Hey John Ternus, if you’re reading this, we love you. Take a break. It’s been 2 months in and this is your third product drop, with one more just day after tomorrow. You need rest, we need rest too. An iPad mini just after you announced the iPhone Duo feels kind of criminal, days after the embargo on reviews for the iPhone Duo lifts too. It’s like you’re telling people that can’t afford the Duo that there’s a cheaper alternative. And it already works with the Apple Pencil out of the box!
The new iPad mini starts at $699, a little over a third of the iPhone Duo’s $1,999 asking price, and it gives you an 8.5-inch OLED screen against the Duo’s 7.6-inch inner display. Apple calls it the biggest update in the mini’s history, and the spec sheet backs that up. There’s the A20 Pro chip from the iPhone 18 Pro, a body just 0.21 inches (5.4mm) thin, and an IP67 rating that makes it the first water-resistant iPad ever. It supports both the Apple Pencil Pro and the USB-C Apple Pencil today, while the Duo’s Pencil support is still listed as coming later this year. Pre-orders open October 28, and the mini lands in stores November 6.
Designer: Apple
A bigger OLED canvas than the Duo’s, minus the 120Hz
Apple stretched the screen from 8.3 to 8.5 inches by shaving the bezels down 24 percent, so you get more display without the tablet growing in your hand. It’s an OLED panel now, which means every pixel lights itself and true blacks finally show up for movie night. Peak brightness hits 1,200 nits, more than double the old mini, with 600 nits across the full screen and a 2,000,000:1 contrast ratio. At the other end, it dims all the way down to a single nit. That’s perfect for reading in bed without waking your partner, or for pilots checking flight charts in a dark cockpit, a crowd that has loved the mini for years.
A nano-texture glass option is on the menu too, but only on the 256GB and 512GB models, and a fully loaded cellular unit with it runs $1,249. The Duo flexes back on this one, since its 7.6-inch inner screen gets nano-texture as standard plus ProMotion at up to 120Hz. The mini stays at 60Hz. That means scrolling will feel exactly like it did on the 2024 model, which stings a little on a screen this good. It’s hard to read it as anything other than Apple keeping its two small-screen darlings from stepping on each other’s toes.
IP67 sealing, an Acoustic Display, and a 9-ounce body
The new mini is 0.21 inches (5.4mm) thin and weighs 9 ounces (255 grams) in Wi-Fi trim, down from 0.25 inches and 10.3 ounces last time. You’ll feel that 1.3-ounce diet about 40 minutes into a one-handed reading session. More importantly, it’s the first iPad ever rated IP67, good for a dunk of up to about 3.3 feet (1 meter) for 30 minutes. Poolside Kindle loyalists, you officially have competition. Touch ID still lives in the top button, USB-C stays at the bottom, and the enclosure uses 100 percent recycled aluminum.
Waterproofing a tablet gets tricky when it has speaker grilles, because grilles are basically tiny doorways for water. Apple’s fix is something it calls the Acoustic Display. Custom woofers work through the screen itself for punchier bass and more volume, while tweeters hide in the seam between the glass and the aluminum frame. The whole system sits in a sealed enclosure, which Apple credits for helping the mini earn its IP67 rating. Ten years after the iPhone 7 ditched the headphone jack and became the first IP67 iPhone, Apple’s war on openings has finally reached the iPad, and the mini’s edges look cleaner for it.
A20 Pro power, a binned chip, and Apple’s new price ladder
Under the hood sits the A20 Pro, built on a 2-nanometer process with a 7-core GPU that packs Neural Accelerators in every core. Apple claims up to 4.5 times faster AI performance and up to 2.7 times faster graphics than the previous mini, plenty for running a local AI model or a heavy Procreate Dreams project. There’s a catch, though. The 128GB and 256GB models get a binned chip (one with a core switched off), running a 5-core CPU and a single 16-core Neural Engine. Only the 512GB model matches the Duo’s full setup, with a 6-core CPU and a dual Neural Engine packing 32 cores.
Apple’s lineup now has a very clear price ladder for anyone who wants a small screen and a Pencil. The $1,999 Duo is the magic trick, and the iPhone Duo’s open-and-close animation alone has people reaching for their wallets. The $699 mini is the practical buy, with a bigger screen, full Apple Pencil Pro support, and a landscape front camera that finally makes video calls feel natural. Pre-orders open October 28 on Apple’s iPad mini page, with deliveries starting November 6 in midnight and starlight. If the Duo is a fold-out passport to the future, the mini is the paperback you’ll actually take everywhere.