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The iPhone Duo may be a bit of a risk right now, but there’s a new mid-size Apple touchscreen device that might do the job. Starting at $699, the 8th-gen iPad mini price has gone up, but there are some big changes. Apple says the refreshed 8th-gen iPad mini marks the most significant update ever for its petite tablet, featuring an OLED screen and the A20 Pro chip that we first saw in the iPhone 18 Pro and iPhone Duo. The new iPad mini has roughly the same footprint as the 2024 release, but the display is slightly larger thanks to a 24 percent reduction in bezel thickness. The device is almost a full millimeter thinner than the last iPad, coming in at just 5.4 mm. The chassis is also IP67 rated for water and dust protection. The 7th-Gen iPad mini didn’t have any official IP rating. The 8.5-inch Super Retina XDR display (up from 8.3 inches) moves on from the IPS technology of the last-gen device to adopt OLED. That means dapper blacks and a much higher peak brightness—1,200 nits versus just 500 nits for the previous mini. It can also manage 1-nit minimum brightness so as not to sear your retinas in a dark room. There will also be a nano-textured matte display option. The display experience on the new mini should be much more in line with what we’ve come to expect from Apple’s Pro-level devices. The 2-nanometer A20 Pro chip was a noticeable upgrade in the iPhone 18 Pro, and it will be even more significant in this tablet. The previous model had a 3-nanometer A17 Pro chip, which was already a year old when it appeared in the iPad mini. In the iPhone 18 Pro, we found the A20 Pro significantly improved graphics performance thanks in part to a 50 percent increase in memory bandwidth.
document fetched 2026-10-27 02:55 · canonical https://arstechnica.com/apple/2026/10/apple-reveals-updated-ipad-mini-with-a-bigger-oled-screen-for-700