iPad mini (A20 Pro) Release Date, Price, and Specs: What's Confirmed

The new iPad mini is official: Apple confirmed the release date, full price list and specs on October 26, 2026, and pre-orders open October 28 at 5 a.m. Pacific, with the tablet arriving in stores and on doorsteps November 6. The headline changes are an 8.5-inch OLED display, the A20 Pro chip, IP67 water and dust resistance, and a starting price of $699 for Wi-Fi or $849 for Wi-Fi + Cellular, as detailed on the official iPad mini product page — the same entry price as the outgoing model, despite the display and chip upgrades.

iPad mini release date: when you can buy it

Apple announced the redesigned iPad mini in a newsroom post titled "Apple gives iPad mini its biggest update ever", dated October 26, 2026. Pre-orders begin Wednesday, October 28, through apple.com and the Apple Store app, in 36 countries and regions including the United States. The tablet becomes available in Apple Stores and through select carriers and retailers on Friday, November 6, 2026.

That is a two-year refresh cycle: the previous iPad mini, built around the A17 Pro chip, launched in October 2024. This is the first redesign of Apple's smallest tablet since it added USB-C and Apple Pencil Pro support two generations ago, and it is the first iPad mini to ship with an OLED screen.

iPad mini price: every configuration

Apple's online store lists ten Wi-Fi and cellular combinations across three storage tiers, plus a nano-texture glass option on the two higher-capacity models. Pricing is identical for both the Midnight and Starlight finishes.

Education pricing knocks the entry Wi-Fi model down to $649. Apple is also offering it through its monthly financing program, starting at roughly $58.25 a month for 12 months on the base Wi-Fi configuration, or through the Apple Card Monthly Installments plan at 0% APR for qualifying US buyers. Trade-in credit and AppleCare+ are available at checkout as usual.

Two accessories launch alongside it: Apple's new TechWoven Smart Folio, in navy blue or taupe, at $79, and the existing Apple Pencil Pro ($129) and Apple Pencil (USB-C) ($79) both carry over as supported styluses.

Design: thinner, lighter, and now water resistant

The new iPad mini is 5.4mm thick — Apple's thinnest tablet — and weighs 255 grams for the Wi-Fi model (263 grams for Wi-Fi + Cellular), a reduction from the previous generation. It keeps the same roughly 8-inch footprint (195.3mm x 132.6mm) despite the larger screen, because Apple shrank the display bezels by 24%.

The bigger functional change is an IP67 rating, Apple's standard shorthand for protection against dust and against immersion in up to 1 meter of water for up to 30 minutes. That is a first for the iPad mini line and brings it in line with recent iPhone models; Apple's own materials note that resistance can diminish with normal wear and isn't covered by warranty for liquid damage. The tablet ships in two finishes, Midnight and Starlight, both with an aluminum enclosure.

Display: the first OLED iPad mini

Apple swapped the mini's Liquid Retina LCD for an 8.5-inch Super Retina XDR OLED panel at 2316 x 1512 resolution (326 pixels per inch) — the same display technology used in the iPad Pro. Apple's published figures put peak HDR brightness at up to 1200 nits, more than double the outgoing model, with 600-nit full-screen brightness for both SDR and HDR content, a 2,000,000:1 contrast ratio and a 1-nit minimum brightness for better low-light viewing. It supports the P3 wide color gamut and True Tone, and for the first time on a mini, Apple offers an optional nano-texture glass finish on the 256GB and 512GB tiers to cut glare in bright environments.

The screen also fully supports the Apple Pencil Pro and Apple Pencil (USB-C), including Pencil hover, so sketching and note-taking apps can sense the tip before it touches the glass.

Performance: the A20 Pro chip

Inside is the A20 Pro, built on a 2-nanometer manufacturing process. The 128GB and 256GB models get a 5-core CPU (2 performance + 3 efficiency cores), a 7-core GPU with Neural Accelerators in every core, and a 16-core Neural Engine. Step up to the 512GB model and the CPU gains a sixth core (2 performance + 4 efficiency) alongside a dual 16-core Neural Engine configuration and roughly double the unified memory bandwidth of the smaller tiers.

According to Apple's published tech specs, the company's own comparisons against the previous A17 Pro-equipped iPad mini claim up to 60% faster multi-threaded CPU performance, up to 2.7x faster graphics thanks to the new Neural Accelerators and hardware-accelerated ray tracing, and up to 4.5x faster on-device AI workloads. For a tablet whose main selling point has always been portability rather than raw power, that is a significant jump, and it's enough headroom to run creative apps like Procreate Dreams and ZBrush, both of which Apple highlighted in its announcement, directly on the mini-sized screen.

Connectivity: Wi-Fi 7, the C2 modem, and eSIM only

Apple's in-house N1 wireless chip brings Wi-Fi 7 (802.11be) with 2x2 MIMO, Bluetooth 6, and Thread support for smart-home devices. Cellular models move to Apple's second-generation C2 modem, which the company says delivers up to 50% faster cellular data speeds than the previous generation's modem, alongside 5G sub-6GHz and Gigabit LTE with 4x4 MIMO.

