Updated October 2026.
Somebody walks up to the tablet table with an iPad Air open in one browser tab and a Galaxy Tab open in the other. Usually it's a parent buying for a student, or a student buying with a parent's card, and they've read enough reviews to know that both are good. What they want from us is somebody to just say which one.
We'll be upfront about one thing first. We sell Samsung tablets and we don't sell iPads, so you might expect us to lean one way. We'd rather not. If the iPad Air is the right tablet for you, we'll tell you so, because a customer who buys the wrong thing from us doesn't come back. So here's the conversation we have at the counter, written down, with Samsung's and Apple's own published specs instead of adjectives. And because this page started life as a Galaxy Tab S8 vs iPad Air comparison, we've kept a proper answer to that one further down.
Galaxy Tab S11 vs iPad Air: which tablet should you buy?
Buy the Galaxy Tab S11 if you want the better screen, the longer battery and a pen in the box, and buy the iPad Air if you already live on an iPhone and a Mac. On the spec sheet the Tab S11 wins more rows. The iPad Air's real strength isn't on the spec sheet at all. It's how well it works with the Apple things you already own.
People ask us which tablet is better when what they mean is which tablet is better for them, and those have different answers. A Tab S11 vs iPad Air decision usually settles in about a minute once we know what phone you carry and what you'll do on the tablet most days. If it's an iPhone and you love AirDrop, that pulls hard towards the iPad. If it's an Android phone, or you'll be writing notes by hand for hours, the Samsung pulls just as hard the other way.
Here's the quick version. If you can name the Apple feature you'd miss, buy the iPad Air. If you can't, the Galaxy Tab S11 gives you more tablet for roughly the same money.
What's actually different between the Tab S11 and the iPad Air?
The screen, the battery, the pen, the water rating and the memory card slot all favour the Samsung, while the chip and the Wi-Fi favour the iPad. Here they are side by side at the 11 inch size, every figure from the manufacturer.
| Galaxy Tab S11 | iPad Air 11 inch (M4) | |
|---|---|---|
| Screen | 11.0 inch Dynamic AMOLED 2X, 2560 x 1600, 120Hz | 11 inch Liquid Retina, LED backlit IPS, 2360 x 1640 |
| Brightness | 1,600 nits peak, 1,000 nits HBM | 500 nits |
| Weight and thickness | 469 g, 5.5 mm | 464 g, 6.1 mm |
| Processor | MediaTek Dimensity 9400+ | Apple M4, 8 core CPU, 9 core GPU |
| Memory and storage | 12 GB with 128, 256 or 512 GB, microSD up to 2 TB | 12 GB with 128, 256, 512 GB or 1 TB |
| Battery | 8,400 mAh, up to 18 hours of video | 28.93 Wh, up to 10 hours of web or video |
| Pen | S Pen in the box | Apple Pencil Pro or Apple Pencil (USB-C), sold separately |
| Cameras | 13 MP rear, 12 MP ultra wide front | 12 MP rear, 12 MP landscape Center Stage front |
| Water and dust | IP68 | no rating published |
| Unlock | fingerprint in the display | Touch ID in the top button |
| Wi-Fi | Wi-Fi 6E | Wi-Fi 7 |
| Updates promised | 7 Android upgrades, 7 years of security updates | no fixed number published |
Figures from Samsung's Galaxy Tab S11 launch release and specification table, Samsung's Tab S11 page for the battery hours and update promise, and Apple India's iPad Air tech specs.
Two rows surprise people. The first is weight, because the Samsung is the thinner tablet and the iPad is 5 g lighter, which you won't feel. The second is the pen row. It changes the real price of the iPad more than anything else on the sheet, and we'll come to that.
What if you want the 13 inch iPad Air instead?
Then the Samsung we'd stand beside it is the Galaxy Tab S12 Ultra, and it moves the Tab S11 vs iPad Air argument up a size rather than changing it. Apple's 13 inch Air starts around Rs 1.2 lakh for 128 GB Wi-Fi on Apple's Indian store, with a 600 nit screen and the same M4 chip. Samsung's big tablet is the 14.6 inch Tab S12 Ultra, with a 1,600 nit peak AMOLED screen at 120Hz, an 11,600 mAh battery and the S Pen in the box.
The Samsung costs more, and it's also a much bigger screen, so this one really is about how you'll use it. People who draw, or who like two documents open side by side, tend to want the extra width. People who mostly read and watch on the sofa often find the 13 inch Air plenty, and some of them end up on the 11 inch Tab S11 after holding all three.
Does the iPad Air have a 120Hz display?
No, and that's the biggest everyday difference between these two tablets. Apple's spec sheet for the iPad Air doesn't list ProMotion, which is Apple's name for its adaptive refresh up to 120Hz. That feature sits on the iPad Pro, where Apple lists ProMotion from 10Hz to 120Hz. The Tab S11 runs at up to 120Hz on an AMOLED panel.
