iPads are pretty commonly gifted during the holidays, with 9% of iPad owners reporting that they received their iPad as a gift during Q4 2024. If you’re looking to gift an iPad to a loved one, especially given the fantastic Black Friday Week deals – you might be wondering, which is more worthwhile? We’ll be comparing Apple’s recently released to its recently released .

First of all, if you’re buying a new iPad as a gift, you’re probably more likely to be considering the cheaper iPad models, like the and . If that’s the case, you can read my comparison for those two models.

If you’re shopping for yourself, or just have much deeper pockets to afford gifting an , you can keep on reading.

The key upgrade with the is the display. iPad Pro features a Tandem OLED display, versus the typical LCD panel on the . That means the offers up to 1000 nits of brightness (versus 500 on ), excellent HDR performance, much punchier colors, and deeper blacks.

also offers a ProMotion display with an up to 120Hz refresh rate, meaning you’ll notice much smoother scrolling, faster animations, and a more responsive experience. Unfortunately, still offers a typical 60Hz panel.

That’s not to say the display is bad, necessarily – it still offers P3 color support, and 500 nits is still plenty bright. That said, if you’re someone who’ll use your iPad as your Netflix/Disney+/etc machine, the could be worth springing for.

Apple refreshed the with the M5 chip last month, utilizing the 3rd generation 3nm process. The M3 chip in the utilizes the 1st generation 3nm process.

In all honesty, you’re unlikely to feel a difference here when it comes to typical iPad activities. I will note, though, that the offers 12GB of unified memory, whereas the offers 8GB. With heavy multitasking and web browsing, this might be a difference you feel.

In terms of synthetic benchmarks, Geekbench 6 places the M5 chip around 40% ahead of the M3 chip in CPU performance, and around 60% ahead in GPU performance.

Will you notice this in real-world usage? Probably not, especially given the fact that the M3 at best only needs to push content at a 60Hz refresh rate, so its incredibly unlikely you’ll face stutters even when you’re pushing your iPad with a heavy task like 4K video editing.

Display and performance are absolutely the two key reasons you’d want to consider an over an , but there are some noteworthy quality of life features to the that also make it worthwhile.

, for one, offers Face ID. Despite the fact that it’s been 8 years since Apple introduced Face ID on the iPhone X, and over 7 years since it debuted on the for the first time, it’s still yet to trickle down to any device besides the iPad Pro. So, if you want fast and easy biometrics, you’ll unfortunately need to buy an iPad Pro.

also offers quad speakers, whereas the iPad Air only offers dual speakers. Luckily, the is still a stereo setup (which hasn’t always been the case). Even though the has four speaker cutouts, only two of them are actually real. If you want a more full-sounding speaker experience, spring for the . If you’re someone who uses your AirPods most of the time, then the will do just fine.

Lastly, the offers a more made of aluminum, whereas the is made of a silicone material.

Before wrapping up, I’d also like to highlight that these iPads also have a lot in common. They both offer the exact same stylus experience with , both are made of solid aluminum (though the does offer more color options than the ), and both offer the same 11-inch and 13-inch display options.

There used to be a time where you’d need to buy an if you wanted a larger display, but luckily that isn’t the case anymore.

You’ll also get all of the latest windowing and multi-tasking features in iPadOS 26 on both iPads.

All in all, I’d say the is probably great for most people. Both iPads offer a nearly identical experience, just that the has slightly less flair.

In short, spring for the if you (or your loved one) would appreciate a much nicer display for watching content, otherwise stick to the . At the end of the day, costs half the price of the , and those savings aren’t something I’d scoff at.

Where do you fall on the iPad Air vs iPad Pro debate? Are you buying an iPad this holiday season? Let us know in the comments.

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