The seventh era of Apple’s tiniest iPad is lastly right here, three years since its last refresh. There was no fancy pretaped or stay occasion—the corporate quietly introduced the new tablet via its on-line newsroom. The headline function encapsulating this gadget? Apple Intelligence. Apple’s synthetic intelligence options nonetheless aren’t out there for the iPhone 16, however they’re on account of arrive this month via iOS 18.1.
Beginning at $499 for the bottom mannequin, the seventh-gen iPad Mini has the identical chassis as its predecessor, however with a couple of upgrades together with a brand new processor, help for Apple Intelligence, and double the storage. It additionally works with the newest Apple Pencil Pro. It is available for preorder now and ships October 23.
Courtesy of Apple
It is What’s Inside
The sixth-generation iPad Mini bought a significant facelift in 2021, so it isn’t stunning that Apple stored the exterior options the identical on this iteration. This pill packs an 8.3-inch LCD display screen, slim bezels, and a 12-megapixel selfie digicam, together with a USB-C port (now with 10-Gbps knowledge switch speeds). The rear digicam has a 12-megapixel sensor with help for Good HDR 4, an up to date picture processing algorithm with the potential to detect and scan paperwork from the Digicam app (a function we noticed launched again in Could with the M4-powered iPad Pro).
The extra vital adjustments are inside. Apple upgraded the processor from the A15 (the chipset contained in the iPhone 13 and iPhone 13 Pro fashions) to an A17 Pro, the exact same that is within the iPhone 15 Professional. With a six-core CPU, the corporate claims it delivers a 30 % increase in CPU efficiency whereas the five-core GPU affords a 25 % soar in comparison with the earlier mannequin. In the meantime, the neural engine is twice as quick.
Placing this chip contained in the iPad Mini means it may possibly help Apple Intelligence—a set of synthetic intelligence instruments coming in iOS 18.1. It makes the iPad Mini the cheapest tablet of the lineup to have these options. Different supported fashions embrace the fifth-gen M1 iPad Air, sixth-gen M2 iPad Air, fifth-gen M1 iPad Professional, sixth-gen M2 iPad Professional, and seventh-gen M4 iPad Professional.
