Many Black Friday traditions have fallen by the wayside - long queues outside shops, news footage of people fighting over the last poorly-reviewed flatscreen TV - but the search for the best Black Friday iPad deal is an enduring classic. And this year, I’ve saved you the bother of looking and found it for you: The 11-inch iPad Air, which can be had for $449 in the US and £499 in the UK.
Still here? Not gone and bought one yet? Well in that case, allow me to explain my thinking.
Firstly, the iPad Air’s processor - an M3 chip that’s “built for Apple Intelligence”. Unless you’re willing to pay top dollar for an M5 iPad Pro, this is the best you’re going to get in an Apple tablet, and is powerful enough to keep you happy for many years to come. You should have more than five years of OS updates, too.
Now, there are also big savings to be had on the standard 2025 iPad but, although it costs a couple of hundred quid less, it contains the three-year-old A16 chip, has less RAM (6GB as opposed to 8GB in the iPad Air), no support for Apple Intelligence (if that’s important to you) and an inferior display (there’s P3 wide colour of anti-reflective coating).
Which isn’t to say that the standard iPad is a non-starter - if you want something for ‘general’ use and occasional music-making it’s still a good option - but if you want to run Logic Pro, the Air is a better bit. Indeed, that software’s Stem Splitter feature will only work on iPads with an A17 processor or later, which rules the standard A16 iPad out.
So that’s where I’m at. By all means save yourself a couple of hundred quid and have fun making music on the entry-level iPad, but if you want a performance boost but aren’t willing to spend top dollar on the iPad Pro, the iPad Air M3 is the model to go for.
The best Black Friday iPad deals in the US
The best Black Friday iPad deals in the UK
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