One change worth flagging before you order: cellular iPad mini models are eSIM-only. There is no physical SIM tray, so if you're moving from an older cellular iPad or switching from an Android device like the Pixel 11 series that still takes a physical SIM, you'll need to transfer or activate an eSIM profile with your carrier. The USB-C port also now handles charging, DisplayPort output to an external 4K/60Hz display, and USB 3 data transfer up to 10Gb/s — a jump from the USB 2 speeds of the prior generation, and the kind of upgrade covered in more detail in our explainer on USB-C ports, cables and charging speeds.

Cameras and audio

The rear camera is a single 12-megapixel wide lens at ƒ/1.8 with a five-element design, digital zoom up to 5x, panorama shots up to 63 megapixels, and an adaptive True Tone flash. Video tops out at 4K at up to 60 fps, with 1080p slo-mo available at 120 or 240 fps and Cinematic stabilization. On the front, Apple moved the 12-megapixel Center Stage camera to the landscape edge of the tablet, which keeps your face centered in frame during video calls when the mini is propped up horizontally — a layout Apple has now standardized across its whole iPad range.

Audio comes from stereo speakers built around what Apple calls an Acoustic Display: woofers that fire through the display assembly itself, paired with tweeters hidden between the glass and the aluminum housing, plus dual microphones for calls and voice dictation.

Software: iPadOS 27 and Siri AI

The new iPad mini ships running iPadOS 27 and includes Apple Intelligence features such as Clean Up, Image Playground, Spatial Reframing for photos, and Notify Me in Safari. Apple says the beta version of its rebuilt Siri AI — with onscreen awareness and personal context — arrives as part of the iPadOS 27.2 update, in six languages initially, and is not currently available in the European Union. Server-based Apple Intelligence features carry daily usage limits for some accounts, per Apple's own disclosures.

None of this is exclusive to the mini; the same iPadOS 27 features ship on every supported iPad. The mini's news here is that its new chip and memory headroom are enough to run them without being the weak link in Apple's tablet lineup, something that wasn't guaranteed given how much smaller and lighter the device is than an iPad Pro.

Accessories: Apple Pencil and the new Smart Folio

Both current styluses carry over: Apple Pencil Pro ($129, or $119 with education pricing) adds squeeze gestures, haptic feedback and Find My support, while the simpler Apple Pencil (USB-C), at $79 ($69 for education), covers basic note-taking and sketching without those extras. New for this generation is a TechWoven Smart Folio case, replacing the older polyurethane Smart Folio, priced at $79 in navy blue or taupe, with a textile-like woven finish that Apple also uses on some iPhone and MacBook accessories.

Apple's specification sheet also confirms a few details that matter for day-to-day use: the built-in 18.9-watt-hour battery is rated for up to 10 hours of web browsing or video on Wi-Fi (9 hours on cellular data), and fast charging can take the battery from empty to roughly 50% in about 30 minutes with a 35W or higher USB-C power adapter, which Apple sells separately from the included 20W adapter. The box itself contains the iPad mini, a 1-meter USB-C charge cable, the 20W adapter, and — on nano-texture models only — a polishing cloth.

How it compares to the previous iPad mini

If you're deciding whether to upgrade from the A17 Pro-equipped iPad mini (2024) or buy your first one, here's what actually changed, based on Apple's own published specs for both generations.

The starting price climbed $200 over the outgoing model's original launch price, which also reflects that Apple discontinued the old entry-level 128GB tier's pricing structure alongside the redesign. Buyers coming from a 2021-era iPad mini (A15 Bionic) or earlier will see the largest jump: that model had a Lightning port, no Apple Pencil Pro support, and a smaller, dimmer LCD screen.

The nano-texture glass option is also new to the mini lineup specifically, even though Apple already offered it on the iPad Pro and certain Mac displays. It's a $100 upsell over standard glass at both the 256GB and 512GB tiers, trading a small amount of sharpness and contrast for meaningfully less glare — worth considering if you plan to use the tablet outdoors or under bright overhead lighting, and worth skipping if most of your use is indoors on a couch or desk.

What to do now

If you want one at launch, add your preferred storage, glass and connectivity combination to your Apple ID wish list now, since pre-orders open October 28 at 5 a.m. Pacific and popular configurations — nano-texture finishes especially — tend to push into later shipping windows within hours on past iPad launches. If you already own the A17 Pro iPad mini, the OLED screen and IP67 rating are the two upgrades most likely to matter day to day; if your current one is still working well and you don't need either, this is a safe generation to skip. Shoppers who aren't committed to Apple's ecosystem may also want to weigh a tablet against this fall's Android phone options before storage tiers sell out.

Written byNadia Osei

Nadia Osei covers mobile and consumer gadgets for Pandromeda: smartphones, tablets, smartwatches, earbuds and smart-home devices. She tracks launches, software updates and pricing across Apple, Google, Samsung and the rest, and builds comparisons from the manufacturers' published specifications.

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