Apple unveiled the eighth-generation iPad mini on Monday, two days before its Pro and Tell event in Los Angeles. The tablet keeps the footprint of the 2024 model but stretches the screen to 8.5 inches, from 8.3, by cutting the bezels by 24%. It is 5.4mm thin and carries an IP67 rating for water and dust, Apple said in a press release.
That makes it the first iPad rated IP67, Mark Gurman and Chris Welch reported for Bloomberg. The new model is 14% thinner and 13% lighter than the one it replaces, they wrote. In Apple’s lab tests, the rating covers a depth of up to 1 metre for 30 minutes.
“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,” said Dave Pakula, Apple’s vice president of hardware engineering.
An OLED screen, with sound through the display
The Super Retina XDR panel is the first OLED screen on an iPad mini. It reaches a peak brightness of 1,200 nits, more than twice the previous generation, and 600 nits across the full screen. Apple quotes a contrast ratio of 2,000,000:1 and a minimum brightness of 1 nit. A nano-texture glass option, until now offered on the iPad Pro, cuts glare.
Apple calls the new speaker system an Acoustic Display. Woofers play through the screen itself, and tweeters sit between the glass and the aluminium case. The sealed enclosure is part of what gives the tablet its IP67 rating, Apple said. The 12MP Center Stage front camera now sits on the long edge, for video calls held sideways. The 12MP rear camera records 4K video at up to 60 frames per second.
The A20 Pro is built on a 2-nanometre process. Apple says it delivers up to 4.5 times the AI performance of the previous iPad mini and up to 2.7 times the graphics performance. Multithreaded CPU performance is up to 60% faster. Each of the seven GPU cores has a Neural Accelerator, and unified memory bandwidth more than doubles.
Not every model gets the same chip. The 128GB and 256GB versions have five CPU cores, Bloomberg reported. The 512GB model has six, plus the Dual 16-core Neural Engine, which Apple says doubles the processing power of the previous generation.
Connectivity and Siri AI
The tablet gets Apple’s own N1 wireless chip, with Wi-Fi 7, Bluetooth 6 and Thread. Cellular models use the C2 modem, which Apple says brings up to 50% faster data speeds than the previous iPad mini.
It runs iPadOS 27, with Siri AI in beta from iPadOS 27.2. Siri AI is not available in the EU on iPadOS, according to the footnotes of the release. Apple says it is working with the EU to find a way forward.
Price and availability
The iPad mini starts at $699 for the Wi-Fi model and $849 with cellular. It comes in midnight and starlight, with 128GB, 256GB or 512GB of storage. The previous model started at $599, and a fully configured new one costs $1,249, Bloomberg reported. A new Smart Folio costs $79. The tablet works with the Apple Pencil Pro and the Apple Pencil (USB-C).
Pre-orders open on Wednesday, 28 October, in 36 countries and regions, and the tablet arrives on Friday, 6 November. TNW wrote in July that Apple was preparing an OLED iPad mini for October.
The launch opens a week of Apple announcements. A new iMac and a 14-inch MacBook Pro with the M6 chip come next, followed by Apple’s first touchscreen MacBook Pro, Bloomberg reported. Apple has not announced those products. It confirmed its 28 October event last week, days before the iPhone Duo went on sale.