From Thord Hedengren’s iPad newsletter:

The new iPad Air is in a weird place though, or rather, it muddies the iPad lineup a bit. It can use the Magic Keyboard originally made for the 11” iPad Pro, but the Air’s screen is 10.9”, so the bezels must be a tiny bit bigger on the Air compared to the 11” iPad Pro. It also uses the second generation Apple Pencil, the magnetic one.

So far, not much different. But:

The iPad Air doesn’t have the full camera array, just the one 12 megapixel wide lens. The front facing camera isn’t the TrueDepth like on the Pro either, so while they’re both 7 megapixels, it can’t do Portrait mode or be used for Animojis or Memojis, nor does it work with Face ID. Instead, the iPad Air has Touch ID built into the top button. Furthermore, the Air has two speakers placed for landscape mode, whereas Pro models has four speakers. The Air screen doesn’t have ProMotion and is somewhat less bright (500 nits compared to the Pro’s 600 nits). It’s also a wee bit thicker, but weighs a little less. And, to wrap all the differences up, the Air comes with up to 256 GB storage, starting at the puny 64 GB, which will disqualify an otherwise truly capable machine for many users.

As I was watching yesterday’s event, I was wondering about the differences between the iPad Pro and the new iPad Air. Good to know the specifics.

Note that the new iPad Air has an A14 Bionic, while the iPad Pro is built on the A12Z Bionic.

If you are considering buying a new iPad, here’s the iPad Pro spec page, and here’s the iPad Air spec page.