It's been eight years since Apple last overhauled the iPhone's design. In 2017, Apple introduced an edge-to-edge screen on the iPhone X. And not much has truly changed since then. Sure, the company has continued to upgrade its all-important smartphone's chips and cameras, but authentically, things have sort of stagnated.

That long drought has come to an end with Apple's all-new iPhone Air. Seemingly impossibly thin and light, the $999 Air makes its stablemates, the reworked $799 iPhone 17 and $1,099 iPhone 17 Pro, feel downright chunky by comparison.

While they might not get the spicy new design of the Air, the 17 and 17 Pro bring along their own improvements, including upgraded cameras and performance, not to mention a slick Cosmic Orange color for the Pros.

This is the most impressive iPhone lineup in years. Although it's not without its trade-offs.

The Air is easily the star of Apple's latest show. It's just 5.64 millimeters thick, versus the 7.95mm-thick iPhone 17 and 8.75mm-thick iPhone 17 Pro and Pro Max. And at just 5.82 ounces, the Air feels shockingly lightweight, especially since it packs a 6.5-inch display.

The iPhone 17 weighs 6.24 ounces and has a 6.3-inch screen, while the 8.22-ounce Pro Max gets a 6.9-inch panel.

I realize all of these numbers are already pretty small and that a few millimeters here or there might not sound all that impressive, but actually holding the Air and then the 17 and 17 Pro is a different story altogether.

The Air does, however, come with some caveats. Apple, for instance, said its battery provides up to 27 hours of video playback. That's in line with last year's iPhone 16 Pro, but short of the new iPhone 17's 30 hours of playback and well below the 17 Pro Max's 39 hours.

That's not to say the Air's battery is bad. I used it throughout the day — streaming video content, playing games like "Balotro," incessantly scrolling Reddit and Instagram, and checking my email — and had some 20% left to stream the Mets game at night. That's right in line with the performance I've gotten out of the 16 Pro for the past year.

The Air also gets a single camera rather than the dual-camera setup on the iPhone 17 or triple-camera array on the iPhone 17 Pro and Pro Max. Apple, though, uses cropping and software tricks to give the Air a 2x optical-like zoom. Details in photos taken with Air were sharp, and colors were even and natural.

But because there's no wide-angle lens, you won't be able to take the kind of macro photos you can on the iPhone 17 or 17 Pro and Pro Max.