New iPad Mini With Four Upgrades Reportedly Launching by October

[darkblu]

Ok, serious question: Anyone have a good answer as to why the iPad Mini has not moved over to M series chips yet?
I have the A17 and it’s perfectly fine, but…
Nonetheless, the Mini is the best iPad I’ve ever had.

If you paid attention to the minis across the generations you’d notice they never used top-SKU SoCs for the respective gen. Even iPhones have had better SoCs. I’d venture to guess minis don’t sport the best power-handling envelopes of the iPad bunch. Or apple intentionally nerfed them. Who knows.

 

[Leobreaker]

120hz OLED with an M4 chip would be an amazing ultra-portable computer. I'd use it for presentations, then just plug into my desktop dock and use it as a main computer. It would simply be too good.

 

[krakenrelease]

This is so depressing to me.
OLED, but only 60hz?

I can't even think of any new OLED products being sold in 2026 that aren't 120hz.

Are there any?

(probably some cheap fitness tracker or something maybe?)

I briefly had a 60hz OLED TV, 11 years ago, in 2015 (sent it back after a week)

OLED brings other improvements. Deeper blacks and better battery life. You know what else is still 60Hz? Almost all business monitors.

 

[mlayer]

OLED brings other improvements. Deeper blacks and better battery life. You know what else is still 60Hz? Almost all business monitors.

It's funny, I have three screens in my life that are ProMotion or higher than 60 Hz: my iPhone Air, my iMac Pro, and my 2017 iPad Pro, which is slow enough in 2026 that it doesn't feel like ProMotion anymore. The dozen or so other screens I regularly look at are only 60 Hz. I'm not throwing any of them out.

Anyway, the "iPad mini Pro" remains elusive.

 

[Lioness~]

Nothing that feels like worth to upgrade too for me, now or anywhere soon.
My A17pro will be fine for a coming year, or so.
I might upgrade to next one?

It’s an iPad mini, a scrolling device - at least for me.

 

[Logamaniac]

OLED brings other improvements. Deeper blacks and better battery life. You know what else is still 60Hz? Almost all business monitors.

Are there really that many 60hz oled business monitors out there in business?

 

[rovex]

if it’s 60hz I’m hoping the battery life will be a huge upgrade.

 

[Eraser112]

I still bet on fixed 90Hz.

 

[dbc34]

are they really still going to handicap it with 60hz?

So disappointing. They could really push this.

 

[Sosab123]

Just got a 17 Mini for $389. Mainly for using around the house. So my iPad pro can stay on its pedestal controlling my home entertainment setup and for drawing and my phone in my pocket. Having used OLED and Mini-LED, I feel like I wont be missing out on much. Not much content out there really takes advantage of OLED/FALD. OLED is much smoother though. Even @ 60Hz. Like for example, ON PC, my daily driver video game, rarely has a black screen. So if I transition from my Mini LED To OLED or vice versa cant tell difference.

For awhile I used a professional 4k 60HZ J-OLED panel, back in 2023~. It was the only tech with normal RGB subpixel layout. I used it next to a 144Hz Mini-LED and even for 60Hz it was darn smooth.

If this released in 2025 i'd probably bought it but a $389 7 Mini is hard to pass up knowing the 8 Mini is probably going to be north of $600. For me, that's a bit steep for something to use for casual media use. $389 got me something reasonable.

Knowing the Mini is going to last me easily till 2028~ maybe longer since I am not exactly dependent on A.I I will be in no rush to get this. Another one of those things I wouldve bought from Apple they just released it too late.

Though down side to owning a Mini and 13" Pro is now anything in-between is pointless. But its the best of both worlds imho.

 

[Macalway]

Just using Preview or another document reader, and nothing else, makes for a great e-reader. Battery life is extended this way, quite a bit.

Perhaps OLED will help with power and weight. If not, it will be a step backward for my usage. Sometimes it's not about progress. But these are multi-use devices, obviously.

 

[brewcitywi]

I've never had an iPad mini, it looks very cool. We use iPads as our POS. It would be interesting to switch to Minis someday. Although, we'd probably not need OLED panels!

 

[turbineseaplane]

OLED brings other improvements. Deeper blacks and better battery life. You know what else is still 60Hz? Almost all business monitors.

Business monitors are 60hz OLED?

That was the question

 

[rensuchan]

Though down side to owning a Mini and 13" Pro is now anything in-between is pointless. But its the best of both worlds imho.

I'm in this boat too. It's basically... small = phone, medium = mini, large = 13" pro. Nothing inbetween makes sense for me now lol.

 

[alsuwaidi]

I prefer if the make official magic keyboard for iPad mini

 

[Crow_Servo]

Thank you. I knew I was forgetting some product.

How sad that the iPad Mini will be getting an "e" experience, despite being not inexpensive.

Hopefully it gets a higher refresh rate than the rumors report. If not, yes, it would be pretty disappointing.

 

[Pezimak]

Hmm will it see a 200 to 200 price increase though?

 

[gummybear2026]

I still bet on fixed 90Hz.

Your bet will be a looser. 60hz is staying for the iPad Mini.

 

[jdawgnoonan]

I am in the camp that would choose the 120 hz over OLED any day. I say that having an M5 iPad Pro and comparing it to my Mini.

 

[Johnnyponken]

here’s what I think. This year we get the oled. Next year we get the 120hz and upgraded battery-tech. Apple sure loves to withhold features as long as they can.

 

[Jovijoker]

are they really still going to handicap it with 60hz?

Your comment totally made my day. Thanks! 💀😅💯

 

[Crow_Servo]

here’s what I think. This year we get the oled. Next year we get the 120hz and upgraded battery-tech. Apple sure loves to withhold features as long as they can.

That’s mighty optimistic to think they’d release another new Mini next year. More likely a two to three year gap.

Hopefully we get ProMotion this year, instead of 2028/2029.

 

[Neepman]

I wouldn’t want to buy an iPad w/o FaceID anymore.
Perhaps by them time the markets have crashed and memory prices are down again, it will come to the Mini, too

I certainly wont if this really is an October release as if so these are already in production and the bills of materials costs long sorted out

 

[turbineseaplane]

Given what happens to so many Apple products with Mini in the name, I guess we should just be happy it’s not getting canceled.

Then again the six and the seven with those dreadful screens have been dead to me already.

 

[praetorian909]

Geezus, it’s just a slimmer Newton with a color screen.

“Eat up Martha”