Apple’s latest iPad Air is on sale in all four colors for its lowest price to date

Metavives October 31, 2024

A photo of the iPad Air in a cafe setting. — *We wouldn’t recommend the latest Air for most people at full price, but the current discount makes it more appealing.* | Photo: David Pierce / The Verge

The new iPad Mini has arrived, bringing with it a faster A17 Pro chip, 8GB of RAM, support for the Apple Pencil Pro, and a taste of Apple Intelligence. However, unless you’re dead set on the tablet’s 8.3-inch form factor, the latest iPad Air is a better buy — especially since the 11-inch configuration is on sale at Amazon and Target with Wi-Fi and 128GB of storage starting at $498 ($101 off), an all-time low.

If you’re having trouble choosing between Apple’s entry-level iPad and an M4-powered iPad Pro, the 2024 iPad Air represents the middle ground. It’s a good-step option from the base iPad with USB-C charging, support for both the Apple Pencil (USB-C) and newer Apple Pencil Pro, and a laminated Liquid Retina display. The latter isn’t as nice as the 120Hz OLED screen found on Apple’s premium iPads, though, and the Air is still beholden to the same aging Touch ID sensor for logging in as previous models, as opposed to Face ID. Thankfully, it does sport a 12MP landscape-oriented webcam — a welcome tweak from the prior model — and a speedy M2 chip, which allows it to leverage AI-powered writing tools, a new and (slightly) improved Siri, and a slew of minor Apple Intelligence features found in iPadOS 18.1.

Admittedly, none of the AI features currently in beta are revolutionary — ChatGPT integration won’t arrive until December, and some most promising tools won’t arrive until 2025 — but at least you’ll have a futureproof iPad for whatever Apple ships in the coming months.

Read our hands-on impressions.

Other deals. discounts, and ways to save

If you prefer a cheaper Android alternative to Apple’s 11-inch Air, the Google Pixel Tablet is on sale at Wellbots starting at $289 ($110 off) when you use promo code NEW10. That’s not quite the all-time low of $274.99 we saw at Amazon last week, but it’s still a great price on an 11-inch slate with a sharp LCD display and speedy performance. You can also grab the 256GB model with its optional speaker dock at Wellbots for $489 ($110 off) using the same code, if you want to use it as a makeshift Nest Hub. Read our review.
Halloween is less than a day away, which makes now the perfect time to grab SFB Games’ Crow Country, which is on sale in the PlayStation Store through November 6th for $15.99 ($4 off). The sluggish survival horror title is a love letter to PlayStation-era games like Silent Hill and Resident Evil — see the intentionally bad aiming and chunky, 32-bit visuals — but it features juuuuust enough quality-of-life tweaks (including a useful tip system and 3D camera) that it doesn’t come across as totally dated. Read our review.
Apple’s latest AirPods Max with USB-C are on sale at Amazon in select colors starting at $486 (63 off), which is the lowest price we’ve seen on the luxe noise-canceling headphones since they launched at the beginning of September. They’re identical to the original model we reviewed in 2020, meaning they pack the same great sound and deep integration with the Apple ecosystem as other pairs of AirPods, except they rely on a USB-C for charging instead of Apple’s proprietary Lightning connector (phew).