At today’s even, Apple has officially unveiled the new iPad Air, a thinner and lighter iPad. The thinner bezel featured on the iPad Air shrinks the footprint of the tablet without compromising the screen size. This is the first major redesign of Apple’s flagship tablet since the release of the iPad 2 in 2011.
At only 7.5mm thick, its 20% thinner than the previous model and weighs just 1.0 pound ( 28% less than the previous iPad ). The iPad Air features the same 9.7-inch Retina display with a 2048 x 1536 pixel resolution
The new iPad features the same 64-bit A7 processor and M7 motion coprocessor found in the iPhone 5S which is 8x faster and has 72x better graphics performance than the old processor.
The iPad Air comes with a 5MP iSight camera and FaceTime HD front-facing camera.
According to Apple, the new iPad Air has twice the data transfer rate on WiFi thanks to new MIMO 802.11n support, but it doesn’t support 802.11ac.
Battery life: 10 hours.
Price and availability
The new iPad Air will be available November 1st in space grey and black, and silver and white color option and starts at $499. An LTE version will also be available but it will start at $629. Apple is also keeping the iPad 2 around, and it will be available for $399