I Paid £599 for the M4 iPad Air. Weeks Later, It Was £749

After nearly nine years with my old iPad, I finally upgraded. Then Apple raised the price. Would I still make the same decision today?

For nearly nine years, I used the same iPad. It was a 2017 iPad Pro, and over those years it became far more than something I used to browse the internet or watch YouTube.

It was part of my creative journey.

I edited some of my earliest YouTube videos on it using LumaFusion. I planned videos on it, wrote notes, consumed far too much content on it and generally found ways to keep using it long after newer and considerably more powerful iPads had arrived.

Eventually, though, there comes a point where “it still works” and “it still works well for me” become two very different things. So, after nearly nine years, I finally traded it in. Its replacement was the new M4 iPad Air.

Thankfully, my timing turned out to be rather fortunate. When I bought the base model, it cost me £599. Just weeks later, that same model was £749. That’s a £150 increase.

Suddenly, the question I originally had about this iPad became much more interesting. It was no longer simply:

Did I make the right upgrade?

It became:

If I were making exactly the same decision today, would I still buy the M4 iPad Air for £749?

After spending time with it, I think I have my answer.

First, why the iPad Air?

Apple’s iPad lineup can become confusing remarkably quickly. There’s the standard iPad, the Air and the Pro, with different sizes, storage options and accessories sitting around them. For me, the Air has always occupied the interesting part of that lineup. It isn’t the cheapest iPad. It isn’t the best iPad Apple makes either.

Instead, it sits somewhere in the middle, and I think that’s exactly why it makes sense for so many people. The M4 gives the Air considerably more performance than I’m realistically going to need for most of what I do on a tablet. More importantly, it means I shouldn’t have to start thinking about replacing it again anytime soon.

After keeping my previous iPad for nearly nine years, longevity matters to me. I don’t want to upgrade every year. I want to buy something, use it and keep using it until my needs genuinely outgrow it. That’s a very different way of looking at value.

I don’t want my iPad to be a MacBook

This is probably where my opinion differs from some other iPad users. I haven’t bought a keyboard for my iPad Air, and I don’t currently intend to.

That’s because I don’t want my iPad to become a laptop. I already have a MacBook Air. Once I start adding a keyboard, trackpad and everything else to an iPad, I’m moving closer towards something I already own. For me, the appeal of an iPad is precisely that it isn’t my MacBook.

I can pick it up. Sit on the sofa. Grab the Apple Pencil. Make some notes. Research an idea. Watch something. Read an article. Plan a video. Then put it down again.

When I need to do heavier work, I move to my MacBook. The two devices aren’t competing for the same job. They complement each other, and I think that’s worth considering if you’re buying your first iPad.

Before asking how close you can make an iPad feel to a laptop, perhaps ask whether you actually need it to.

If this is your first iPad

If you’ve never owned an iPad before, I think the Air is probably the most interesting place to start. The standard iPad is cheaper, and for many people it will be more than enough.

The iPad Pro gives you considerably more at the other end, particularly when it comes to the display and premium features.

But you need to know that you actually need those things. The Air sits between them. You get an extremely powerful tablet without paying for every feature Apple can possibly put into one. That’s what makes the Air compelling.

At £599, I thought that argument was incredibly easy to make. At £749? It requires slightly more thought.

What if you’re upgrading an older iPad?

This was my situation. If you’re coming from something genuinely old, the difference isn’t difficult to notice. My old iPad wasn’t suddenly useless the day the M4 Air arrived. That’s important.

Technology doesn’t magically become bad because something newer exists. But after nearly nine years, there were enough little compromises accumulating that I knew it was time.

Performance. Battery life. Software. Compatibility.

The general feeling that I was asking an ageing device to keep doing things it hadn’t really been designed for. Moving to the M4 Air feels like I’ve removed those compromises.

Everything happens without me thinking about whether the iPad can handle it and that’s arguably one of the biggest compliments I can give technology.

I stop thinking about the technology. I just use it.

What if you’re coming from Android?

