Apple iPad Mini (7th generation) Rumors about release date, price and specifications

The iPad mini was given a new lease of life with the release of the sixth-generation tablet in 2021, offering a substantial upgrade over what came before it.

In addition to a beefed-up 8.3-inch screen in the same form factor as its older sibling, the iPad mini 6 features a refined design similar to that of the iPad Air and iPad Pro, along with A15 Bionic performance and support for the second generation Apple pencil.

It’s a great tablet, but the upcoming seventh generation will likely be a smaller update. Here’s everything you need to know about the possible release date, pricing and key specs.

When will the new iPad mini be released?

Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman, known for his reliable Apple insights, suggests in a Bloomberg article that new iPads will likely debut around the week of May 6. However, this only applies to the iPad Air and the iPad Pro.

Gurman says Apple is working on a new iPad mini, but it “won’t be coming until the end of this year at the earliest.” That opens up the possibility of it even being delayed until 2025. The same rough release window is also predicted for a new version of the regular iPad.

For context, this is when the last few generations launched:

• iPad mini 6: September 2021
• iPad mini 5: March 2019
• iPad mini 4: September 2015

There’s no real pattern to the release schedule, so it could theoretically arrive at any time.

How much will the new iPad mini cost?

The iPad mini used to be one of the more affordable options in Apple’s tablet lineup, but that all changed with the iPad mini 6. Here’s how much it cost at launch:

• iPad mini 6 (Wi-Fi, 64GB) – £479 / $499
• iPad mini 6 (Wi-Fi, 256GB) – £619 / $649
• iPad mini 6 (Wi-Fi + Cellular, 64GB) – £619 / $649
• iPad mini 6 (WiFi + Cellular, 256GB) – £759 / $799

Apple is unlikely to drop prices closer to the iPad mini 5’s $399/£399 anytime soon. But further price increases are also unlikely, especially if the upgrades are only minor.

However, it’s possible that prices in the UK will be reduced to match US figures, as we’ve seen with some other Apple products – so $499/£499, down from $499/£569.

What specifications and features will the new iPad mini have?

There are a lot of leaks and rumors about what to expect from the iPad mini 7. We expect the new iPad mini to have a more impressive processor, along with some minor internal improvements.

Design

With such a dramatic redesign of the sixth-generation iPad mini, it’s unlikely that Apple will make any noticeable design changes to the next-generation tablet – especially when you consider that, apart from the entry-level iPad, all iPhones and iPads share the same design. language.

That’s not to say we wouldn’t like to see changes made to the small-screen tablet. While the 8.3-inch iPad mini 6 offers a much-improved design with thin bezels, a lightweight form factor and the jump to USB-C, there’s one major omission: a smart connector.

The smart connector is available on the iPad Air and both variants of iPad Pro and provides a way to connect Apple’s superior Magic Keyboard to turn the iPad into something akin to a traditional laptop, but is not present on the iPad mini 6. That leaves the small-screen tablet at a disadvantage compared to the virtually identical iPad Air.

So while this hasn’t been confirmed yet, we’d love to see a smart connector (and accompanying Magic Keyboard) on the iPad mini 7.

The iPad mini is currently available in space gray, pink, purple and starlight. It’s likely that it will carry over some of the colors introduced with the 2021 iPad Air redesign, such as silver, rose gold, green and sky blue.

With the bold color choices of the 10th generation iPad, the iPad mini may see a new palette. However, the introduction of light colors on the iPhone 15 creates uncertainty about the direction Apple is choosing for the color options of the iPad mini.

Display

According to a Korean forum post (shared on Twitter by @FronTron), the iPad mini’s 8.3-inch screen will be upgraded with 120Hz ProMotion support.

We know what you’re thinking: that makes absolutely no sense if it’s a standard iPad mini and not an iPad mini Pro, and I tend to agree. ProMotion is certainly a feature Apple associates with Pro-level products, appearing on the iPad Pro, iPhone 13 Pro and MacBook Pro, so introducing it to a non-pro iPad would muddy the waters.

However, it all comes down to one problem: jelly scrolling. Jelly scrolling was a hot topic at the launch of the iPad mini 6, with some users noticing a slight delay in the screen refresh rate while scrolling, causing a shaky effect not unlike that of jelly.

Contrary to popular belief, this is normal behavior for LCD screens. LCD panels are refreshed line by line, and there is a slight delay between when the lines at the top and bottom are refreshed.

However, it’s more noticeable on the iPad mini 6 than on most other small LCD displays, and while it hasn’t been officially recognized by Apple, it’s something that many users have noticed – including this writer. It’s also something that would be virtually unnoticeable to the naked eye if the refresh rate were increased from 60Hz to 120Hz.

However, analyst Ross Young suggested this would not happen in June 2022:

We think it’s also possible that Apple could push an interim 90Hz display to the small-screen tablet, but that’s just speculation at this stage. And there likely won’t be any changes to the current 8.3-inch screen size.

As a side note, Apple is also reportedly developing an iPad with a foldable display, but it’s unlikely to be implemented in this model.

Performance

It’s safe to assume that the next iPad mini will be more powerful than the current tablet, but it’s currently unclear which chipset it will contain.

Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman said in April 2024 that “the iPad mini update won’t include much more than a processor upgrade.” In January 2022, Ming-Chi Kuo also claimed that the new processor will be “the main selling point”, suggesting little else will change on the next-generation tablet.

At the time, Kuo did not specify the processor, but it is now expected to feature the A16 chip, similar to the one in the iPhone 14 Pro and iPhone 15 models. The rumor comes via the same Korean forum post mentioned above, which suggests that Apple is working on an iPad mini with the same A15 Bionic as the existing iPad mini, but with a higher clock speed of 3.23 GHz.

You see, while the iPad mini has the same A15 Bionic as the iPhone 13 series, it has a lower clock speed – 2.9 GHz versus 3.2 GHz – and that results in a slight drop in performance when compared side-by-side .

The new A15 Bionic’s increased clock speed could offer a performance boost over the existing iPad mini without Apple having to produce more of its (presumably more complex) next-generation chipset. That will reportedly be paired with the same 4GB of RAM and 64GB of storage as the current model.

However, it would be wise for Apple to upgrade it to at least 8GB/128GB, given the challenge of higher quality cameras and software. Likewise, increasing the maximum storage to 512GB would make sense, especially if the base storage goes to 128GB.

The original post mentions an iPad mini Pro, not the seventh-generation tablet, so the above could apply to an interim Pro-focused iPad mini released sometime between now and the release of the iPad mini 7. It could also just be a rumor, so take this with a grain of salt.

Elsewhere, we’re also hoping for improvements to the cameras, battery life and charging speeds, but there are no rumors of that so far.

We will update this article as more is revealed. In the meantime, check out our guides to the best iPads and best tablets.