The new iPad mini
apple.comThey should stop handicapping the non-Pro displays at 60hz refresh rate. The world moved on 5 years ago. It’s getting tiring now.
If you give me a choice between buttery smooth >60Hz refresh rate animations, and better battery life, I'll choose the battery life 100% of the time. But that's just me. But then again, with the insides of a typical tablet being 90% battery these days (along with a little motherboard along one edge) maybe that's all a nonissue. Phones, on the other hand... my unambitious, cheap (from when you could still get half decent cheap phones) one goes two days on a charge easily, whereas a friend with an "advanced" phone struggles to get through one day with it, often running out during all-day outdoor adventures. Tradeoffs!
Phones use VRR displays, they don't always scale up all the way to 120Hz, only when justified by the content.
What's magical about 60 there? I'd naively think you'd just want VRR and some power saving render rate behavior rather than a fixed target framerate equal to the max framerate for all types of content all the time. The latter gives you neither good power saving nor good experience in most combinations.
Has any non pro consumer ever noticed a display greater than 60 hz. I can barely get the regular people in my life to nice anything above 30 hz or turning off motion smoothing. I really don't see how any of this stuff matters for most people
I'm sure there is a point of diminishing returns for display refresh rates, but I can tell you from experience that it is definitely higher than 60hz. 90hz feels meaningfully smoother (on a Steam deck), and 120/144hz (on a desktop monitor in my case) feels smoother than that. Even mouse input latency is perceptibly lower. I've never used a display faster than 144hz but I honestly would not be surprised to discover that one can still tell the difference well past 144hz.
60fps is basically fine as long as you are unaware that it can be any better, but once you find out you are forever spoiled by the knowledge.
I'm sure mouse latency is a big issue for iPad Mini users.
I know there's a sizable contingent of people who just think a bigger number is better, but realistically this is a device for passively consuming text and video content that is typically around 30 fps anyway. Why waste the battery power on faster refresh?
Not sure about iPads, but going from a pixel 3 to a pixel 5 made me feel like my pixel 3 was broken. Xr to 16 pro was similar, but that is because Xr was legit broken.
The ProMotion screens have variable refresh rate depending on the content displayed. 10Hz to 120Hz for iPhones and 24Hz to 120Hz for iPads. So in theory the power consumption should be even better than a regular screen for static content like reading text.
Yup. For me up until 90/100ish it's a pretty significant improvement all the way up and after that I don't know if I could notice outside of a fast game or wiggling the cursor over a contrasting color
I'm sure a lot of people now would feel odd if you gave them a 60Hz phone after high refresh has become so common, even if they don't pay conscious attention to that kind of stuff
I think Apple has held off 120 Hz for so long precisely because the average person gets a bit of a jolt of "this device is fast, it runs so smooth compared to..." they can't quite immediately place until someone explains it's the refresh rate.
Without this, it'd be very hard for an average user to "feel" a performance difference between an A18 Pro in the Neo and say as far as the M5 Max in a MacBook Pro unless they had a "special" use case which really needed the extra CPU/GPU cores.
Of course, they can't stay forever on that. E.g. with the iPhone 17 they finally flipped the non-Pro over. Probably because it was starting to make the iPhone seem sluggish/stuttery compared to other phones more than it was making the iPhone 18 seem fast. Tablets have never seemed to be as fierce a market in terms of your average Joe comparing them, but I'd expect the same switch to being a liability instead of a tool will happen there as well (if they aren't already late to the game).
I would be surprised if >10% of people didn't notice a difference between 60Hz and 120Hz.
Whether the hardware can keep up with Liquid Glass and push 120 frames a second is a different story, of course.
notice, maybe, but care, definitely not. there's a reason TV manufacturers get away with leaving on that awful AI smoothing by default.
That argument goes the other way though? The only reason TV manufacturers would leave frame interpolation on by default is that a decent chunk of people notice, those people care, and most of the people who notice are "normal people" who aren't repulsed by it.
If only "pro consumers" noticed or cared... well, those "pro consumers" are the ones who think it looks like shit and would rather have a TV without it.
I think it only really matters for gamers, but seriously, who's gaming on an iPad?! Use a PC or console!
Nobody ever wanted a >60Hz display, but once you've used one it's hard to go back. It's like having a higher-performance car. You're now stuck with paying more just for baseline happiness.
It's probably not actually as hard to go back as we think it is, but holding on to stuff is in our genes.
I keep hearing this all the time, and I think this is an absolutely massive overstatement that you cannot go back to 60 hz after experiencing high refresh rates.
