Apple has introduced a new iPad mini which features a powerful new A17 Pro chip which enables support for Apple Intelligence as well as a USB-C port which replaces the Lightning port. It also features support for Apple Pencil Pro, and a faster GPU which allows it to support ray tracing in gaming. It has also received a storage bump, with the base model starting at 128GB for $499.

The A17 Pro chip in iPad mini provides considerable performance and efficiency improvements over the previous A15 Bionic chip. The 6-core CPU features two performance and four efficiency cores, and brings about a 30 percent improvement in CPU performance. The GPU features a 5-core architecture and improves performance by 25 percent. The GPU also features support for ray tracing, Dynamic Caching and hardware-accelerated mesh shading.

iPad mini Apple Intelligence Writing Tool

Thanks to the faster 3nm A17 Pro chip support, iPad mini will support Apple Intelligence features with iPadOS 18.1 update. This will include the following:

  • Writing Tools to help users write content, summarize it, or proofread it.
  • Improved Siri features a new design and can better understand conversations, including stumbles as well as context between requests. Users can also type to use Siri.
  • Memories and Clean Up come to Photos app. Memories lets users create memories using their photos and videos using text descriptions, while Clean Up lets users hide unwanted objects from the background of their photos.

Features such as Image Playground, Image Wand, Genmoji, personal context and onscreen awareness for Siri, as well as ChatGPT support will be released over the coming months.

Other improvements in the new iPad mini include the following:

  • Apple Pencil Pro support which means that improved Pencil experiences are available, including hover.
  • WiFi 6E and Bluetooth 5.3 connectivity
  • Smart HDR 4 and new True Tone flash for camera.
  • USB-C port supports data transfers up to 10Gbps.
  • eSIM support in all cellular models.

Customers can pre-order the new iPad mini starting today in 29 countries and regions around the world, in blue, purple, starlight and space gray colors. The price starts from $499 for WiFi models, while WiFi + Cellular models start from $649. Storage options include 128GB, 256GB and 512GB.

A new Smart Folio is also available for $59 in charcoal gray, light violet, denim, and sage colors.

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