With only six days to go until Christmas at the time of this writing, bargain hunters looking for the perfect last-minute gift at the perfect price might be surprised to find… precisely that at Best Buy right now. Of course, you will have to hurry and order Apple‘s deeply discounted fifth-gen iPad Air as soon as possible, and not just for the obvious shipping-related reasons.
The retailer’s latest (and, believe it or not, greatest ever) sale on the 2022-released 10.9-incher is scheduled to last just 24 hours, knocking a hefty 120 bucks off the $599.99 and $749.99 list prices of the powerful tablet’s 64 and 256GB storage variants.
With an Apple M1 processor under its hood, the newest member of the always popular iPad Air family is naturally not the fastest or overall greatest tablet money can buy in (late) 2023. But at $479.99 and up, it obviously doesn’t need to be, going up against the likes of Samsung’s Snapdragon 8 Gen 1-powered Galaxy Tab S8 from 2022 while undercutting the mid-range Galaxy Tab S9 FE+ giant released just a few months ago.
Compared to the latest iPad Pro editions, this is also a decidedly mid-end affair, although that M1 SoC remains a screamer for (almost) all intents and purposes. The iPad Air 5 sports a beautiful Liquid Retina IPS LCD screen as well while accommodating a good old fashioned fingerprint scanner at the top of its undeniably premium body, packing a more than generous battery under said premium metal hood, and supporting a bunch of handy optional accessories like keyboards and pens.
Left without a 2023 sequel, the surprisingly affordable 10.9-inch slate is widely expected to get not one but two different successors with two different screen sizes in early 2024. Of course, odds are both those next-gen “iDevices” will cost more than 480 bucks, which is why we highly recommend you at least consider taking advantage of Best Buy’s last-second Christmas “flash” deal. You might regret it if you don’t!