This is where things get a little more complicated. I don’t think anyone should move from Android simply because someone on YouTube or Medium tells them Apple is “better.” There are some fantastic Android tablets. If you’ve built a setup around Samsung, Google or another ecosystem and it works for you, there needs to be an actual reason to leave it.

The question isn’t: Which brand wins?

It’s: Which device works better for what I actually want to do?

For me, one of the biggest attractions of the iPad is everything surrounding the hardware.

The apps. The accessories. The software support, and, increasingly in my case, how naturally it works with the other technology I already own.

Which brings me to something I hadn’t really noticed until recently.

Apparently, I’ve bought into the Apple ecosystem

I’ve never really thought of myself as someone who buys into ecosystems. I’ve always bought products because they solve a problem. But if I look around my desk, I have to admit that’s exactly what’s happened.

I have an iPhone. A MacBook Air. A Mac mini. And now another iPad.

So whether I deliberately planned it or not, I’ve quietly bought into Apple’s ecosystem.

The slightly strange thing is that it never really felt like I was making that decision. It just happened because the products worked for me. That doesn’t mean I’m loyal to Apple at all costs.

My watch is a perfect example. I used an Apple Watch for years, but as running has become a much bigger part of my life, I realised a Garmin suited what I needed from a watch considerably better.

So I switched.

That’s generally how I approach technology. I don’t buy something because of the logo on the front. I buy it because of what it helps me do.

Right now, though, Apple’s other devices continue to work incredibly well for my creative lifestyle.

I can begin planning something on my iPad, continue on my MacBook, AirDrop something from my iPhone and generally move between devices without thinking much about it.

None of those individual features is revolutionary. Together, however, they remove lots of tiny bits of friction. When you’re creating content regularly, those little things add up.

That’s what I want from technology. I don’t need it constantly reminding me how clever it is. I just want it to quietly help me create.

There are still things I’d change

As much as I’m enjoying the M4 iPad Air, it isn’t perfect.

I’d like Face ID. Touch ID in the power button works perfectly well, but when I’ve become accustomed to Face ID elsewhere, it feels like an obvious omission.

Then there’s the display. The Air’s display looks great for what I use it for, and I’ve got very little to complain about in everyday use. But it isn’t the OLED display from the iPad Pro. If the absolute best display is high on your priority list, there’s still a reason to look further up Apple’s lineup.

And then there’s the big one.

The price.

I paid £599. The same base model subsequently became £749. According to reporting from the BBC, rising memory and storage chip costs have contributed to increases in the price of consumer electronics. Whatever the wider reasons behind it, from a buyer’s perspective the situation is pretty simple:

You’re being asked to spend substantially more money on the same iPad, and that changes the value conversation.

So, would I still buy it for £749?

Yes. But it’s a more considered yes than it was at £599.

At £599, the M4 iPad Air occupied an incredibly comfortable position in Apple’s lineup.

At £749, I’d spend more time looking at the alternatives before pressing the buy button.

But ultimately, I think I’d still arrive at the same place. Not because the Air is cheap. It isn’t. Not because it’s the most advanced iPad Apple makes.

It isn’t that either.

I’d buy it because it gets the balance right for me. It’s enormously powerful for the things I want to do. It’s portable enough that I naturally pick it up. It works incredibly well alongside the devices I already use, and crucially, it still feels like a tablet.

That’s what I wanted.

The beginning of another long relationship?

When I traded in my old iPad, I thought I was simply replacing an ageing piece of technology.

Looking back, I was replacing something that had been part of almost nine years of my creative journey. That old iPad helped me edit some of my first YouTube videos.

It helped me learn. It helped me create. Eventually, it was simply time to move on. Now the M4 iPad Air takes its place.

If this one lasts even half as long as the iPad it replaced, I’ll be a very happy creator, because ultimately, that’s how I judge whether technology was worth buying. Not by how exciting it feels on day one.

But by whether I’m still happily using it years later.

I’ve also made a video about my experience with the M4 iPad Air, including who I think should buy one, whether it’s worth upgrading an older iPad and whether I’d still recommend it following the price increase.

Watch my M4 iPad Air video on YouTube