Apple's new iPad mini gets OLED display, A20 Pro chip and IP67 rating

Thinner design, larger OLED screen

The new iPad mini is 5.4 mm thin and comes in two finishes: a new midnight and starlight. Apple says it is thinner and lighter than the previous generation, and it now carries an IP67 rating against water and dust. The company points to use cases such as working outside on a rainy day or reading by the pool.

The display grows to 8.5 inches while keeping the same footprint as the previous mini, thanks to 24 percent thinner bezels. It is a Super Retina XDR OLED panel with P3 wide color gamut support. Apple lists peak brightness of up to 1200 nits, which it describes as more than 2x higher than the previous generation, plus 600 nits of full-screen brightness for SDR and HDR content and a 2,000,000:1 contrast ratio. Minimum brightness is 1 nit, which Apple says suits dim environments, from reading in bed to pilots checking an electronic flight bag.

A nano-texture option, already offered on iPad Pro, reduces glare in bright environments.

A20 Pro, audio, cameras and connectivity

The tablet is powered by A20 Pro, built on Apple's 2-nanometer process. According to Apple, the 7-core GPU with Neural Accelerators in each core delivers up to 4.5x faster AI performance than the previous generation, including running local LLMs. Graphics performance rises by up to 2.7x, and the up to 6-core CPU is up to 60 percent faster in multithreaded tasks. Unified memory bandwidth increases by more than 2x.

The 512GB configuration features a Dual 16-core Neural Engine, which Apple says doubles the processing power of the previous generation.

• Acoustic Display: woofers paired through the display for punchier bass and more volume, with custom tweeters hidden between the glass and aluminum enclosure. Its sealed enclosure helps meet the IP67 rating.
• Cameras: a 12MP Center Stage front camera on the landscape edge, and a 12MP Wide back camera with Smart HDR 4, 4K video at up to 60 fps and an Adaptive True Tone flash.
• N1 chip: Apple-designed, enabling Wi-Fi 7, Bluetooth 6 and Thread.
• C2 modem: on cellular models, with up to 50 percent faster cellular data speeds than the previous iPad mini, according to Apple.

iPadOS 27, Siri AI and availability

The iPad mini runs iPadOS 27 with the next generation of Apple Intelligence. Apple describes Siri AI, rolling out in beta, as an entirely new version of Siri that is more personal, capable and conversational. It can draw on personal context across messages, emails, photos and more. The device also supports what Apple calls its most advanced on-device model ever, used for more expressive Siri voices and more accurate systemwide dictation.

Customers can pre-order the iPad mini and the new Smart Folio from Wednesday, October 28, with availability beginning Friday, November 6. The source text does not include pricing.

Dave Pakula, Apple's vice president of Hardware Engineering, said the iPad mini is "beloved for its fantastic portability, performance, and display by a wide range of users, from creators and small business owners to doctors, field service workers, and gamers."

For those users, the update brings an OLED screen, water resistance and on-device AI hardware to the smallest iPad, according to Apple's own claims. Independent performance figures were not part of the announcement.