What does that mean when you're holding it? Scrolling a long web page or a PDF looks smoother on the Samsung, and handwriting feels a touch more like it's coming straight out of the nib. AMOLED also means true blacks, because each pixel switches itself off, which you notice the first time you watch a film in a dark room. The iPad's screen is sharp, colour accurate and fully laminated, so it's a very good screen. It's just an LCD without the high refresh rate, at a price where the Samsung gives you more.
Here's the practical bit we always add. If you've never used a 120Hz screen, you won't miss it. If you have, on a recent phone for instance, going back to a standard refresh screen is the thing people notice on day one. So hold both and scroll before you decide this doesn't matter to you.
Is a Samsung tablet better than an iPad for students?
For most students we'd say yes, mainly because the pen comes in the box and the screen is easier on long study sessions. A student tablet lives or dies on note taking, PDFs and battery, and those are three of the Samsung's strongest rows.
The pen is the part that changes the sums. Every Galaxy Tab S11 comes with an S Pen in the box. Apple's in-box list for the iPad Air is the tablet, a USB-C cable and a 20W adapter, so the Apple Pencil is an extra purchase on top. At Apple's own Indian prices, the 11 inch iPad Air Wi-Fi starts just under Rs 90,000 for 128 GB and a little over Rs 1 lakh for 256 GB (Apple India store). The 256 GB Galaxy Tab S11 sits in the same band at our counter, so add a pencil to the iPad and the Tab S11 vs iPad Air sums come out level or in the Samsung's favour. Keyboards are extra on both, and Apple's Magic Keyboard for the 11 inch Air sits in the high Rs 20,000s on that same page.
Medical and engineering students ask us about this more than anyone, because they're annotating heavy PDFs for years. Our honest view is that both tablets handle that work well, and the deciding question is the rest of your kit. If your laptop is a MacBook, the iPad slots in beside it. If it's a Windows laptop, the Samsung gets along with it more easily.
One thing worth saying out loud: the S Pen that comes with the Tab S11 doesn't use Bluetooth, which Samsung's own spec table says plainly. So it won't do the remote camera clicks and air gestures that older Bluetooth S Pens could.
Which is faster, the Tab S11 or the iPad Air M4?
On raw chip power the iPad Air's M4 is the stronger chip, and for what most people do on a tablet you won't feel the difference. Apple says the M4 Air is up to 30% faster than the M3 Air and up to 2.3 times faster than the M1 Air (Apple Newsroom).
Samsung uses MediaTek's Dimensity 9400+, a 3nm chip, and Samsung says the S11 series is the first Galaxy Tab to get a 3nm processor. Both companies publish percentages against their own older models, never against each other, so there's no honest single number we can give you for one against the other. We'd rather say that than invent one.
Where would the extra power show? Heavy video editing, big multi-layer drawings, demanding games. If that's you, the iPad Air's chip is a fair reason to choose it. If the tablet is for notes, reading, streaming, video calls and the odd game, both are far more tablet than the job needs, and the screen and battery rows will matter to you more than the chip row.
Which has better battery life, the Tab S11 or the iPad Air?
The Tab S11, on the manufacturers' own figures: up to 18 hours of video against up to 10 hours for the iPad Air. That's the widest gap on the whole spec sheet.
One honest caveat, because we'd rather you heard it from us. The two companies don't run the same test. Samsung measures video playback in its own lab. Apple quotes up to 10 hours of browsing on Wi-Fi or watching video. So treat the gap as a direction rather than an exact eight hours. Even so, Samsung's number has gone up by three hours across these two generations while Apple's has stayed at ten.
In practice that's the difference between charging every night and charging every second night for a lot of people, and in the Tab S11 vs iPad Air comparison it's the row we'd weigh most after the screen. A student who studies on it all day notices that by the end of the first week.
Can a Samsung tablet replace a laptop?
For browsing, documents, email and video calls it can, and for specialist Windows or Mac software it can't. That's true of the iPad Air as well, so be wary of anyone who promises you otherwise.
Samsung's answer is DeX, a desktop style mode for multitasking that you switch on with the Book Cover Keyboard attached or a monitor plugged in. Apple's answer is the windowing in iPadOS 26 with the Magic Keyboard. Both work. Neither keyboard comes in the box, so budget for one either way if this is the plan.
We tell people to test this question honestly. Write down the three programs you open every day on your laptop. If all three exist as tablet apps, a tablet with a keyboard can do the job. If one of them is accounting software, design software or a college lab tool that only runs on Windows, keep the laptop and buy the tablet for everything else.
Galaxy Tab S8 vs iPad Air: which was better?
