How to pre-order Apple's new iPad Air, iPad Pro, Pencil Pro and Magic Keyboard

The new 11-inch iPad Air starts at $599 for a model with 128GB of storage. That's the same entry price as the prior model, but the base storage is (thankfully) twice as much as before. If you need more capacity, 256GB, 512GB and 1TB models are available for $699, $899 and $1,099, respectively. (The latter two options are new.) Cellular models start at $749. Color options include Blue, Purple, Starlight and Space Gray. You can currently order one at Apple.com or third-party retailers such as Amazon, Best Buy, B&H and Walmart.

This may be the least sexy of today's updates. It mostly looks to be a spec bump: The flat-edged design has the same weight and dimensions as before, and the screen has the same resolution — despite Apple now calling this an 11-inch tablet instead of a 10.9-inch one — but the processor has jumped to the M2 chip found in the last-gen iPad Pros. This won't be a game-changing upgrade over the previous model's M1 chip, but it's an upgrade all the same, and it should make the Air one of the most performant tablets in its price range.

On top of that, both of the new Airs place their front-facing camera on the tablet's landscape edge, which'll make it easier to stay in the center of the frame during video calls. Previously, the 10th-gen iPad was the only Apple tablet with that perk. The new tablets also support the Apple Pencil "hover" feature that was introduced with the last-gen iPad Pros.

Otherwise, you're still looking at a 60Hz LCD display with the same 500 nit brightness rating, a Touch ID sensor with no Face ID, a non-Thunderbolt USB-C port and the usual 10-hour battery life. The device does jump to Wi-Fi 6E and Bluetooth 5.3, however, up from Wi-Fi 6 and Bluetooth 5.0.

All that said, we considered the prior Air to be the best iPad for most people, and we'd expect this new one to still be a good middle ground between the pricier iPad Pros and the less featured 10th-gen iPad. The latter, by the way, is now Apple's entry-level model, and has dropped permanently in price to $349. The company has formally phased out the older 10.2-inch iPad with today's updates, which means its cheapest tablet now costs $20 more than before. This also marks the death of Apple's older iPad design language, home button and headphone jack included.

The real big change with the iPad Air is the introduction of an entirely new model. Similar to the iPhone 15 Plus, the new 13-inch iPad Air looks to be a lower-cost option for those who want a jumbo-sized device but don't want to fork over the cash for a Pro model. It's still not cheap: The device starts at $799 for 128GB of storage, with the 256GB, 512GB and 1TB models respectively available for $899, $1,099 and $1,299. But that's significantly less than the 13-inch Pro. Cellular models here start at $949. 

The 13-inch iPad Air is effectively the same device as the 11-inch model above, only bigger. It's just as thin at 0.24 inches, but it weighs about 0.3 pounds more at 1.36 pounds total. Apple says it can reach up to 600 nits of brightness, however. You can order the device at Apple's online store, Amazon, Best Buy, B&H and Walmart, among other retailers.

The new 11-inch iPad Pro starts at $999 for a 256GB model. That's a $200 increase over the entry price of its predecessor. Again, the base version now comes with twice as much storage as before, though the previous 11-inch Pro cost $100 less for the same amount of space. In any event, versions with 512GB, 1TB and 2TB of storage are also available for $1,199, $1,599 and a whopping $1,999, respectively, while cellular models start at $1,199. Like the rest of today's new iPads, you can pre-order it at Apple.com or outside retailers like Amazon, Best Buy and B&H, and it'll be available on May 15. It's available in Silver or Space Black.

The new Pros are the first iPads to feature OLED displays. This should result in deeper and more uniform black levels, richer colors and wider viewing angles. This is a particularly noticeable upgrade for the 11-inch Pro, which previously used a more conventional LCD panel without the advanced mini-LED backlighting of its larger sibling. The display still supports a fast 120Hz refresh rate, too, which helps it provide smoother motion than the iPad Air. Apple claims it can reach up to 1,600 nits of peak HDR brightness as well.

In a first, you can also configure the iPad Pros with a nano-texture glass display, which is designed to further reduce glare. However, this option is only available with the 1TB and 2TB models, and it adds an extra $100 to the already-high MSRP.

The switch to OLED has helped Apple slim down the chassis a smidge. The new 11-inch model measures 0.21 inches thin, which is 0.2 inches slighter than before, and it weighs 0.98 pounds, down from 1.03 pounds before.

Internally, the new iPad Pros are the first devices to ship with Apple's M4 chip, an upgraded version of the 3nm processor that was only introduced last October and is currently found in the company's latest MacBooks and iMac. We'll have to get our hands on the new slates to see just how much of an upgrade this is over the M2 and M3 in practice. For what it's worth, Apple says it makes the new iPad Pros up to four times faster than the prior generation, though it's not like those tablets were hurting for performance.

It's worth noting that the 1TB and 2TB versions of the new iPad Pros are technically beefier than their lower-capacity counterparts. More specifically, Apple says those configs ship with 16GB of RAM rather than 8GB and feature a 10-core CPU instead of a 9-core unit.

Like the new iPad Airs, the M4 iPad Pros now situate their selfie cameras along the landscape edge. Beyond that, the usual perks of the iPad Pro are still here: A faster Thunderbolt port, Face ID support, a four-speaker setup, similar main and selfie cameras, a LiDAR scanner and so on. The ultrawide camera of the previous model has been removed, however. It's probably still a stretch to say the new Pros can replace most people's laptops, but if you just want the most premium iPad possible, one of these would be the device to get.

Just about everything we said about the 11-inch iPad Pro above also applies to the new 13-inch model. With the switch to OLED, any display tech disparities between the two models appear to be eliminated, so which one is right for you should simply come down to the screen size you prefer. As with the 11-inch version, the 12.9-inch Pro has also shrunk down in size, going from 0.25 inches thin to now 0.2 inches. The overall weight has also dropped from 1.5 pounds to 1.28 pounds.

But it, too, has leaped in price. The 13-inch Pro now starts at $1,299 for a model with 256GB of storage. That's another $200 leap in exchange for double the default storage. Other models with 512GB, 1TB and 2TB are also available for $1,499, $1,899 or $2,299. Cellular and nano-texture glass models add more on top of that. It's currently up for pre-order at Apple.com, Amazon, Best Buy and B&H, among others.

Alongside the new tablets, Apple also unveiled a new stylus dubbed the Apple Pencil Pro. This pen starts at $129, the same as the second-gen Pencil, but adds a squeeze gesture that lets you bring up a tool palette just by firmly pressing the device. There's now support for haptic feedback and Find My device tracking as well, as well as a "barrel roll" feature that can detect rotation through a built-in gyroscope. 

That said, the Pencil Pro does complicate the Pencil lineup a bit more, as it's only compatible with the new iPad Pros and iPad Airs, and Apple will continue to sell its other three styluses alongside them. Apple doesn't list its new tablets as being fully compatible with the second-gen Pencil that many users may already own, either, just the Pencil Pro and lesser USB-C model that lacks pressure sensitivity.

The Pencil Pro is currently available for pre-order at Apple's online store, Amazon, Best Buy and B&H. It'll be released on May 15.

Lastly, Apple's new Magic Keyboards are specifically designed to work with the M4 iPad Pros. These look to more closely resemble MacBook keyboards, with an aluminum palm rest, a full function row and a more spacious trackpad that supports haptic feedback. They'll cost $299 for the 11-inch model or $349 for the 13-inch version. As above, you can currently order the keyboards at Apple.com, Amazon, Best Buy and B&H.