If you had a square on your bingo card for a new iPad mini during an October Apple event, well, partial credit: the company today unveiled the seventh-generation of the diminutive tablet, adding the A17 Pro processor and support for the Apple Pencil Pro.
In addition to those headline features, the new mini also gets Wi-Fi 6E, Bluetooth 5.3, and starts at 128GB of storage (twice as much as the previous generation’s 64GB), with upgrades available to 256GB and 512GB. Its size and weight remains unchanged from the previous model, as does its 8.3-inch Liquid Retina display, 12MP cameras on front and back, and button-based Touch ID. The cellular model also no longer supports a Nano-SIM, going eSIM-only, like most of the rest of Apple’s tablets and phones.
The new mini is also available in four finishes, including the same Space Gray and Starlight as its predecessor. There’s also a new blue finish that replaces a previous pink, and a different purple that appears much paler than the sixth-generation’s purple. There’s also a new $59 Smart Folio in charcoal gray, light violet, denim, and sage.
The addition of the A17 Pro processor, which debuted in last year’s iPhone 15 Pro and Pro Max, allows for the new mini to support Apple Intelligence—presumably that also means 8GB of RAM under the hood, though Apple isn’t advertising that fact.
The new iPad mini is available for pre-order today, starting at $499 for the 128GB Wi-Fi configuration, with upgrades to 256GB and 512GB costing $599 and $799 respectively. Adding cellular will cost another $150 on top. They’ll be available in stores starting October 23.
This announcements comes only a couple weeks before a rumored Apple event introducing a slew of new Macs based on the M4 processor; it seems likely that Apple didn’t want to spend stage time talking about a very minor update to one of its less popular products. But it is also possible that Apple will choose to eschew an event in favor of press release announcements sometime in the next couple weeks.
This post was originally published on Six Colors
