Apple has introduced a new iPad Mini today, refreshing the company’s small tablet range after more than three years from the last model. It’s 2024, so there’s no surprise that AI is again one of the major highlights in the seventh-gen iPad Mini while the rest of the upgrades include a faster A17 Pro chipset. It’s available for pre-order starting today and costs $499.
Despite a long gap from the iPad Mini 6 (review), Apple didn’t bother to update the design and compact formula in the iPad Mini 7. The new tablet features a familiar 8.3-inch Liquid Retina display, but it is now compatible with the Apple Pencil Pro. There are new finishes, however, which are purple and blue in addition to space gray and starlight.
Apple says the 12 MP rear camera is improved and leverages AI for scene detection while the front-facing 12 MP gains Center Stage. There’s a faster Wi-Fi 6E as well, which is becoming a standard connectivity in many Apple products that are coming out lately. Additionally, the USB-C port is said to offer up to 10 Gbps transfer speed, or double from the predecessor.
The bigger upgrade lies inside, with the iPad Mini 7 fitted with an A17 Pro, which is the SoC that powers last year’s iPhone 15 Pro (review) and that is capable of running Apple Intelligence. Apple touts that the chip delivers a CPU boost of 30 percent and about 25 percent in GPU compared to the A15 Bionic. Likewise, the neural engine is noted to be 2x faster than the 2021 iPad Mini chip.
Apple Intelligence for the tiniest iPad entry
Of course, all the added silicon muscles are designed to support the first set of AI features which are included with the iPadOS 18.1 update. Apple didn’t confirm if the iPad Mini 7 runs on the said firmware out-of-the-box, but it did highlight the update is scheduled to be released later this month.
The first release of Apple Intelligence adds AI-powered Writing Tools for summarizing, proofreading, and rewriting texts in different writing styles. Elsewhere, Photos debuts the Clean Up tool which is the equivalent of Google’s Magic Eraser that removes unwanted objects from photos or enhances details of faces.
A redesigned and smarter Siri is also part of iPadOS 18.1. The assistant can now accommodate written text prompts apart from voice commands. It is even better to build coherent responses based on one request to a new one.
Apple plans to roll out more Apple Intelligence features through the next update, which should include Image Playground, Genmoji, on-screen aware Siri, and integration with ChatGPT.
The iPad Mini 7 price is unchanged at $499 but has the base configuration with 128 GB storage, double that of the iPad Mini 6. The cellular model commands $649.
Do you think these changes and improvements in the iPad Mini 7 are worth the wait? Let us hear your thoughts in the comment section below.
