OLED iPad mini Arrives at $699 With A20 Pro Chip and IP67 Water Resistance

$699. That is the starting price of the OLED iPad mini Apple announced on Monday, October 26, two days before its "Pro and Tell" event. The money buys an 8.5 inch OLED screen, the A20 Pro chip that debuted in the iPhone 18 Pro, and, for the first time on an iPad mini, an IP67 rating for water and dust. According to Apple's newsroom, preorders open Wednesday, October 28, and the tablet arrives in stores and at customers' doors on Friday, November 6.

Apple calls it the biggest update the iPad mini has ever received. Here is what the figures say, and what they leave out.

The new iPad mini in 12 figures

• $699: starting price for the 128GB Wi-Fi model.
• $849: starting price for the Wi-Fi and cellular model.
• $649: education price for the Wi-Fi model.
• 8.5 inches: screen size, up from 8.3 inches, in the same footprint.
• 24%: how much thinner the bezels are, per Apple.
• 1,200 nits: peak brightness, which Apple says is more than double the last model.
• 2,000,000:1: the panel's contrast ratio.
• 5.4 mm: thickness, thinner and lighter than before.
• 60%: Apple's claimed gain in multithreaded CPU performance.
• 4.5x: Apple's claimed gain in AI performance over the previous generation.
• IP67: water and dust rating, tested to 1 meter for 30 minutes.
• 36: countries and regions where preorders open on day one, the US among them.

A $200 step up from the 2024 model

The previous iPad mini, built around the A17 Pro chip, launched in October 2024 at $499. The new model starts $200 higher with the same 128GB of base storage. Apple gave no reason for the increase. Storage now runs to 512GB, and the color choice is narrow: a new midnight finish or starlight.

Accessories push the total up fast. Apple lists the Apple Pencil Pro at $129, the USB-C Apple Pencil at $79 and a new TechWoven Smart Folio at $79. A cellular model with a Pencil Pro and the folio comes to $1,057 before tax or AppleCare.

Buyers who prefer to spread the cost can pay $58.25 a month over 12 months for the Wi-Fi model with Apple Card, or $14.99 a month through Apple's 36 month Upgrade lease.

What 1,200 nits and OLED change on a small screen

The old mini used an LCD panel. OLED lights each pixel on its own, so dark scenes look properly black and the 2,000,000:1 contrast figure becomes believable. Apple rates full screen brightness at 600 nits for both SDR and HDR content, and the screen can dim to 1 nit for reading in a dark room. An optional nano texture glass, previously offered on the iPad Pro, cuts glare outdoors.

Sound gets a rethink too. Apple says woofers now work through the display itself, with tweeters tucked between the glass and the aluminum body. That sealed design is part of how the tablet earns its IP67 rating. Apple's fine print adds that the rating can weaken with normal wear and that liquid damage is not covered under warranty, so the tablet is splash proof, not pool proof.

Reading Apple's speed claims carefully

The A20 Pro is made on a 2 nanometer process and pairs a 6 core CPU with a 7 core GPU that has a Neural Accelerator in every core. Apple claims up to 60% faster multithreaded work, up to 2.7x faster graphics and up to 4.5x faster AI tasks. The press release does not name the baseline for every number, and it lists neither RAM nor battery life. Those gaps matter, and independent reviews will fill them.

Connectivity moves forward as well. Apple's N1 chip brings Wi-Fi 7, Bluetooth 6 and Thread, while cellular models use the C2 modem, which Apple says delivers up to 50% faster data speeds.

The tablet ships with iPadOS 27. Its new Siri, still labeled beta in iPadOS 27.2, can draw on personal context and what is on screen, in English, French, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese and Spanish. It is not available in the EU. Apple also notes that some server side features have daily usage limits, with expanded access to be sold for a fee later.

How the mini fits Apple's crowded fall

The tablet is one piece of a long run of releases. Apple has new products lined up for several straight Fridays, and Wednesday's event is widely expected to bring the first touchscreen MacBook Pro. It also lands while Apple's $1,999 foldable deals with cracked screen reports from early buyers, which makes a $699 small tablet look like the simpler way to get a pocketable big screen. More launches are tracked on our gadgets page.

One practical note before Wednesday: the nano texture glass and cellular radio are choices you make at checkout and cannot add later, so decide on both before preorders open on October 28.