2025 iPad Air May Get A 90Hz Display Upgrade And So Could These Other Apple Devices
An anonymous person contacted the Upgrade Podcast show (with hosts Myke Hurley and Jason Snell) with some information that Cupertino is developing "a higher refresh rate LCD display with a new liquid motion panel fixed at around 90Hz." The person added that Apple plans to bestow the tech across its portfolio of products.
The same source also states that 90Hz panels will initially drop with the M3-powered iPad Air that's coming in early 2025. This would pair nicely with the promised M3/M4 chipset performance upgrades, although expect a price bump to boot.
Afterwards, the 24-inch iMac could be next—potentially as a model refresh or offered as a pricier model. After all, the iMac just received an M4 performance upgrade, so it'd make sense for Apple to push the 90Hz panel late 2025 or early 2026.
As for the Studio Display, which has been around since 2022 without a new successor in sight, the panel upgrade is still a toss up. A promising project to give us a brand new 27-inch 120Hz monitor with Apple's ProMotion tech was reportedly nixed in early 2023. Whether Apple is currently working on something else for the monitor at this point (including the simpler 90Hz display) is still unknown.
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Anyway, the current iPad Air was refreshed with an M2 SoC and a 13-inch model a few months ago, so based on the same product release schedule, a new M3 iPad Air with the new display should be available around the April-May time period.
Like the M2 iPad Air, the new version is expected to be offered in 11- and 13-inch guises. The biggest change will obviously be the M3 chipset built on Apple's 3 nanometer process. Benchmarks put the M3 about 30 percent and 15 percent faster in CPU and GPU performance, respectively. Gamers will love the new GPU; it's not only going to be more efficient, but will support hardware-based ray tracing and dynamic caching.
