Apple has redesigned the iPad mini for the first time since late 2024, and this one gets the chip from the iPhone 18 Pro and the new foldable iPhone Duo. The company is calling it the tablet's "biggest update ever," and the spec sheet backs that up: a new 8.5-inch OLED screen, the A20 Pro processor, and the mini's first-ever water and dust resistance rating.
Apple hasn't slapped a generation number on it, but this is the successor to the A17 Pro iPad mini from 2024, the model plenty of people online already refer to as the mini 7. Expect this one to get tagged iPad mini 8 in search results and spec comparisons even though Apple itself doesn't use that naming.
A brighter screen and a thinner body
The outgoing iPad mini used an 8.3-inch Liquid Retina LCD panel topping out at 600 nits. The new Super Retina XDR OLED display is both bigger, at 8.5 inches, and dramatically brighter, hitting 1,200 nits peak with a 1-nit minimum for better contrast in dark scenes. Bezels are 24% thinner, which is how Apple grew the screen without growing the chassis. The whole tablet is now 5.4mm thick versus 6.3mm before, and it's dropped about an ounce, from 297 grams to 263 grams.
Buyers who pick the 256GB or 512GB configurations can add a nano-texture coating for $100 more, which cuts down on glare and reflections. Apple has also built what it calls an Acoustic Display, with woofers behind the panel for deeper bass and tweeters squeezed between the glass and the aluminum frame for sharper highs.
The 12MP front camera has shifted from the short edge to the long edge for better video calls in landscape, and the 12MP rear camera now shoots Smart HDR 4 photos and 4K60 video with a new Adaptive True Tone flash that Apple says also helps document scanning.
The IP67 rating is new territory for the mini line. The A17 Pro model that came before it had no official water or dust resistance at all.
A20 Pro, pricing and when it ships
Apple is touting up to 4.5x faster AI performance on the A20 Pro compared with the outgoing chip, along with a 2.7x graphics bump and 60% faster multithreaded CPU performance. The 512GB model goes further, with a 16-core Neural Engine that doubles the processing headroom of the previous top-tier mini and double the memory bandwidth. Every model also picks up Apple's N1 wireless chip for Wi-Fi 7, Bluetooth 6 and Thread, while cellular versions add the new C2 modem. Apple Pencil Pro and Apple Pencil (USB-C) both still work with it.
Pricing starts at $699 for the 128GB Wi-Fi model, with 256GB at $799 and 512GB at $999. Cellular adds $150 to any configuration. It comes in starlight and midnight. Apple hasn't announced Indian pricing yet.
Preorders open at 1:10 PM ET on October 28, with units shipping from November 6.
GDFiled by The Gadgets Desk
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