OPINION: Apple’s newest iPad Air is a implausible little bit of equipment that appears to bridge the hole between Apple’s common iPad assortment and its top-end iPad Professional assortment. It’s the one non-Professional iPad to get a desktop-class M sequence chipset, and it matches the 11- and 13-inch display sizes of its Professional sibling too.
Nevertheless, the iPad Air can’t fairly compete with its professional siblings in terms of the display’s refresh charge. Like each non-Professional product in Apple’s cellphone and pill strains, the iPad Air refreshes at a most of 60Hz in comparison with the tremendous clean 120Hz of Apple’s proprietary ProMotion show tech.
The latter primarily permits Professional-level iPhones and iPads to refresh the display 120 occasions per second, permitting not solely 120fps help in video games however a usually smoother, extra responsive expertise utilizing the merchandise. Scrolling feels smoother with much less jitter, and app animations are buttery clean too.
It’s a type of options that, when you’ve used it for some time, you merely can’t return to merchandise with out it. After utilizing 120Hz (and better) screens on telephones, tablets, laptops and even TVs, I really feel the stuttery nature of the iPad Air’s 60Hz display is noticeable.
Nevertheless, the newest whispers from the ever-active hearsay mill recommend that would change with the following iteration of iPad Air, with Apple allegedly seeking to improve the pill’s refresh charge. Now, we gained’t be seeing the complete 120Hz ProMotion tech of the top-end iPad Professional fashions, nevertheless it’ll allegedly soar from 60Hz to 90Hz.
This can be a large deal, because the soar from 60Hz to 90Hz is arguably essentially the most notable soar, with the distinction between 90Hz and 120Hz, and even larger refresh charges, being much more negligible for something outdoors of excessive body charge gaming. It’s additionally the primary time that Apple has damaged away from its ‘120Hz or nothing’ stance in terms of boosted refresh charges on its merchandise.
That’s nice information for future iPad Air homeowners in fact, however I’d argue that it’s much more thrilling for future iPhone customers because it opens the door for the opportunity of the common iPhones – at present capped at 60Hz and certainly one of my essential criticisms of the iPhone 16 – additionally getting a lift in refresh charge tech to 90Hz.
This is able to make plenty of sense, because it retains the ‘true’ 120Hz ProMotion tech unique to the Professional-level iPhones whereas nonetheless providing a smoother expertise with a 90Hz refresh charge. It’s just like what we noticed within the Android market when excessive refresh charge screens grew to become a ‘factor’, with a transfer first to 90Hz earlier than 120Hz grew to become extra ubiquitous.
Apple may additionally differentiate the fashions by not utilizing the newest LTPO tech on its common iPhone assortment. This LTPO tech in query permits screens to dynamically change refresh charge wherever from 1-120Hz, and it’s what you’ll discover on present ProMotion screens. Apple may go for an older model of LTPO for its common screens the place it sits at one set refresh charge, or it may ditch it altogether – once more, as we see on Android smartphones.
Primarily, a soar from 60Hz to 90Hz wouldn’t essentially cannibalise the gross sales of the 120Hz Professional-level iPhones relying on how Apple needs to implement the tech – assuaging the presumptive fear over why we’ve but to see 120Hz screens on the common iPhones regardless of being ubiquitous on Androids of an analogous worth level.
Apparently, a separate hearsay from show analyst Ross Younger additionally factors in direction of using ProMotion shows within the next-gen iPhone 17, due for launch in 2025, nevertheless it’s price noting that Younger didn’t particularly point out 120Hz ProMotion – simply ‘ProMotion’ on the whole.
It’s fully potential that the common iPhone 17 will embrace ProMotion, however a downgraded model of the present tech capped at 90Hz. That consistency with the alleged 90Hz refresh charge of the iPad Air would make plenty of sense, particularly with rumours that there will likely be an iPhone 17 ‘Air’.
No matter the way it’s branded, if we do see a 90Hz-enabled iPad Air launched in H1 2025 as at present predicted, it may level in direction of an enormous improve for subsequent yr’s common iPhone assortment.