My personal experience is that I do notice the difference - for like a minute - and then I adjust and never care anymore.
Yeah, we're talking more like reducing the amount of sugar in your tea hard, not quitting heroin hard.
You don't have to know what Hz is to see that scrolling on some devices is smooth and on other (coug..Apple) devices is choppy. 60Hz feels like a decade old phone.
As someone who occasionally browses Hacker News on a Kindle e-Reader, having a low refresh rate really doesn't matter.
If your phone is choppy when scrolling a list on a 60 Hz display, it's not going to scroll smoothly on a 120Hz display.
Yeah I wanted to love the form factor of the Mini and thought the 60 he wouldn't be an issue but was reminded any time I used the device.
Actually surprised to learn Apple did the OLED swap and didn't use the opportunity to bump it up at least to 90 hz like the OLED Steam Deck.
The base iPhone 17 has a 120 Hz display, I suspect they are going to drip feed it through their products as a cheap spec bump (vs adding extra RAM or storage).
> I suspect they are going to drip feed it through their products as a cheap spec bump (vs adding extra RAM or storage).
The iPhone sells way more units than the iPad, so it makes sense that it's not a feature for the iPad mini yet.
Or this will be an anomaly and they'll drop the base iPhone and keep the E model for the new base, the Air, the Pro and now the Duo.
The non-Pro iPhone 17 has ProMotion. I have to assume it's a matter of time before it'll make its way to the non-Pro iPads.
Sure, but the parent comment is saying the “matter of time” should be in the past. I wouldn’t buy a 60hz device today.
If you needed a mini tablet you would cause there's practically zero competition
I bought the new 8 inch Alexa tablet the other day, and the price was decent but it's a piece of shit. I only wanted it for putting on a video in bed while I fall asleep but it can't even do that because when you drop the brightness to minimum, the display randomly turns off (not actually locking the screen, it's still running the app and active, you can touch stuff you can't see, but the pixels are turned off)
To everyone over here stating the pro vs regular consumer argument:
- Apple introduces OLED and talks about deep blacks and 1200 bits
- Why do they think people care about the above and not 120hz as well?
To the average consumer, neither matters much. True. But the above did not make much sense to me.
While I agree 100%, I'm more interested in the variable refresh down to 1hz that comes with 'Promotion' to save on battery when viewing lots of static text.
Did it? Most devices are still at 60
High refresh rate displays are an interesting feature because most users do not notice the difference.
I can spot a 60Hz display from jiggling the mouse pointer for a second.
I’ve also done side-by-side comparisons of full screen scrolling on 60Hz and 120Hz screens for less technical people who could barely perceive a difference when I was pointing it out, but it took some time to get them to see it.
MKBHD (YouTube tech video and reviewer) talks about this a lot: It’s highly valuable to people like you and me who are attuned to the performance of our devices, but most people don’t notice. Or care!
I would appreciate high Hz displays everywhere, but I admit that Apple has probably made the right consumer choice tradeoff to compromise on refresh rate for these lower end devices where minimum cost and maximum battery life are the two most important features for those who buy them.
I'm one of those who can't spot a difference. I've tried to with the mouse trick or scrolling and I just can't see it. I can see the difference between 30fps and 60fps but anything north of 60fps is imperceptible to me. Maybe it's from a lifetime of gaming on toaster specs where I'd scarcely break 25fps.
I think another thing to keep in mind is that there’s probably an element of sensory adaptation at play here. Like when you wear a watch: you notice it at first, and then you don’t notice it on your wrist anymore.
So if you’re actively moving between a high-refresh-rate device (like a lot of people here with their 144hz monitors) and then one with a lower refresh rate, you’re probably more sensitive (and potentially annoyed) by the discrepancy.
You will notice this as soon as you use a low dpi device again for any length of time. First 10 minutes you see the pixels. After that you stop seeing the pixels.
Viewing distance plays a factor too. I realized 4k tvs are useless to me because I can't perceive 1080p pixels unless I'm comparison shopping in a TV show room from 2 feet away (probably why they don't let you experience appropriate TV viewing distances in these spaces in the first place).
Right? Pro devices should be 240hz now
A 40% price increase compared to pre June pricing, a 60Hz display (that’s likely just software locked), and still starting at 128GB of storage.
I was actually excited for this, but now I’m going to pass.
Thanks AI.
I wanted to upgrade my air(gen4) but with these prices it's just not happening. Oh and no support for the perfectly fine apple pencil I already got with it is just....
