Image credit: Apple
Apple has announced a new iPad mini, and it's the biggest update the small tablet has had in years. The screen is now an 8.5-inch OLED panel, the body is thinner and lighter, there's a new A20 Pro chip inside, and the mini gets an IP67 rating for water and dust resistance for the first time. Pre-orders open October 28 and it goes on sale November 6, starting at $699 for the Wi-Fi model and $849 with cellular.
That's $200 more than the previous iPad mini, which started at $499 when it came out in 2024. I was a iPad mini 5 owner who has been waiting years for Apple to give this tablet a proper overhaul. This is pretty close to the one I want, without being quite there. I say that as someone who has been using the Oppo Pad mini for about five months now. It's the only other tablet I've liked as much as my old mini. It's as good as a small tablet gets right now. Oppo set the bar pretty high with it, so I was hoping this new iPad mini would meet it.
What Apple got right
The display is the big change. OLED means much deeper blacks than the old LCD. Apple says the panel can do 600 nits of full-screen brightness and 1,200 nits peak for HDR content, which is more than double the previous model. The bezels are 24 percent thinner than before, according to Apple, which is how the screen grew from 8.3 to 8.5 inches without the tablet getting any bigger. You can also get a nano-texture glass option on the 256GB and 512GB models to cut glare, something that was an iPad Pro feature until now.
Image credit: Apple
The body is 5.4mm thin and weighs 255 grams for the Wi-Fi model. That's lighter than the Oppo, which weighs 282 grams. The A20 Pro is the same chip as the one in the iPhone 18 Pro. The front camera has finally moved to the landscape edge, which means you won't look like you're staring off to the side on video calls. I like all of this, since Apple is basically giving the mini the iPad Pro treatment on the screen, which is what I've been asking for since the mini 5.
The screen refresh rate and the bezels
Apple's spec sheet doesn't list ProMotion, which is Apple's name for its 120Hz displays. Apple hasn't said what the refresh rate is either. Tom's Guide reads that omission as the same 60Hz the mini has always had, which is likely right, since Apple mentions ProMotion everywhere it has it. The Oppo Pad mini can run at up to 144Hz. Apple's own iPhone Pro models and the iPad Pro have been at 120Hz for years, so 60Hz on a $699 tablet in 2026 is not great.
The Oppo Pad mini is as good a tablet experience as I've had, and I wish the new iPad mini matched the hardware.
Image credit: Palash Volvoikar/Techlicious
The bezels are the other problem. Thinner is better, but the new iPad mini still looks archaic next to what's possible in this size. The Oppo Pad mini's body is a touch smaller than the new iPad mini's in both directions, according to Oppo's spec sheet, and Oppo still fits an 8.8-inch screen in it where Apple fits 8.5 inches. You don't even need the Oppo for the comparison. Even Apple's own iPhone Duo, which opens up into a 7.6-inch screen, makes the new mini's borders look dated.
Read More: Apple's $1,999 iPhone Duo takes on the Galaxy Z Fold 8 and Pixel Fold
Then there's the price. At $499, the old mini was easy to recommend as the small tablet for most people. At $699, Apple is asking a lot more money for a tablet that still has a 60Hz screen, and the Oppo makes that harder to accept. The Oppo Pad mini isn't sold in the US, and Oppo just started selling it outside China this month, in markets like India and Malaysia, under the name Pad Mini Matte Display Edition. Importers like Giztop list it at $699 right now, which is the same money as the new iPad mini. You'd be giving up Apple's warranty and iPadOS to get the better screen. That's a lot to give up, though the Oppo does at least show what $699 should get you in a tablet this size.
Who should buy the new iPad mini
This will still have a lot of takers. If you're on an iPad mini 6 or anything older, the OLED screen and the water resistance alone add up to a big jump, and there's nothing else in this size that runs iPadOS.
What I wanted was a Pro mini, which this almost is. The screen tech, the chip, and the nano-texture option all come from the Pro side of Apple's lineup, while the 60Hz refresh rate and those bezels seem to have carried over from the old mini. If Apple had put a 120Hz panel in and trimmed the borders a bit more, I'd have called this the small tablet to beat without any comparison. At $699, though, I think it could have done a bit more. Oppo has already shown, in a tablet that has been on sale in China since April, that the hardware to do it can be had at this price.
