The Seventh Generation of Apple’s Smallest Tablet (Preview): Intelligence Enhancement and the Case for the New iPad Mini

Apple just announced, in a somewhat understated fashion via a press release, a new iPad Mini. It was the first upgrade for Apple’s smallest tablet in six years. The new Mini starts at $499. It’s up for pre-order now and goes on sale next Wednesday.

The only real design change with the new Mini is the colors. Apple’s gone more colorful with a lot of its products this year, and the Mini comes in new purple and blue models. The new colors on the phone aren’t really eye-catching, so don’t expect them in photos.

The Mini has always been something of an oddity in Apple’s tablet lineup, similar to the iPhone SE: it has fans who love it for the smaller size, but Apple has always intimated that there aren’t actually that many of those fans. Most people prefer the big screen to the small screen when choosing between the two, even though pilots love their iPad Minis.

The seventh-generation iPad Mini comes with an A17 Pro chip to support Apple Intelligence. It also newly supports the Apple Pencil Pro and has faster Wi-Fi and USB-C speeds.

The more significant changes are inside. Apple upgraded the processor from the A15 (the chipset inside the iPhone 13 and iPhone 13 Pro models) to an A17 Pro, the very same that’s in the iPhone 15 Pro. The company says that with a six-core processor, it delivers a 30 percent boost in CPUs performance while the five-coreGPU offers a 25 percent increase over the previous model. The neural engine is just as fast as the other one.

Three years after its last refresh, the seventh generation of Apple’s smallest iPad is here. The new tablet was announced quietly through the company’s online newsroom. What about the headline feature on this device? There is Apple Intelligence. Artificial intelligence features are still not available for the iPhone 16, but they will be in the updated operating system by this month.