I doubt the display is hardware locked. Apple is too good at protecting its margin to do that.
Now I get why they only announced it via press release...
Value/$ in iPad basically has not changed since 2022. Inflation (general and AI/antitrust-driven component shortages) has cancelled out technical gains.
128gb...
AI Doomer: AI is going to rise up and destroy humanity!
AI Optimist: AI is going usher in an era of unparalleled productivity and achievement
The reality: RAM/Chip prices are way, way up. The starter iPad mini is $700.
The cheapest configuration of the original model was $329 in 2012 [0]. Even when corrected for inflation, that would still be less than $500 in today's money -- so quite a bit less than $700!
Is the comparison unfair because today's model is much more powerful than the one from 14 years ago? Perhaps. But perhaps it shouldn't be compared to the past, but to its relative competitors?
[0] https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2012/10/23Apple-Introduces-iP...
Oh I long for the days when every 2 years prices for compute FELL.
Not really unfair, as the basic use case is still the same for either model.
A toilet from a hundred years ago in the same product tier serves the same function as one today. Old models were also more expensive when adjusted for inflation, but today's toilets can tackle more turds with less water.
The alternative approach leads to those "costs have dropped by 7 orders of magnitude in the last 50 years" style of deceptive graphs popular among people with an agenda to insist AI memory price inflation isn't a real problem.
> RAM/Chip prices are way, way up
So that cloud providers can have servers and GPUs sitting unpowered in warehouses and datacenters.
Right. The prices are up for Nvidia’s benefit (and Micron, Sandisk by extension).
I know it’s now a trope to say “an incoming Democratic Congress should…” but there are really serious questions to ask about the means by which Nvidia is securing such a radically high value buy-and-hold strategy, and whether it amounts to deceptive channel stuffing.
The whole tech industry is using apparent demand for Blackwell GPUs as a proxy for AI demand, when this is a wholly broken metric because Nvidia seems to be gaming it, and everyone (consumer and business alike) is paying more as a result.
The whole supply demand spherical cow model of capitalism really breaks down when suppliers decide they'd collectively use their cartel to not engage in demand and instead gouge prices.
How does AI explain the mini being $250 more expensive than the regular 11-inch iPad?
> How does AI explain
12 reasons why the iPad Mini is $250 more expensive than iPad 11-inch: 1) ...The iPad mini is not a mini version of the base model iPad. It's more or less a scaled down iPad Air.
Sure, but that tells you that the upgraded specs and pricing is a conscious decision made by Apple, not something forced by AI. Making an entry-level small screen equivalent of the 11-inch iPad is always an option. They’re choosing not to take it.
Memory and storage is expensive as hell, so they're gonna ration it for their more expensive devices.
Same reason this year, for the first time ever, Apple announced their new Pro phones (and the ultra-expensive Duo) but no base-model iPhone 18. They're paying more for memory so they're gonna use it on the devices where they make more on a sale.
When did Apple last refresh that? (not a rhetorical question sorry!)
It got a price bump 3 months ago.
> The reality: RAM/Chip prices are way, way up. The starter iPad mini is $700.
This has tiny 128 GB of storage and unknown but obviously not too high amount of RAM. At best 16, but probably less.
That's just Apple beeing greedy as usual.
Apple was "greedy" before too and were able to sell it cheaper. So obviously they're being impacted by increased storage/memory/whatever prices.
More like they were not able to find a pretext to sell it for more.
I can open my local store and will see shitty 8/128 Android tablets for less than 150 euro. If memorypocalypse was the main reason for pricing new ipad mini as it is, the budget tablet segment would be completely dead because manufacturers just wouldn't be able to afford memory at all.
I bought a used iPad for my daughter for her birthday about a year ago for about $500.
M4 chip.
Her mom's cats chewed on the corner of the screen. It won't turn on.
The cost to replace that screen: $1200.
Apparently OLED screens break completely if just a single pixel is damaged.
I don't think that's unique to OLED. There's all manner of things that could've gone wrong when breaking a corner in both LCD and OLED
your ex’s cat chewed on the corner of an iPad? Does the cat have some more interesting stories of destruction since it apparently likes chewing on metal/glass, a higher level of destruction setting than the standard cat.
Only Apple can properly replace these screens and pair the parts (FaceId etc), so setting the standard repair cost high enough helps push people toward Apple Care eligible new devices, handicapping the second hand market.
That has been the case basically since Apple Care existed IMHO.
> Only Apple can properly replace these screens and pair the parts
Not true. Apple has a self-service repair program for most of its products, including the iPad mini.
