The 11-inch iPad Air M2 is on sale for $100 off

If you've been waiting for a good deal on an iPad with one of Apple's M-series chips, now seems like a good time to take the plunge. The M2-powered 11-inch iPad Air has dropped back down to $500. That's $100 off the regular price and just a hair above the record low of $498. Most colorways have dropped to either $539 or $559, but you'll get the full discount when you add in the clippable coupon for each.

This deal is for the base model with 128GB of storage (double the base storage from the previous gen) and no cellular connectivity, though there is Wi-Fi 6E support. You'll get 8GB of RAM as well.

We gave the M2 iPad Air, which debuted less than a year ago, a score of 91 in our review. It's our pick for the best iPad for most people. It hits the sweet spot between performance, features and price — even more so considering this deal. It offers better future proofing compared with the entry-level iPad, as many features and apps only run on M-series chips and newer A-series ones.

For basic tasks like web browsing and streaming video, performance shouldn't be an issue at all. The M2 iPad Air supports Apple Intelligence features, as well as demanding games like Death Stranding and the Resident Evil 4 remake.

You should get about 10 hours of battery life on a single charge. There's no Face ID here, but a Touch ID fingerprint scanner is built into the power button. One other major positive is that Apple has shunted the front-facing camera to th longer side of the tablet, making FaceTime calls in landscape mode an easier proposition. The M2 iPad Air is compatible with the Apple Pencil Pro, but not the second-gen Pencil.

One of our main complaints about the M2 iPad Air is that it has an LCD display with a 60Hz refresh rate. It's not as smooth or vibrant as the 120Hz OLED you'll find on the most recent iPad Pro. Still, it's a bright, sharp screen. However you slice it, the M2 iPad Air is a pretty great tablet.

If you'd prefer a larger tablet, the 13-inch M2 iPad Air is on sale now, too. The space gray model is the cheapest at $689, which is more than $100 off, while most other colors are on sale for $700 when you combine their straight discounts with clippable coupons found on the product pages.

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