Apple will likely release the iPad Air 4 on October 23, finally giving the world a refreshed mid-range tablet despite its September announcement.

At least this is according to a leak from Best Buy Canada, discovered by tech tipster Jon Prosser, listing a 64GB Wi-Fi version of the new iPad Air. Whether this release date is the same in every country remains to be seen, but given that Apple typically releases products around the same time worldwide, the iPad Air 4 will be available in a little over a week.

The iPad Air, with an all-screen design inspired by the iPad Pro 2020, was unveiled by Apple last month and touted by Cupertino as a tablet for work and play. But the killer feature was undoubtedly the A14 Bionic chip at the heart of the iPad Air 4.

The A14 Bionic would be powerful enough to outperform the older A13 Bionic in the iPhone 11 Pro and iPhone SE 2020. And it is also the chip that all four new iPhone 12 devices will use.

The iPhone 12 was unveiled on October 13, almost a month after the iPad Air 4 was unveiled on September 15. Therefore, some technical commentators believe that the iPad Air 4 release was delayed until the iPhone 12 was unveiled before Apple had a chance to endorse it, in order to prevent people from running benchmarks on the tablet's A14 Bionic chip and making educated guesses about the iPhone 12's performance. speculated that this was to prevent people from making educated guesses about the iPhone 12's performance.

But this was all speculation. And the gap between the iPad Air 4 reveal and its planned release could be attributed to the coronavirus outbreak that disrupted the technology manufacturing and supply chain.

Nevertheless, it appears that the iPad Air will finally arrive before October is over. That means iPad fans will soon be able to enjoy a tablet that acts as a pseudo-laptop, thanks to Magic Keyboard compatibility and improvements Apple has made to the iPad OS.