and the 4GB RAM is quite limiting nowadays.

Oh, you can expect OS updates for many years to come. My iPad Pro 2018 still receives updates in 2025.

PEN

Pens that can work with the M3 iPad Air are:

• USD 129 Apple Pencil Pro: Support tilt, pressure, palm rejection and other features
• USD 79 Apple Pencil USB-C: Supports tilt, palm rejection
• Third party Apple Pencil lookalike: Supports tilt, palm rejection

For drawing purposes, you should get the Apple Pencil Pro for all these features:

• Tilt sensitivity: You can tilt the pen low to get broad strokes
• Pressure sensitivity: Apple does not disclose the number of pressure levels supported but it's probably around 4000 levels
• Palm rejection works really well
• Hover lets you preview the cursor or brush when pen tip is near the display
• Barrel Roll allows you to rotate the cursor by rotating the pen
• Double tap shortcut: This is customisable depending on the app you use
• Squeeze shortcut: This is customisable depending on the app you use
• Haptic feedback happens when shortcuts are activated with double tap or squeeze
• Find My allows you to locate your lost pen
• Magnetic charging and pairing

There is a lot of tech in Apple Pencil Pro.

Since the Apple Pencil Pro can be attached to the side of the tablet for charging, you don't have to worry about the battery life as it's always charged the next time you use it.

Apple Pencil Pro is well made. Pen tip is firm without movement. Pen tip replacements are easily available. There are also many third party pen tip alternatives

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Line tests

Line tests below were created with Medibang Paint

1. Initial activation force is minimal. Drawing thin lines is easy even with a thick brush selected. No noticeable jitter or wobble when drawing slow diagonal lines.

2. Lines taper smoothly and sharply.

3. Line transition from thin to thick and back to thin smoothly.

4. Consistent line width can be created by maintaining consistent pressure.

5. Dots can be drawn easily.

6. There is no cursor misalignment. Joining lines do not have gaps or overshoot.

The Apple Pencil Pro is accurate, and has consistent and predictable performance for drawing.

Tilt sensitivity and barrel rotation work well with apps that support those features.

Drawing experience

This was sketched with Medibang Paint. Half of the sketch was drawn with the iPad 11 (2025) with Apple Pencil 1 and half was drawn with the M3 iPad Air with Apple Pencil Pro. The pen performance for drawing is similar for Apple Pencil 1, Apple Pencil 2 and Apple Pencil Pro.

I did not experience any issues while drawing. Workflow is smooth.

Lines are able to come out exactly the way I expect them to. Apple Pencil Pro is very sensitive and is able to draw thin lines even with a thick brush selected. I chose to draw buildings because I wanted to test for diagonal line wobble and there are no issues.

Pen performance is consistent and predictable. This pen and tablet can definitely be used to create professional art. In fact, many artists actually use iPads (all models) for their career.

As someone who enjoys sketching outdoors, I appreciate how portable the 11-inch tablet is. The tablet is not too heavy and easy to handle with one hand. I can stand and sketch on the train while commuting to work, which is what I usually do instead of doom-scrolling through social media. When I bring the tablet outdoors, I prefer to use a magnetic case where I can remove the tablet quickly and easily.

The 13-inch iPad Air is mostly a table-top tablet since it's so big. It's just more comfortable to set the tablet down on a surface, or a tablet stand (I use the Parblo PR100. If you don't actually have to bring your tablet outdoors often, there isn't much downside to getting the 13-inch over the 11-inch.

The plastic pen tip glides quite smoothly on the glass surface but I won't consider it to be slippery. I've already gotten used to that. There are many people who would prefer having a matte screen protector on the display to get the extra tactile experience while drawing. There's no need to buy expensive matte screen protectors. Consider the SuperShieldz screen protectors which are cheap and good.

List below are the number of layers you can get for an A4 sized 300 DPI canvas in Procreate.

Battery life

Battery life is around 6 to 10 hours depending what you do on the tablet and the display brightness. With auto-brightness, you can get around 8 hours of use easily. Battery life is considered good.

Conclusion

The tablet performance with the M3 chip and 8GB RAM is responsive and smooth. And the tablet looks good and sounds good. It's a great all-round tablet.

The M3 iPad Air is a very capable tablet for creating art. Pen performance is fantastic, accurate enough, consistent and predictable. Drawing experience is very similar to the M4 iPad Pro so you're not missing out on anything by going with the M3 iPad Air.

The downsides are mostly in the form of limitations or lack of features when compared to the iPad Pro. It is not surprising considering this tablet is selling at a lower price.

The M3 iPad Air does provide good value for money, especially so when you compare it to the much more expensive iPad Pro. But do compare the price with refurbished M2 iPad Pros that are sometimes available from the refurbished store on Apple's website. If the price difference isn't too big, I would still recommend the refurbished iPad Pros for the extra features.

Pros and cons at a glance

+ Beautiful design
+ Solid build quality
+ LCD is bright, vibrant and sharp
+ Good colour accuracy
+ Effective anti-reflective coating
+ Laminated display
+ Auto-brightness works well
+ Fingerprint scanner is fast and effective
+ Audio quality is good
+ Apple Pencil Pro provides great drawing and writing experience
+ Pen attaches to the tablet for charging and pairing
+ Good battery life
+ Many drawing, graphic design, creative apps available
+ M3 processor and 8GB RAM has good longevity
+ Backup options can backup 100% of the tablet
+ Many years of OS updates
- Camera does not have flash
- Stage Manager external display usefulness depends a lot on third party app implementation
- Display refresh rate is only 60Hz
- No water resistance

Availability

Do me a favour. If you're interested to get the M3 iPad Air or accessories, consider supporting my blog by buying through the affiliate links listed below at no extra cost.

The M3 iPad Air is available from Amazon (US | CA | UK | DE | FR | ES | IT | JP)

Here in Singapore they are available from Lazada SG and Shopee SG.