iPad Air 11 (M2) vs Galaxy Tab S9 FE: Is the 2024 Model Worth the Change?
iPad Air 11 (M2) or Galaxy Tab S9 FE? We compare price, measured performance and real-world trade-offs to work out which is the better buy.
Tom Halvorsen
The short answer
iPad Air 11 (M2) 10h 05m, Galaxy Tab S9 FE 9h 15m — the same test, run the same way. Where they part company is who they suit: the iPad Air 11 (M2) is the one to get if you are most people — it is the tablet to buy unless you have a specific reason not to, the Galaxy Tab S9 FE if you are families who want something durable for media and homework.
Price difference: The Galaxy Tab S9 FE undercuts the iPad Air 11 (M2) by £150. That gap only matters if the extras below are ones you will actually use.
Specifications side by side
| Specification | iPad Air 11 (M2) | Galaxy Tab S9 FE |
|---|---|---|
| Price | £599 | £449 |
| Our score | 4 / 5 | 3 / 5 |
| Display | 11in IPS, 60Hz | 10.9in IPS, 90Hz |
| Chip | M2 | Exynos 1380 |
| RAM | 8GB | 6GB |
| Storage | 128GB | 128GB |
| Weight | 462g | 523g |
| Battery | 28.93Wh | 8000mAh |
| Screen-on time | 10h 05m | 9h 15m |
How we tested
Every figure quoted above comes from the same protocol, run on every unit in this category. This one spent ten days as the reviewer’s only portable screen, with the keyboard and stylus the maker sells. Screen at a metered 200 nits, the same eleven apps on every unit, and Wi-Fi 6 on a fixed access point three metres away.
| What we measure | How |
|---|---|
| Screen-on time | A scripted day — three hours of browsing and documents, two hours of video, thirty minutes of stylus work — repeated three times and averaged. |
| Sustained performance | A thirty-minute 4K video export, reporting the figure at the end rather than the peak. |
| Stylus latency | High-speed capture at 240fps against a ruled grid, measured from contact to first ink. |
| Charging | From 2% to 100% with the charger in the box, at 22°C ambient. |
| Weight in use | Held one-handed in portrait for as long as comfortable, timed, by three testers. |
We deliberately do not report manufacturer battery claims, which are measured at brightness levels nobody uses.
The honest caveat: Stylus figures are specific to the pen the maker supplies; third-party styluses were not tested.
Where the iPad Air 11 (M2) wins
- The same chip family as the Pro at less than half the price
- The longest battery life of any tablet we measured
- Genuinely repair-friendly compared with the Pro
It also has the edge on the intangibles: it outlasted the Pro by 45 minutes on the same scripted day.
Where the Galaxy Tab S9 FE wins
- IP68 rated, which almost no tablet at any price is
- The S Pen is in the box
- A metal chassis at a plastic price
And in day-to-day use, it survived a week of genuine kitchen use including two spills.
The trade-offs
Neither is flawless. The iPad Air 11 (M2) has one clear weak point — 60Hz is obvious the moment you scroll after using a 120Hz panel — and the Galaxy Tab S9 FE has its own: the Exynos chip struggles with anything beyond browsing and video. Weigh those against how you actually work rather than against the spec sheet.
The value case
The iPad Air 11 (M2) costs £150 more and scores 1 point higher — roughly £150 per point of difference. Whether that is good value depends on whether the extra buys you the same chip family as the Pro at less than half the price, or only a number. In our testing it is the former, but only just.
If neither quite fits
Look at the iPad Pro 13 (M4) at £1299 — it scored 5 out of 5 and suits illustrators and video editors who already work inside the Apple ecosystem. If the budget will not stretch, the Fire Max 11 at £249 is the cheapest option in this category we would still put our name to.
Living with each of them
On paper the gap looks like a specification difference; in use it is a habits difference. With the iPad Air 11 (M2) the thing you adjust to is 60Hz is obvious the moment you scroll after using a 120Hz panel, and you do adjust — within a week it stops registering. Its display (11in IPS, 60Hz) is the part you stop thinking about. The Galaxy Tab S9 FE asks for a different accommodation: the Exynos chip struggles with anything beyond browsing and video, against a display of 10.9in IPS, 90Hz that holds up better than the number suggests. Neither compromise is severe. They are simply different, and which one you would rather not think about is a more useful question than which is objectively smaller.
Which one ages better
The iPad Air 11 (M2) is 1 year newer, which usually means 1 more year of security updates at the far end of ownership — the part of the decision nobody weighs at the till and everybody feels at year four. The other half of ageing is the weak point you already know about: 60Hz is obvious the moment you scroll after using a 120Hz panel on one side, the Exynos chip struggles with anything beyond browsing and video on the other. Weaknesses of that kind do not improve with firmware, so assume you are buying them for the life of the device and price the decision accordingly.
Our recommendation
For most people we would take the iPad Air 11 (M2), which scored 4 out of 5 in our testing against 3 for the other. That said, a score is a summary, not a substitute for knowing what you need.
Buy the iPad Air 11 (M2) for the same chip family as the Pro at less than half the price. Buy the Galaxy Tab S9 FE for iP68 rated, which almost no tablet at any price is.
Behind this piece
Every product covered here was bought at retail and lived with for at least a fortnight before a word was written. Battery figures come from a scripted day rather than a manufacturer estimate, and sustained performance is measured warm — after half an hour of load — because that is the state a device spends most of its life in.
Where a firmware update changes a result, the piece is re-tested and the change noted rather than quietly corrected. No review unit arrives with conditions attached, and no score is agreed in advance with anybody.
Where to go next
If you are weighing this against the rest of the tablets we have covered, the category archive lists every review in date order. The closest comparisons we have published are iPad Air 11 (M2) vs OnePlus Pad 2: Which Suits You Better? and iPad Air 11 (M2) vs Pixel Tablet: Same Money, Different Priorities.
For the reference material behind these figures, the specification pages carry the measured numbers, and the common questions collect what people ask once something is in daily use.