The Tab S8 had the smoother 120Hz screen, the longer battery and the S Pen in the box, and the iPad Air (5th generation) had the faster M1 chip, which is the same story as now. This page used to compare those two, and plenty of people still arrive asking exactly that, usually because they're holding one and wondering what to do next. Here's the straight answer from the manufacturers' own 2022 specifications.
| Galaxy Tab S8 | iPad Air (5th generation) | |
|---|---|---|
| Screen | 11 inch LTPS TFT, 2560 x 1600, up to 120Hz | 10.9 inch Liquid Retina, LED backlit IPS, 2360 x 1640, 500 nits |
| Weight and thickness | 503 g, 6.3 mm | 461 g, 6.1 mm |
| Processor | 4nm octa core, as Samsung lists it | Apple M1 |
| Memory and storage | 8 or 12 GB with 128 or 256 GB, microSD up to 1 TB | 64 or 256 GB |
| Battery | 8,000 mAh, 15 hours of video | 28.6 Wh, up to 10 hours of web or video |
| Pen | S Pen in the box | Apple Pencil (2nd generation) or Apple Pencil (USB-C), sold separately |
| Wi-Fi | Wi-Fi 6E | Wi-Fi 6 |
Figures from Samsung's Galaxy Tab S8 series launch release and Apple's iPad Air (5th generation) tech specs.
The old version of this page got a few things wrong, and we'd rather fix them than leave them standing. It linked to a Galaxy Tab S8 Ultra listing, a 14.6 inch tablet, while calling it the Tab S8, and that listing no longer exists. It quoted prices in US dollars and battery test times we couldn't trace to either manufacturer, so we've replaced them with the published figures. It called the Tab S8 much newer than the iPad Air, when both came out in 2022. And it described the Tab S8's screen as LED, when Samsung's sheet lists it as LTPS TFT, which is an LCD. It was the bigger S8+ and S8 Ultra that had Super AMOLED.
Should you upgrade from a Tab S8 or an older iPad Air?
If your tablet still holds a charge through the day and does what you need, there's no rush, but if the battery's fading the step up is bigger than most people expect. From a Tab S8 to a Tab S11 you go from an LCD to an AMOLED screen, from 8,000 to 8,400 mAh, from 15 to 18 hours of claimed video, and the tablet gets 34 g lighter and 0.8 mm thinner. You also pick up IP68 and Samsung's promise of seven Android upgrades and seven years of security updates.
From an iPad Air with M1 to the M4 model, Apple claims up to 2.3 times the performance and the memory goes from 8 GB to 12 GB. The battery claim stays at 10 hours and the screen still doesn't have ProMotion. So an M1 Air owner who's happy with the screen is upgrading for speed, and a Tab S8 owner is upgrading for the screen and the battery.
Something we say to everyone who comes in to upgrade: bring the old tablet and its charger. We'd much rather help you move your notes and apps across at the counter than have you find out at home that something didn't come with you.
Which Galaxy tablet do we hand people at the counter?
One of these three, depending on the screen size you want and how much you'll write on it. Prices move through the year, so these are the bands each one sits in rather than a figure that'll be wrong next month.
Samsung Galaxy Tab S11, 12 GB RAM, 256 GB, Wi-Fi
The direct answer to the iPad Air, and the one this whole page is about. The 256 GB Wi-Fi model sits a little over Rs 1 lakh, and the 512 GB version runs around Rs 1.1 lakh. 11 inch 120Hz Dynamic AMOLED 2X, MediaTek Dimensity 9400+, 12 GB of memory, 8,400 mAh battery with 45W charging, S Pen in the box, IP68, 469 g. It's the one we suggest when somebody says the words "notes all day", and the long update promise means it isn't a tablet you'll be replacing in two years.
Samsung Galaxy Tab S10 Lite, 6 GB RAM, 128 GB, Wi-Fi
Our value pick, in the high Rs 30,000s. 10.9 inch 2112 x 1320 TFT screen, Exynos 1380, 6 GB with 128 GB and microSD up to 2 TB, 8,000 mAh battery, and an S Pen in the box (Samsung's Tab S10 Lite specifications). It isn't an iPad Air rival on speed or screen, and we won't pretend it is. It's the one for a school student, a first tablet, or someone who wants a pen tablet for notes and reading at well under half the price.
Samsung Galaxy Tab S12 Ultra 5G, 12 GB RAM, 512 GB
The one for people who came in looking at the 13 inch iPad Air and want a bigger canvas. This 512 GB 5G model sits in the high Rs 1.7 lakhs. 14.6 inch 120Hz Dynamic AMOLED 2X at up to 1,600 nits peak, MediaTek Dimensity 9500, 11,600 mAh battery with 45W charging, Wi-Fi 7, S Pen in the box, IP68, 5.1 mm thin (Samsung's Tab S12 series specifications). Samsung promises up to seven OS upgrades and security updates. It's a lot of tablet, and it's the one artists and people who work from two documents side by side tend to fall for.
Where can I buy a Samsung Galaxy tablet in Delhi NCR?
You can buy any of these online from us with delivery across Delhi NCR, or come in and try the pen on the screen before you choose. Our wider Samsung lineup, from tablets and earbuds to watches, sits in the Samsung gadgets range. If you're choosing a phone at the same time, our S26 vs S26 Ultra guide does the same job for the Galaxy S phones.
Our advice before you spend, and it costs us nothing to give it: decide two things first. What phone do you carry, and will you write on the tablet with a pen most days? An iPhone and no pen points to the iPad Air. Anything else and the Galaxy Tab S11 is the tablet we'd buy, with a better screen, a longer battery and the pen already in the box. That's the whole Tab S11 vs iPad Air decision, and it takes about two minutes once you've held them both.