iPad mini (2024): price, release date, AI, and everything you need to know

The iPad mini (2024) has more power and supports AI

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It has been an extremely long wait for a new iPad mini, with the previous model – theiPad mini (2021)– landing back in September of 2021. But now, just over three years later, the iPad mini (2024) – or the iPad mini 7 as it’s sometimes referred – has arrived.

Despite the long wait this new tablet isn’t a drastic overhaul, but it does include some significant upgrades, perhaps most notably a far more powerful chipset – one which ensures the slate also supportsApple Intelligence.

There’s more that’s new here too, and you’ll find full details of the iPad mini (2024)’s specs, features, release date, and price, below.

iPad mini (2024): what you need to know

Release date and price

The iPad mini (2024) was announced on October 15, 2024, and you can pre-order it now, with the tablet shipping from October 23.

It starts at $499 / £499 / AU$799 for a 128GB Wi-Fi model, and you’ll find full pricing for every configuration below.

iPad mini (2024) specs

We’ll look closer at the iPad mini 7’s specs and features below, but first, here’s a brief overview of just the headline specs:

New colors, same screen

The iPad mini (2024) looks a lot like the iPad mini (2021), and in fact at 195.4 x 134.8 x 6.3mm and 293g, its weight and dimensions are exactly the same.

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It’s also the same shape, and has similarly large bezels around the screen, and once again a single-lens camera in the top left corner of the rear.

The main visual difference is just the colors, with the iPad mini 7 being available in Space Gray, Blue, Purple, and Starlight (white) shades, even then though it’s only the blue that’s really a new shade, though its shade of purple is also much lighter than the purple of its predecessor.

As for its screen, the iPad mini 7 has an 8.3-inch 1488 x 2266 LCD display with 326 pixels per inch, and a peak brightness of 500 nits. This again is the same as the previous model.

However, this time around the display supports theApplePencil Pro and Apple Pencil hover.

Better HDR for the cameras

There isn’t much new on the camera front either, with the iPad mini (2024) having a 12MP f/1.8 rear camera, though it has been upgraded to SmartHDR4, which delivers increased dynamic range, and which Apple says should make your photos more detailed and vivid.

The iPad mini (2024) can also record video in up to4Kquality at up to 60fps, and it has a 12MP f/2.4 front-facing camera.

A powerful A17 Pro chipset

The main upgrade on the iPad mini 7 it its chipset. It has an A17 Pro chipset, just like you’ll find in theiPhone 15 Pro, and this delivers up to 30% faster CPU performance and up to 25% faster GPU performance than the A15 Bionic in the iPad mini (2021).

It also features hardware-accelerated ray tracing, and has a neural engine that’s up to two times faster than the previous generation.

So the iPad mini (2024) should be capable of running graphically intense games, as well as generally feeling faster whatever you’re using it for. All this extra power also enables AI – more on which below.

Data is also faster, as the iPad mini (2024) supports Wi-Fi 6E, for up to two times faster Wi-Fi speeds than the previous model.

And you can get the iPad mini (2024) with twice as much storage than the previous model, at up to 512GB. The starting capacity is also twice as big at 128GB. For theoperating system, you’re unsurprisingly gettingiPadOS 18, which is the latest release.

As for the battery, Apple hasn’t revealed the capacity, but has said that the iPad mini (2024) can last for up to ten hours of surfing the web or watching video. Or if you’re using mobile data on a cellular model then you should be able to get up to nine hours of life when web browsing. That’s the same as the iPad mini (2021).

To charge it back up you’ll be plugging it in via USB-C, and there’s no wireless charging.

Apple Intelligence

Perhaps the biggest new feature on the iPad mini 7 – and the reason Apple released it now – is AI, as Apple Intelligence is about to land, and the previous iPad mini won’t support it.

But thanks to the newer chipset here you’ll get access to all sorts of AI features, like Image Wand, which turns a rough sketch into a related image, Writing Tools to help you optimize your writing, and AI-enhanced document scanning.

There’s also Genmoji, which lets you create new emoji by typing a description or feeding it a photo, a Clean Up tool to remove distracting objects in photos, and improvements to Siri.

These features aren’t here yet, but Apple Intelligence will start rolling out to the iPad mini (2024) and other compatible devices before the end of October, though not every AI tool will be available on day one.

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James is a freelance phones, tablets and wearables writer and sub-editor at TechRadar. He has a love for everything ‘smart’, from watches to lights, and can often be found arguing with AI assistants or drowning in the latest apps. James also contributes to 3G.co.uk, 4G.co.uk and 5G.co.uk and has written for T3, Digital Camera World, Clarity Media and others, with work on the web, in print and on TV.

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