The Morning After: The new iPad Air M4 is Apple's best overall tablet

Source: Engadget

Apple’s iPad Air upgraded to M4

Now that Apple is designing and engineering its own silicon, the updates come fast. It’s been less than two years since the company released the M2‑powered iPad Air and we’re already on our third iPad Air iteration, one with the M4 inside. That’s the same chip that was inside the iPad Pro in 2024.

That’s one way of expressing how powerful 2025’s iPad Air now is – and it remains a step above the base iPad in most ways. However, there’s room for improvement. Apple has stuck with the same display for another year. The 11‑inch iPad Air that Nathan Ingraham reviewed seems to have the same screen in 2026 as it did when the first no‑Home button iPad Air was released in late 2020. (And that’s the one I’m still using!) Also, why still no FaceID?

– Mat Smith

Other big stories (and deals) this morning

Qualcomm’s new Arduino Ventuno Q goes all‑in on AI and robotics

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Qualcomm, which bought microcontroller board manufacturer Arduino last year, just announced a new single‑board computer that marries AI with robotics. The Ventuno Q is more sophisticated (and expensive) than Arduino’s usual AIO boards, thanks to the Dragonwing IQ8 processor that includes an 8‑core ARM Cortex CPU, Adreno Arm Cortex A623 GPU and Hexagon Tensor NPU that can reach up to 40 TOPs. It also packs in Arduino App Lab, with pre‑trained AI models—including LLMs, VLMs, gesture recognition and object tracking—all running offline.

Apple may delay its smart display launch until fall

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Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman reports that Apple is expected to postpone its smart home display until later in 2026, possibly September, when it often introduces a barrage of new gadgets. The hardware has reportedly been finished for months, but the AI‑centric overhaul of Siri is still not done.

Dell XPS 14 (2026) laptop review

Read the full review on Engadget

Dell’s revamped XPS 14 is more powerful than ever. The XPS series has long been a favorite at Engadget, and this model’s lightweight design features a gorgeous OLED screen. However, Dell’s keyboard this year has a baffling flaw: it forces you to type more slowly to register each key press. According to Dell, a small batch of early XPS units exhibited this issue, but it has been resolved in current shipments, with a firmware update slated to address the problem.