New iPad Air: Lighter, thinner 9.7-inch tablet, weighs just a pound, coming out Nov 1

The iPad Air is Apple's extremely light fifth-generation iPad.

(Credit: James Martin/CNET)

Apple trotted out its fifth-generation iPad today in San Francisco at the company's annual unveiling event. This model, which is now called the iPad Air, is "thinner, lighter, and more powerful than ever before," Apple's Phil Schiller said.
In this model, the 9.7-inch tablet with Retina Display weighs just a pound (down from 1.9 in the fourth-generation iPad. It weighs an extremely thin 7.5 millimeters, down from 9.4mm -- that's a 20 percent slimmer build, if you're keeping count. The bezel is also much narrower, too; 43 percent so, in fact.
A new A7 chip inside makes it 8 times faster than before. For reference, this is the same 64-bit chip populating the iPhone 5S, and also comes with its M7 motion co-processor. M7 promises graphics that render at twice the rate as the previous iPad.
Nobody looks cool taking photos with their tablets, but if you must, then the iPad Air has a 5-megapixel iSight camera on the rear that Apple says takes improved low light shots. On the front, video chatters will find the refreshed FaceTime HD camera, which gives you larger pixels to make images look clearer, according to the claim.

 

The iPad Air gets some new camera specs.

(Credit: James Martin/CNET)

Apple is always cagey when it comes to sharing battery capacity details, but the company does promise to keep up its 10-hour battery life rate for a single charge.
As with past models, the iPad will come in both WiFi and cellular versions that support LTE.
On the software front, free and redesigned versions of core Apple apps -- like iPhoto, iMovie, Keynote, and Garage Band -- have been reworked for iOS 7 and the iPad.
The iPad Air ships November 1 in space gray and black, and silver and white colors (but no gold, sorry.) Prices start at $499 for 16GB Wi-Fi version, with the cellular model coming in at $629. In addition to a wave of other countries, it's coming to China with WiFi, a first for Apple, Schiller says.