The redesigned $499 iPad mini finally catches up with the times

After years of being stuck with the same look and features, Apple's iPad mini will finally get a major redesign akin to last year's iPad Air update, the company announced today. The tablet's screen size gets a bump from 7.9 to 8.3 inches and includes a new A15 Bionic processor that Apple says is "up to 80% faster" than the A12 chip in the old iPad mini 5. But the redesign also comes with a price hike—the new iPad mini starts at $499 for a Wi-Fi model with 64GB of storage, $100 more than the previous model.

Like other recent iPads and iPhones, the iPad mini drops the home button to make more room on the front of the device for a larger, almost edge-to-edge screen. However, the device does not feature Face ID like the iPad Pro. Rather, it follows the 2020 iPad Air in featuring a TouchID fingerprint reader on the power button for authentication. It also leaves behind Apple's long-standing proprietary Lightning port in favor of the industry-standard USB-C—a change that also came to other recent iPad redesigns. The flat edges of the tablet bring the new mini's design in line with the iPad Air 4 and post-2018 iPad Pros. The design also enables Apple Pencil 2 compatibility.

Internally, the A15 chip combines a six-core CPU (that's two high-performance cores and four low-power efficiency cores) that Apple says is 40% faster than the A12 and a 5-core GPU that the company says is 80% faster than the A12. Both the rear and front-facing cameras get significant upgrades—the 8MP rear camera in the mini 5 is bumped up to 12MP in the new model, and the front-facing camera gets a 12MP resolution bump and support for the face-and-body-tracking "Center Stage" feature from the 2021 iPad Pros. Support for 5G and Wi-Fi 6 round out the connectivity features.

Like the iPad Air 4, the new iPad mini comes in a range of pastel-y color finishes: space gray, purple, pink, and "starlight," with redesigned $59 Smart Folio covers that come in "black, white, dark cherry, English lavender, and electric orange" (Apple's nomenclature, not ours).

The new iPad mini will be available for preorder today and will be available on September 24. The Wi-Fi + Cellular model starts at $649 for 64GB, and Apple will also offer a 256GB upgrade option.

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Listing image by Apple