Switch to iPadA site about going iPad first.
News

New iPad mini announced: OLED, A20 Pro, and $699 price tag

Image from Apple

Apple announced a new iPad mini on Monday. There was no event, just a press release and a website update, which is pretty expected for this kind of release. Apple touts this as the biggest update ever for the iPad mini. We’re talking OLED (finally!), a bigger screen, the A20 Pro, and water and dust resistance. It’s also $100 more expensive than the model it replaces, and $200 more than that one cost at launch.

Pre-orders open on Wednesday, October 28, and the new iPad mini ships on Friday, November 6.

Image from Apple

Dave Pakula, Apple vice president of Hardware Engineering:

With a remarkably thinner and lighter design, a stunning new OLED display, the incredibly powerful A20 Pro, and water and dust resistance, the new iPad mini is a huge leap forward for users who love having the full iPad experience in the palm of their hand.

That’s a lot of adjectives, but the list itself is accurate.

  • 8.5” OLED display, up from 8.3”, in the same footprint thanks to thinner bezels. Up to 1,200 nits peak brightness, and a nano-texture option. It’s not ProMotion though, as far as Apple’s spec sheet goes. That’s a shame.
  • A20 Pro, with up to a 6-core CPU and a 7-core GPU. Apple claims up to 60 percent faster multi-threaded performance and up to 2.7x faster graphics than the A17 Pro. Only the 512 GB model gets the full A20 Pro, though, more on that below.
  • 5.4 mm thin, and lighter than before. The previous mini was 6.3 mm. That’s pretty sweet.
  • IP67 water and dust resistance.
  • 12MP Center Stage front camera on the landscape edge, which will make landscape users happy. It’s the right call, I think, but less so than the larger iPads that are more commonly used in landscape. Personally, I use my iPad mini in portrait most of the time, but hey, propping it up with a stand in landscape makes sense for FaceTime video calls.
  • N1 and C2, Apple’s own wireless and cellular chips. And yes, that’s WiFi 7 and Bluetooth 6.
  • Midnight and starlight, 128GB, 256GB, or 512GB storage. At least it starts at a reasonable size.

The screen

The iPad mini has always been the reading iPad, and OLED is the upgrade that matters most for that. Deeper blacks, more brightness outdoors, and a much dimmer minimum for reading in bed:

And with a 1-nit minimum brightness, iPad mini is even more suitable for dim environments, from users reading in bed at night to pilots checking their electronic flight bag in the cockpit.
Image from Apple

What Apple doesn’t mention is ProMotion. The press release talks brightness, contrast, and P3 color, but not refresh rate, and neither does the spec sheet, which lists ProMotion for the iPads that have it. So it’s almost certainly 60 Hz. This is a real downer at this price point.

A20 Pro, and a footnote

The A20 Pro is a big jump from the A17 Pro, and it should make the mini a better gaming device and a better sketchbook. Apple says graphics performance jumps up to 2.7x, and that the GPU has Neural Accelerators for on-device AI work.

Image from Apple

There’s a catch, though. The 128 GB and 256 GB models get a 5-core CPU and a single 16-core Neural Engine. Only the 512 GB model gets the 6-core CPU and this:

The 512GB configuration features a powerful Dual 16-core Neural Engine, which offers double the processing power of the previous generation…

We’ve seen this before in both iPads and iPhones. My guess is that it’s about being able to use all chips produced, even the slightly faulty ones. This is common in chipmaking so nothing to be concerned about, but again, that price point is pretty steep as it is.

Finally, Apple touts iPadOS 27 and Siri AI in beta. Siri AI isn’t available in the EU, though, so here in Sweden that part of the announcement is moot for now.

TechWoven Smart Folio

I’ve always been a fan of the iPad mini Smart Folio. It’s easy to snap on and off, and protects the device when I toss it in my bag.

The new version is in the TechWoven fabric (navy blue or taupe, $79). There’s still no Magic Keyboard for the mini, as expected, so you’ll have to pair it with Bluetooth keyboards. Apple Pencil Pro and Apple Pencil (USB-C) both work, as will Bluetooth pointing devices.

Image from Apple

The bottom line

The WiFi model starts at $699, and WiFi + Cellular at $849. The previous iPad mini started at $499 when it launched in 2024, and Apple raised that to $599 in June. That’s quite a steep increase either way, and it puts the mini within reach of the iPad Air, which has a bigger screen and support for the Magic Keyboard. The mini has always been a bit of a niche device, and at $699 it becomes more so. That said, comparing pricing to older generations is a bit off these days, thanks to how the AI industry is gobbling up RAM and storage.

There’s definitely a case to be made for the new iPhone Duo, and how the pricing of that one fits into the Apple product lineup as well. We’ll explore that down the line.

Is it worth upgrading from the iPad mini 6 or 7? That’s down to how much money you want to spend obviously, and if you feel that your current device is lagging behind in terms of performance. That new OLED screen is enticing though, and I’d definitely jump on this one if it had ProMotion. Now, I’m not so sure. We’ll see how it feels when it launches.

Not sure an iPad can be your computer at all? Take the quiz.

More from News