Apple just announced a new, faster iPad Mini

Apple conscionable announced, successful a somewhat understated manner via a property release, a caller iPad Mini. It’s the archetypal upgrade for Apple’s smallest tablet since 2021. The caller Mini starts astatine $499. Iis up for pre-order present and goes connected merchantability 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 interaction for the Mini-toting artists retired there. The Wi-Fi 6E spot is faster, the USB-C larboard is faster, everything astir the iPad Mini is the aforesaid arsenic earlier lone faster this time.

The lone existent plan alteration with the caller Mini is the colors. Apple’s gone much colorful with 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 last-gen Mini was a beauteous large overhaul, with a caller plan and a USB-C larboard on with a clump of spec upgrades. Given that that was the archetypal redesign since the archetypal Mini successful 2012, it’s not terribly astonishing that this Mini looks a batch similar the past Mini. The large spec bump makes sense, too: arsenic Apple goes all-in connected 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 bash hardware-accelerated ray tracing, which should marque 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 determination aren’t really that galore of those fans. Yes, pilots emotion their iPad Minis, but it seems wide that astir radical similar the large surface to the tiny 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 terms of the basal exemplary to $349. The Mini, arsenic it has successful the past, looked similar the unusual tablet out, which made immoderate radical wonderment whether Apple was really readying to support making the Mini. But it seems Apple’s conscionable blessed keeping the Mini connected a somewhat antithetic update cadence from the remainder of its tablets.