Apple’s new iPad mini is built for Apple Intelligence and supports Apple Pencil Pro

Apple has released the latest version of its popular iPad mini which boasts the powerful A17 Pro chip and support for Apple Intelligence and Apple Pencil Pro.

Priced from $799, the new iPad mini will go on sale on October 23.

The iPad mini has an 8.3-inch Liquid Retina display and comes in four colours – blue, purple, starlight and space grey.

The A17 Pro chip offers impressive performance with a faster CPU and GPU and a Neural Engine 2x faster than the previous model.

The iPad mini’s small and easily portable size along with its solid processing power makes it an ideal product for on the go users including creatives and professionals.

“There is no other device in the world like iPad mini, beloved for its combination of powerful performance and versatility in our most ultraportable design,” said Bob Borchers, Apple’s vice president of Worldwide Product Marketing.

“iPad mini appeals to a wide range of users and has been built for Apple Intelligence, delivering intelligent new features that are powerful, personal, and private.

“With the powerful A17 Pro chip, faster connectivity, and support for Apple Pencil Pro, the new iPad mini delivers the full iPad experience in our most portable design at an incredible value.”

Thanks to the power of the A17 Pro chip, the iPad mini supports Apple Intelligence that runs entirely on the device with Private Cloud Compute offering the computational capacity to safely and privately process larger server based models.

Apple Intelligence can be used to rewrite and summarise text including Mail, Notes pages and other third party apps.

Siri also becomes empowered with not only a new design but also new capabilities.

It will also be possible to create images in seconds, transfer a rough sketch into a polished drawing as well as edit and improve your own images.

Apple’s new iPad mini also works with Apple Pencil Pro which is sensitive to a squeeze to bring up a tool palette and quickly switch tools and colours without having to access a menu and go out of your project.

On the gaming side, the iPad mini is a popular choice for players and the new model will not disappoint thanks to its boosted CPU and GPU performance along with 4x faster than software-based Ray Tracing plus support for Dynamic Caching and hardware accelerated Mesh Shading.

This means the latest games will look amazing and perform as they are designed to.

Connectivity-wise, the iPad mini supports Wi-Fi 6E while the cellular models have support for 5G so you can always stay connected on the move.

Cellular models also have an eSIM so users can quickly connect plans digitally and get connected to wireless data plans in more than 190 countries around the world.

The iPad mini’s wide angle camera has a 12-megapixel resolution while the front 12-megapixel ultrawide camera has been placed in portrait orientation and supports centre stage to make your FaceTime and video calls even better.

The new iPad mini also comes preloaded with iPad OS 18 which offers a host of new features including Maths Notes which lets you write mathematical expressions and see the answers and Smart Script which can edit handwritten text and even paste typed text in your own handwriting.

PRICING

The iPad mini, available in blue, purple, Starlight and space grey, goes on sale on October 23 and is priced at $799 (128GB Wi-Fi Only), $979 (256GB Wi-Fi Only), $1,049 (128GB Wi-FI + Cellular), $1,229 (256GB, Wi-Fi +Cellular), $1,329 (512GB, Wi-Fi Only) and $1,579 (512GB Wi-Fi + Cellular).

Editor