Apple's latest M4 iPad Air is already $50 off

SAVE $50: The new 13-inch Apple iPad Air (M4, WiFi, 128GB) is on sale for $749 at Amazon, Best Buy, and Walmart as of mid-March. That's $50 off its usual MSRP of $799; it's never been cheaper.

Amazon, Best Buy, and Walmart are celebrating the release of Apple's latest tablet with a decent launch day deal. As of March 11 — its first day on the market — the new 13-inch iPad Air with the M4 chip is $50 off at all three retailers. The base configuration with 128GB of storage is now just $749 (normally $799), which is its lowest price yet.

This is the first time the new 13-inch iPad Air has been on sale, but its 11-inch counterpart was marked down to $559 (or $40 off) during its preorder phase. Blessedly, that discount was still live at the time of writing. The two tablets are identical aside from their screen sizes and brightness. The 11-inch model's display is a hair dimmer.

Mashable tech editor Timothy Beck Werth got a chance to test the M4 iPad Air right after Apple announced it last week, and in its words, "it delivers iterative updates that improve an already stellar tablet." It's super thin, light, pretty, and probably way too powerful for the average user. Werth thinks "creators, artists, and college students" will take the fullest advantage of it. (Read his full review.)

Here's a quick overview of the M4 iPad Air's specs:

• Apple M4 chip with an 8-core CPU and 9-core GPU

• 12GB RAM

• Liquid Retina touchscreen display with True Tone, a 60Hz refresh rate, 500/600 nits of brightness, and an anti-reflective coating

• 12MP Wide rear camera and 12MP Center Stage camera

• Landscape stereo speakers

• Dual mics

• Apple N1 wireless networking chip (WiFi 7 and Bluetooth 6)

• Apple Pencil and Magic Keyboard support

• Apple Intelligence support

• Blue, purple, starlight, and space gray color options

If you need more storage and don't care about having the freshest, most future-proofed specs, consider opting for a last-gen M3 iPad Air instead: The 13-inch model with 512GB of disk space is on sale for $949 on Amazon. (It usually retails for $1,099, so you save a cool $150.) That's a match of its record-low price from last Black Friday.

Compared to the newer M4 variant, the M3 iPad Air has older connectivity technology and 8GB of memory instead of 12GB. Their overall designs, displays, and camera systems are exactly the same, and both are plenty fast for running intensive apps. Per Mashable's Werth, the M4 model's upgrades make it just a little better for "[handling] as many AI features as possible."