All the repair manuals are available online and you can buy official Apple parts. [1] They'll even sell or rent the tools you will need.
You're right, the self-service repair program exists. It doesn't clear neither the pairing issue nor parent's hurdles though, as Apple parts are still required , you can't get any similar enough screen you'd want, and they'll be priced the same as in Apple Stores.
As far as I remember, the self-repair kits only make sense in very niche cases (I think repair shop get a different contract ?) and won't work around any limitations Apple puts on parts or repairs.
> The cost to replace that screen: $1200.
That's Apple saying to you: omg, stop being so poor and wasting our time, just buy another one
Yup. Had an MacBook Air. Slight water damage near charging port. Laptop functioned correctly on AC power. Extensive battery diagnostics: Healthy. Just the charging circuit saying "go ahead, charge device"...
At the Genius Bar expected something reasonable, realistic... $300? Parts and labor.
"So we have a quote for you, $950. Perhaps we go out and look at the new Macs together?"
90% of the cost of the laptop to replace the charging port.
Her mom keeps jungle cats or something?
That happened to my MBP without OLED. Fortunately I had Applecare.
I don't like when they force a storage upgrade just to get a matte screen. I have no need for more storage, but would like a matte screen. As a $100 upgrade for nanotexture, it already seems steep, but forcing it to a $200 upgrade due to a needless storage bump is too much to ignore.
I also question what is required for nanotexture. I read the iPhone Duo has this in a replaceable screen protector, effectively. A replacement, under AppleCare is $15. Are we being charged $100 for a factory installed screen protector? If so, why does that need to be tied to certain levels of storage to reduce SKUs?
Nanotexture on non-folding displays is etched glass.
> in an even thinner and lighter design
Never once did I hold my iPad mini with a case and think, "damn this thing is heavy"
Just because it's good doesn't mean it can't be better
The novelty of how thin my M5 iPad Pro is still hasn't worn off. Sometimes it's just nice to hold some tech in your hand that feels like it's from the future.
Since when have we established "thinner and lighter" equals "better"?
In the case of iPhone Air and Galaxy Edge phones, there were notable compromises to achieve a thinner body, for which many people don't consider an improvement.
Granted, I have not seen or used the new iPad mini, and I don't know if any such compromise has been made. But probably should leave it open until we conclude this is a plus.
I thought the same thing about iPhones, then I got an iPhone Air and can’t imagine going back to those fat bloated bricks people lug around daily. Worse, they put a thick case on it making it even more portly, because the aluminum bodies dent so easily. iPhone Air is what Steve Jobs would have wanted: a super thin strong Titanium phone that doesn’t need any case to feel complete.
I have the gen 6 mini for reading and notes. It'sthe least needy, most capable of my devices. I bring it everywhere.
I'm excited for the OLED display because it would make bedtime reading easier on the eyes. I'm also happy about the weight reduction.
Still, it's €749 vs €549 in 2021. I will use mine until it stops fulfilling its role, which might take a few more years.
I hope you’re a patient person. My 2017 iPad Pro is still getting security updates.
Is Stage Manager with an external monitor possible with this new iPad Mini or still artificially limited to M chips? I mean it’s more powerful than the M1 iPad Air which supports it.
As a life long and continuous Apple user (and iOS SWE), I recently got a $150 Samsung Android tablet that I can use as a claude interface. It can take in voice commands, and create new builds of itself on a network Mac. So I can essentially have whatever screen or interface I want for any given moment. Right now I'm tuning my motorcycle with an OBD bluetooth device and recording engine behavior on rides.
I looked at the tech specs but I don't see how much ram it has. I ended getting more storage than I needed on my pro because it also gave it more ram.
Gizmodo thinks it will have at least 12GB RAM, but it sounds more like an educated guess than a confirmed fact:
https://gizmodo.com/ipad-mini-oled-a20-pro-chip-2000830541#:...
The 512GB option actually has a better chip with 1 more CPU core and twice the neural engine...
What does twice the "neural engine" get me?
For about the same cost, I can get a used M5 chip with both a Neural Engine™ and GPU cores each with Neural Accelerators™
I understand ram shortages but what is the justification behind selling the mini as a “pro” product? People want a smaller base iPad, that’s it.
One of my beloved devices was the Nexus 7, it was an excellent affordable template that didn't feel cheap, nor fancy or pro. Just a good media consumption / general purpose small tablet.
I wish Apple would make a similar device. I'm fine with recycled chips and getting a bit gimped on RAM size.
