Apple’s New $699 iPad Mini Comes With Bigger 8.5″ OLED Display and A20 Pro Chip

Apple announced today a new version of its iPad Mini with a bigger 8.5-inch OLED screen, a faster A20 Pro chip, all in a slightly thinner (0.21 inch) and lighter (0.56 pound) design with water and dust resistance. The new tablet starts at $699 for the Wi-Fi model with 128GB of storage, and it will start shipping on November 6.

Apple integrated a larger 8.5-inch OLED display on this new iPad mini by reducing the size of the bezels by 24%. This new display delivers up to 1200 nits of peak brightness for HDR content, more than 2x higher than the previous generation, and there’s also a nano-texture display glass option to reduce glare in bright environments on 256GB and 512GB models.

This new iPad Mini has an IP67 rating to protect against water and dust, and Apple also integrated a new “acoustic display” with custom-designed woofers paired through the display, and custom tweeters hidden between the glass and aluminum enclosure. The last notable design change is the move of the 12MP Center Stage front camera to the landscape edge.

“iPad mini is beloved for its fantastic portability, performance, and display by a wide range of users, from creators and small business owners to doctors, field service workers, and gamers,” said Dave Pakula, Apple’s 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.”

The A20 Pro chip inside this new iPad Mini features up to 6 CPU cores and 7 GPU cores with neural accelerators, and up to a dual 16-core Neural Engine on models with 512GB of storage. Apple promises up to 4.5x faster AI performance than the previous generation, and up to 2.7x graphics performance.

The new iPad mini adds support for Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 6 thanks to Apple’s N1 wireless chips. Cellular modems also use Apple’s C2 modem, which enables up to 50 percent faster cellular data speeds compared to the previous generation.

In terms of battery life, Apple still promises up to 10 hours of web browsing or video consumption on this new iPad mini. The new tablet also supports fast charging, with 30 minutes of charging with a 35W or higher adapter providing up to 50% of battery life in just

The new mini tablet is available to pre-order today in two finishes, midnight and starlight. Apple is also selling a new Smart Folio accessory with a two-panel architecture for $79. While Apple announced this new iPad mini via a press release, the company announced a hardware event on Wednesday, October 28, where we should see a new MacBook Pro with an OLED touchscreen.