The Sixth Generation of Apple’s Tiniest iPad Revisited: A New Look and an Updated Core Intellibria
It’s been three long years since Apple last updated the iPad Mini, but the company is finally turning the page on the sixth-gen model of its smallest tablet. The refreshed iPad Mini was announced today and pre orders have just been opened for the October 23rd release date at Apple. Prices start at $499 for the Wi-Fi-only 128GB configuration, which is double the previous generation’s starting storage.
The colors are the main change with the new Mini. The Mini has a new look this year, with purple and blue models. The new colors in the iPhone 16 will not be as striking as in photos, where they look a bit subdued.
The Mini has always been something of an oddity in Apple’s tablet lineup, similar to the iPhone SE: it has fans who love it for the smaller size, but Apple has always intimated that there aren’t actually that many of those fans. The iPad Minis seem to be popular among pilots, but it seems that most people prefer the big screen.
Apple kept the same features in the sixth-generation iPad Mini that they did in the previous iteration, so it’s not surprising. This tablet packs an 8.3-inch LCD screen, slim bezels, a 12-megapixel selfie camera, along with a USB-C port (now with 10 Gbps data transfer speeds). The camera on the back of the iPad Pro has an updated image processing system with the ability to detect and Scan Documents from the Camera app (see feature we saw introduced in May), and is powered by the M4-powered iPad.
The more significant changes are inside. Apple upgraded the processor from the A15 (the chipset inside the iPhone 13 and iPhone 13 Pro models) to an A17 Pro, the very same that’s in the iPhone 15 Pro. With a six-core Intel processor, the company claims it offers a 30 percent improvement in performance over the previous model. The neural engine is twice as fast.
The seventh generation of Apple’s tiniest iPad is finally here, three years since its last refresh. There was no fancy pretaped or live event—the company quietly announced the new tablet through its online newsroom. The headline has this device in it. Apple has intelligence. However, Apple’s artificial intelligence features aren’t available for the iPhone 16 and are due to arrive later this month on the new iOS 18.1.
