It’s been more than two years since Apple last launched an iPad Mini. The people want to know: Where is the next one?
The short answer is that we don’t know, at least not for certain. But there has been plenty of reporting and rumor-mongering about the potential 7th-generation iPad Mini over the last year or so. Let’s dig in and find out when we can expect to see the next tiny iPad, what might be better about it, and how much it might cost.
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iPad Mini 7th generation: Release date
If this article was written just a few weeks ago, this section would’ve been a lot more juicy. Instead, we can be pretty sure that the new iPad Mini isn’t launching until early 2024 at the absolute earliest.
To explain the reasoning behind that speculation, one only has to look at Apple’s recent activities. The “Scary Fast” announcement event that took place around Halloween focused entirely on Macs, despite rumors that new iPads would be announced around that time. Needless to say, they weren’t.
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Thankfully, Apple prognosticator Ming-Chi Kuo has our backs. He reported all the way back in January that he doesn’t expect the next iPad Mini to show up until the first quarter of 2024. Now that the “Scary Fast” event came and went without any iPad news to speak of, it’s probably safe to bet that he’s right.
iPad Mini 7th generation: New features
I should temper your expectations right now by saying we don’t really know what to expect from the new iPad Mini feature-wise. That’s just the way it goes with unreleased products sometimes.
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That said, Kuo has also weighed in on this, all the way back in late 2022. According to Kuo, the “main selling point” of the next iPad Mini will be a new processor. The 2021 model (Apple’s most recent iPad Mini refresh) came with an A15 Bionic chip, which at the time was the cutting-edge iPhone 13 Pro chip. Obviously, times have changed and if Apple kept up the trend of putting its in-house mobile chipset in the new iPad Mini, the new processor would most likely be the A16 Bionic that powered the iPhone 14 Pro or maybe even the brand new A17 Bionic that powers the iPhone 15 Pro.
Of those two, the A16 might be the more likely option since Apple prefers to keep the price of its iPad Mini relatively affordable. That’s the same reason why it might be unreasonable to expect one of the more powerful M-series chips that powers Mac computers in the new iPad Mini. It would be rad, but it may not be feasible.
Similarly, as nice as it would be for the new iPad Mini to have a beautiful OLED display, that might have to wait a year or two. We expect the next iPad Pro to have one in 2024, but it’s very unlikely that Apple would do the same thing for the iPad Mini in the same year, again as a reason to keep prices affordable.
iPad Mini 7th generation: Price
Speaking of prices, this is one area where all we can do is speculate.
For context, the 2021 iPad Mini started at $499 for the 64GB model. You had to go all the way up to $649 to expand to 256GB of storage, with no 128GB model at all. That $499 starting price was $100 higher than the previous iPad Mini, but unless there are some seriously substantial new upgrades in the new one, it’s reasonable to think Apple will stay at that starting price for now. It would be great if Apple could find a way to include more onboard storage at that price, too.
But all we can do is guess and wish at this point. Until Apple confirms the new iPad Mini, there just isn’t a lot to go on. Hopefully, that happens sooner rather than later.
