On Monday, Apple announced a new iPad Mini powered by the A20 Pro chip, with a large 8.5-inch OLED display. The updated iPad Mini has a thinner and lighter design in comparison with the previous generation, and is available with a nano-texture option.
Apple says the iPad can go up to 1200 nits of brightness, twice the previous generation, and it supports 600 nits of full-screen brightness for SDR and HDR content. Thanks to the Super Retina XDR OLED display, Apple says it delivers pixel-level lighting control for deeper blacks and P3 wide colour gamut support for vivid imagery.
Under the hood, Apple says the A20 Pro chip powered by a 7-core GPU delivers up to 4.5x faster AI performance over the previous generation. Thanks to the latest graphics architecture, dynamic caching, and hardware-accelerated mesh shading and ray tracing, graphics performance is 2.7x faster on the new iPad Mini.
The iPad Mini is available in 128GB, 256GB, and 512GB storage options. The 512GB model features a Dual 16-core Neural Engine, which provides double the processing power of the previous generation.
Apple says the new iPad Mini has an innovative Acoustic Display, which delivers a great audio experience. Its specially designed woofers, which are paired through the display, produce punchier bass and higher volume. “In addition, custom tweeters are now hidden between the glass and aluminum enclosure for clearer highs. The Acoustic Display also features a sealed enclosure that helps iPad mini achieve its IP67 rating,” Apple said in a press release.
In front is a 12MP Center Stage camera for FaceTime calls. At the rear is another 12MP wide camera, which is capable of shooting 4K videos at up to 60fps. The iPad N1 wireless networking chip enables Wi-Fi 7, Bluetooth 6, and Thread. It also features the next-generation C2 cellular modem system, which delivers up to 50 percent faster cellular data speeds than the previous generation.
The iPad mini starts at $699 for the Wi-Fi model, and $849 for the Wi-Fi + Cellular model. Pre-order is available starting tomorrow, Wednesday, October 28.