Like the MacBook Neo of iPads; I just really want a media consumption device. A20 Pro means nothing to me.
In what way are they selling it as a "pro" product?
By putting the A20 Pro chip in it rather than A16/A17/A18 which is on base iPads and iPhones.
Perhaps they are planning to launch application features that require or benefit from the A20. Anyway it looks like the base model of the new iPad is using binned CPUs that were not quite good enough for the iPhone 18: 5 cores instead of 6, 1 neural engine instead of 2.
They have enough bezel room to make it into 8.7" or even 8.9" version without changing the dimensions of the mini.
I believe this is the lightest iPad at only 255g. I just wonder how much more weight can they shave off.
And if they are going to kill the iPad? The current iPad line up is split into Pro, Air, (iPad) and Mini. Surely the mini could replace the normal iPad?
Not in a snarky way but who is the target market for this?
I like using my 6th gen as an erader. With the right color settings the screen doesn’t fatigue me, and it’s nice to be able to read from any source (kindle, Apple Books, Libby, a pdf, etc).
from previous [1] threads on the iPad Mini, at least aircraft pilots are a target audience
Can definitely attest to this. When I was doing my PPL I had an iPad that had a built-in cellular modem loaded with ForeFlight for GPS positioning mounted to the inside of the cessna's window.
And with a 1-nit minimum brightness, iPad mini is even more suitable for dim environments, from users reading in bed at night to pilots checking their electronic flight bag in the cockpit.
As per other comments, my guess is somewhere between 1% and 5% of ipad mini sales are to pilots. It's gotta be significant or they wouldn't drop a line that in their main copy!
I've been hoping for a water and dust resistant tablet for use in the pottery studio for a while (for photographing work in progress, cataloguing glaze ingredients, taking notes, etc), as it's a wet and dirty environment, but the price kills all interest.
They only sell around six million minis per year, so it's not a large market (for Apple).
I predict it’ll be less than 6 million a year at these ludicrous prices.
I can give you at least one group that loves them. Taxi/uber drivers who use them as bigger displays for their maps and apps.
People waiting for >v1 Duo? Same processor, 1" larger screen, lower cost but you still carry a phone.
Is iPad mini finally smaller than iPhone maxi?
Or this exciting marketing twist still to come?
Anyone use a cell version instead of a phone?
Starting at $949 before tax (~$1050 after tax in most provinces) in Canada for 128GB
Zoinks
It's the same price as a MacBook Neo
Starting at $1,099 AUD. Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha
edit: That's more than a MacBook Neo, they're only $1,049!
£700 here (VAT incl). That's ~$1,310 CAD!
Goodness, Apple is going back to the luxury item category... thanks ai
What's the value proposition compared to the iPhone Duo? Aren't they relatively similar now?
Screen won't kill itself
With OLED, this is going to be the best e-book reader in dark mode, and given that it's water resistant you could even use it in bath/hot tub w/o destroying the device - if you're willing to put down $700 for an e-reader that is.
I don’t know about everyone else but I’m just so sick of Apple releasing marginally improved products, calling it their biggest update ever, and then jacking up prices. $700 for an iPad mini is absurd RAM price increases or not.
Whats the closest Android equivalent to this?
I would love Apple to actually make something that is worthy of the name Apple. When Steve was alive, Apple was A-P-P-L-E and now it is just a shell of its self.
Another (earlier?) post:
interesting this is so close to the iPhone Duo release.
Everything old is new again - return of the phablet.
$699 for 128GB is wild. Between this and HomeView apple has two meh launches in a row now.
will it run Omarchy?
A bit disappointed it lacks ProMotion adaptive refresh.
The 60Hz display is pretty disappointing. The size is just right, though.
Oh yay, they made a kindle
I wish they would do that. I'd love a dedicated $200-$300 ereader from Apple.
"We have released another mind-enslavement tool for your kids! It's the most potent ever!"
Thought China would have flooded the ram market by now
They are working on it (CXMT for RAM and YMTC for NAND flash) but not having access to ASML’s EUV lithography equipment hobbles them.
The US government is also trying to kneecap them, threatening Apple with tariffs if they went ahead with YMTC storage, even if only for the Chinese market.
They are thus primarily focusing on the Chinese market, but if they weren’t there, DRAM and flash is a global commodity market and prices would have gone up even more insanely than today.
You can't just spin up factories producing top of the line components like RAM. It's an extremely expensive process
Maybe with enough money. Terafab ~ Q3 2027