Apple’s October surprise: New iPad Mini 7 features, price, availability, and more

Apple simply shocked iPad fanatics by launching a brand new iPad Mini era, which opened for pre-orders as we speak. Most of us anticipated Apple to carry a fast however elaborate October occasion, like final 12 months, to announce the brand new and improved iPad Mini. As a substitute, Apple took a low-key method, releasing an understated press launch in the beginning of the workday. 

The brand new iPad Mini options an A17 Professional chip, making it 30% sooner in CPU duties and 25% sooner in graphics than the earlier mannequin. The extra superior processor, which additionally powers the iPhone 15 Professional and 15 Professional Max, improves effectivity and helps Apple Intelligence, the corporate’s synthetic intelligence options that present personalised generative AI throughout apps. Although the iPad Mini can help Apple Intelligence options, together with textual content era, doc evaluation, deeper and improved Siri integrations, and picture creation, most will not be obtainable for months.

Along with extra superior AI help than the earlier era, the 2024 iPad Mini’s A17 Professional chip can deal with extra demanding duties, together with augmented actuality (AR) functions, photograph modifying, and gaming with hardware-accelerated ray tracing. 

Apple additionally introduced the iPad Mini options Wi-Fi 6E help for sooner connections at “twice the efficiency than the earlier era,” 5G help, 12MP cameras with Good HDR 4, and improved USB-C for sooner knowledge transfers. 

The iPad Mini now additionally helps the Apple Pencil Professional, which has the newer squeeze performance to change instruments, colours, and extra with out interrupting workflow, haptic suggestions, barrel rolling, and the hover characteristic to preview strokes. The Apple Pencil Professional additionally helps the Discover My community, letting you simply discover your misplaced stylus via the Discover My app, like you may with an AirTag or pair of AirPods. 

The iPad Mini begins at $499 for the 128GB Wi-Fi mannequin and $649 for the Wi-Fi+Mobile mannequin. It’s obtainable for pre-order in 4 finishes: Blue, Starlight, House Grey, and Purple, with orders delivery on October 23.