It’s back to school season, which means many students and/or their parents are on the lookout for a laptop on which they can get schoolwork done. Depending on your needs, though, a tablet may do the trick (but you’ll likely still want a keyboard attachment for extended typing sessions). Tablets offer flexibility in terms of study and play, and it’s pretty hard to go wrong with a recent iPad.
As luck would have it, the 13-inch iPad Air M2 has dropped to its lowest price since Apple released it in May. The blue and space gray models are . That’s $70 off the regular price.
Apple
Apple’s M2-powered iPad Air has dropped to its lowest price to date. You can pick up one with 8GB of RAM and 128GB of storage for $729.
$729 at Amazon
While it’s not the most powerful iPad around — the latest iPad Pro is the first device to use Apple’s M4 chips — the M2 iPad Air is a great option. It’s our recommendation for the and we gave it .
The M2 iPad Air delivers a great balance of performance, features and price. The 13-inch model has a brighter screen than its 11-inch sibling, and more screen real estate to get things done on. However, the 60Hz refresh rate is not as smooth as the 120Hz OLED panel on the latest iPad Pro.
The 8GB of included RAM and 128GB of base storage should be enough for basic tasks. The iPad Air will run for up to 10 hours on a single charge too.
There are cheaper and less-powerful iPads, but you’ll be futureproofed to a certain degree with this one. AI-driven features will be available on the M2 iPad Air when Apple rolls those out later this year, and you can play some modern games such as and the on the tablet (there’s always the option to stream games from the cloud or local hardware too). One other feature we appreciate about this model is that Apple finally moved the front-facing camera to the horizontal edge, which makes much more sense for FaceTime or video calls in landscape mode.
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