iPad Air 2020 debuts with A14 Bionic chip and USB-C

Apple has announced the all-new iPad Air, calling it “the most powerful, versatile and colorful iPad Air ever.”

Available in five finishes, the all-new iPad Air boasts a bezel-free design and houses a larger 10.9in Liquid Retina display that includes full lamination, P3 wide color support, True Tone, and an anti-reflective coating.

The new iPad Air also gets serious camera upgrades, including a 7MP front-facing FaceTime HD camera and a 12MP rear camera for higher-resolution photos and 4K video capture. It also includes a magnetic side for attaching and charging the optional Apple Pencil, and the next-generation Touch ID sensor built into the top button.

Of all the news, perhaps the most exciting is that the new iPad Air comes with Apple’s most advanced chip, the A14 Bionic.

“Today we’re excited to introduce a completely redesigned and far more powerful iPad Air, debuting Apple’s most powerful chip ever made, the A14 Bionic,” said Greg Joswiak, Apple’s senior vice president of worldwide marketing.

“With its gorgeous new all-screen design, larger 10.9-inch Liquid Retina display, next-generation Touch ID, and a massive boost in performance with A14 Bionic, the new iPad Air brings customers powerful pro features at an even more affordable price,” Joswiak added.

The A14 Bionic chip is packed with 11.8 billion transistors for increased performance and efficiency. Its new six-core design boosts CPU performance by 40% while a fresh four-core graphics architecture delivers a 30% improvement in graphics.

The A14 Bionic also includes a new 16-core neural engine that can perform up to 11 trillion operations per second. Plus, second-generation machine learning accelerators in the CPU deliver 10 times faster machine learning calculations.

The new iPad Air comes outfitted with a USB-C port for up to 5Gbps data transfers too, which Apple says is 10 times faster for connecting to cameras, hard drives and external monitors.

The new iPad Air will also come with the newest iPadOS 14, which better integrates the Apple Pencil by automatically detecting handwriting, shapes, phone numbers and more. It also includes Scribble, which lets the user handwrite into any text field and converts it to typed text.

The iPad Air is currently available for purchase and will begin shipping in October. The base model starts from $599, and the Wi-Fi and cellular iPad Air starts from $729.