Look, I'm not even mad.
Apple's new iPad mini, now in its seventh generation, looks the same as the last one, and while it brings a number of small upgrades across the board, none of them will knock you off your feet.
It's hard to blame Apple for not doing more, though. Even though it launched three years ago, the 6th generation iPad mini was a massive upgrade that brought a completely new design, with a larger display, new Touch ID, and a new camera, among other improvements. The 7th generation iPad mini merely builds on that same design, but brings a new chip, more starting storage, and compatibility with Apple's (yet unreleased) Apple Intelligence features.
Apple iPad mini 7 price
The price for the Apple iPad mini 7 is the same as before, starting at $499 for the Wi-Fi version with 128GB of RAM, and $649 for the Wi-Fi + Cellular variant.
If you want 256GB of storage, you'll have to add $100 to the starting price, and if you want to max it out at 512GB of storage, that'll cost you another $200 compared to the starting price. You can also add the Apple Pencil Pro to the mix for $129, and Apple's Smart Folio cover will cost you an additional $59.
Apple iPad mini 7 design
You'll need a keen eye to notice the differences between the iPad mini 7 and the previous one, but they do exist. The choice of colors is now Space Gray, Blue, Purple (lighter than before), and Starlight. The Pink variant is no longer available. Apple sent me a Starlight-colored unit, so I can't say how the new colors look in person. I did get the Smart Folio in Sage, which to my eyes appeared more like lime, and I liked the color a lot.
There's another minor difference here: The previous version had an "iPad" inscription on the back, whereas the one on the new one says "iPad mini." Nice if you, like me, are a fan of the iPad mini.
Other than these details, no one will be able to tell that you have the brand new iPad mini. Sorry.
Apple iPad mini 7 specs
The new iPad mini is powered by Apple's A17 Pro chip (the same one that powers the iPhone 15 Pro), which gives it some gaming-related features like hardware-accelerated ray tracing, and enables (upcoming) AI features. Starting storage is 128GB, and you can now get the iPad mini with 512GB of storage, which wasn't available until now. There are also indications that the new iPad mini has 8GB of RAM, which doubles the previous model's 4GB of RAM.
Other tidbits include faster USB-C data transfer, Bluetooth 5.3 support, and Wi-FI 6E connectivity — all meaningful upgrades, though most users probably won't notice much of a difference. The cameras — a 12-megapixel shooter on the back, and a 12-megapixel ultra-wide camera on the front — are mostly the same as before, with the most notable upgrades being Smart HDR 4 support.
The big takeaways here are the big RAM increase and 128GB of starting storage, which is a huge upgrade as 64GB (the starting storage on the previous generation) was just cutting it way too close for comfort if you have a couple of games installed.
The new chip is a big improvement over the previous version's A15 Bionic, but it's a pity that the new iPad mini doesn't have Apple's latest mobile processor, the A18 Pro which is found in the new iPhone 16 Pro. The company probably decided to cut costs on this one, but it does make the new iPad mini just a little less future-proof.
I tested my unit with a combination of news apps, Chrome, Books, X, and Blizzard's Hearthstone. Everything felt sufficiently fast but don't expect iPad Pro performance; this is still a phone chip running things, and even a fairly simple game such as Hearthstone will push it pretty hard on high settings.
Apple iPad mini 7 battery life
I didn't have the iPad mini 7 long enough to properly test battery life, but Apple rates it the same as before (19.3 Wh battery, up to 10 hours of surfing on Wi-Fi, and up to nine hours of surfing on cellular), and I didn't notice much of a difference compared to the previous version.
For a day, I used the iPad mini as a secondary display, next to my 16-inch M1 MacBook Pro, and it did struggle to keep up. But in more typical usage — which for me is light reading and a bit of gaming, mostly at home — battery life was never an issue.
Apple iPad mini AI support
Apple made its life incredibly complicated with the belated launch of Apple Intelligence. The company's most important product, the new iPhone 16, launched without it. As for the iPad mini, it will launch at the same time as iOS 18.1 which brings some AI features, but it wasn't available at testing time.
To complicate matters further, Apple Intelligence isn't currently available in Europe and China, and it won't be arriving there until 2025 (the UK is the exception here; Apple says AI is arriving there in December). Being in Europe, I have no access to it (unless I go through a number of convoluted steps to enable it), and it would be unfair to test a new device running beta software.
This means that all I can say about AI is that this is the first and currently only iPad mini that supports it, and that it is coming soon (in the U.S.). Features will include Writing Tools, which can rewrite, proofread, and summarize your texts, a smarter Siri, Clean Up tool for photos, Genmoji, and integrated ChatGPT, among other features.
Apple iPad mini Pencil Pro support
The iPad mini 7 supports Apple Pencil Pro, with all the bells and whistles such as hover and squeeze. I don't have a need for Apple Pencil, and it seems to me that a heavy user would also prefer a larger canvas to draw on, so an iPad Pro would be a better option. Furthermore, the asking price of $129 for the Pencil Pro is a bit steep when compared to the $499 price of the entry-level iPad mini.
Still, there's absolutely nothing wrong with this feature. I tested the Pencil Pro with the new mini, and it worked as advertised, and it's nice to have the option to use the company's best Pencil together with its smallest tablet.
Is the iPad mini 7 worth getting?
Absolutely.
If you're new to the iPad, and you want the most compact one around (or any compact tablet), the new iPad mini 7 is the best choice. If you already rock the iPad mini 5th generation or earlier, it's also a no brainer; the new one looks better and is a lot more powerful. And if you own the previous, 6th generation iPad mini, it could also be worth upgrading, but if it's still fast enough for you and you don't care much about the AI features, you'll be OK if you sit this one out.