Apple's latest tablet creation gets the Air label

The iPad Air has a 43 percent thinner bezel, is only 7.5mm thick but most remarkably, at just 1lb in weight, it is the lightest full-size tablet in the world.

Apple claims its newest tablet is a world first and that it is so much thinner, lighter and powerful than any of its existing tablets, that it deserves a new name. Meet the iPad Air.

Heralded by the company’s VP of Marketing, Phil Schiller, as a “new vision for mobile computing” during the company’s special launch event in California Tuesday, the device is so revolutionary according to Schiller that it needs a new name. The iPad Air has a 43 percent thinner bezel, is only 7.5mm thick (compared with the existing iPad 4 which is 9.4mm) but most remarkably, at just 1lb in weight, it is the lightest full-size tablet in the world.

But it is no lightweight in terms of performance. It gets the Apple A7 64-bit chip with desktop class performance. It also has the same motion coprocessor found in the iPhone 5S and a serious boost in graphics performance (which Schiller claims is 72 times faster than the original iPad). On top of all of that it has a 10-hour battery life, dual microphones, HD front and rear-facing cameras and will be available in silver and white or space grey and black. But no gold option.

As such, it will replace the current flagship full-size iPad and will go on sale for $499 for the 16GB version. However, the iPad 2 will remain on sale as an entry-level model for $399. The iPad Air will start shipping on November 1 and will launch in 40 countries from day one, including for the first time, China.

Turning his attention to the iPad Mini, Schiller said that the most common customer request was for a better display and so it seems only right to oblige. The new iPad Mini comes with a Retina display so dense that it has the same number of pixels as the screen in the iPad Air. However, in a move that many didn’t expect, the Mini tablet is getting the same chip set as its bigger brother –- so a 64-bit A7 processor yet still has a 10-hour battery life.

The iPad Mini won’t be hitting the market until the end of November but when it does it will retail for $399 with 16GB of internal storage and will also be available in silver and white or space grey and black. The existing iPad Mini will remain on sale but will now retail for $299 meaning that Apple now offers four very different tablets.

For the first time since Apple launched the original iPad three and a half years ago, the device that singlehandedly created the tablet category, for outsiders looking in, the company seems to be playing catch-up. Where once it had the market to itself, the iPad and, more recently iPad Mini, face competition in terms of price, performance and even pixels.

However, commentators had been saying very similar things about the iPhone right up until the iPhone 5S – the first handset to offer a 64-bit chip, integrated biometric scanner and a second motion sensing processor – was unveiled in September and promptly sold 9 million units in the space of 48 hours.

Nevertheless, Apple has sold 170 million iPads and of course, when Tim Cook introduced the unveiling, he turned to figures about web usage to highlight that 81 percent of tablet web traffic comes from iPads. “This is what’s important to us,” said Cook, because that proves people love it. “I can’t think of another product that’s come so far, so fast.”

In terms of the competition, the specifications, quality and performance of the new tablets gives the company a head and shoulders advantage, and by keeping on the older devices Apple is making its products more accessible without cost-cutting.