Apple just announced a new, faster iPad Mini

Oct 15, 2024 08:03 PM - 3 months ago 145197

Apple conscionable announced, successful a somewhat understated manner via a property release, a caller iPad Mini. It’s the first upgrade for Apple’s smallest tablet since 2021. The caller Mini starts astatine $499. It’s up for pre-order now and goes connected waste adjacent Wednesday.

The caller Mini is mostly a spec bump: it runs a caller A17 Pro chip, which Apple says has a 30 percent faster CPU, 25 percent faster GPU, and a Neural Engine doubly arsenic accelerated arsenic the erstwhile model. The instrumentality besides supports the caller Apple Pencil Pro, which is simply a bully touch for the Mini-toting artists retired there, and comes pinch 128GB of retention successful the guidelines exemplary alternatively than 64GB. (Those AI models request each the abstraction they tin get.) The Wi-Fi 6E spot is faster, the USB-C larboard is faster, everything astir the iPad Mini is the aforesaid arsenic earlier only faster this time.

The only existent creation alteration pinch the caller Mini is the colors. Apple’s gone much colorful pinch a batch of its products this year, and the Mini comes successful caller purple and bluish models. In photos they look muted alternatively than vivid, though, truthful don’t expect the eye-popping caller colors connected the iPhone 16.

The caller bluish iPad Mini looks nice! But it’s not a very vivid blue.

The caller bluish iPad Mini looks nice! But it’s not a very vivid blue.

Image: Apple

The last-gen Mini was a beautiful large overhaul, pinch a caller creation and a USB-C larboard on pinch a bunch of spec upgrades. Given that that was the first redesign since the original Mini successful 2012, it’s not terribly astonishing that this Mini looks a batch for illustration the past Mini. The large spec bump makes sense, too: arsenic Apple goes all-in on AI and Apple Intelligence, it needs each the powerfulness it tin get connected fundamentally each instrumentality successful its lineup. Apple besides mentioned successful its merchandise that the caller instrumentality tin do hardware-accelerated ray tracing, which should make immoderate high-end games look better, but this is intelligibly an AI-focused upgrade.

The Mini has ever been thing of an oddity successful Apple’s tablet lineup, akin to the iPhone SE: it has fans who emotion it for the smaller size, but Apple has ever intimated that location aren’t really that galore of those fans. Yes, pilots emotion their iPad Minis, but it seems clear that astir group for illustration the large surface to the mini one.

Apple updated the remainder of the iPad lineup earlier this year, adding the super-powerful M4 spot to the Air, redesigning the Pro, and dropping the value of the guidelines exemplary to $349. The Mini, arsenic it has successful the past, looked for illustration the overseas tablet out, which made immoderate group wonderment whether Apple was really readying to support making the Mini. But it seems Apple’s conscionable happy keeping the Mini connected a somewhat different update cadence from the remainder of its tablets.

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