Apple launches faster new iPad mini with double storage for $799

Apple has redesigned its smallest iPad to cater for the AI boom, with a faster chip, new colours and double the minimum storage to 128GB for the same price as the previous model.

Apple's new iPad Mini now supports Apple Pencil Pro.

Apple has redesigned its smallest iPad to cater for the artificial intelligence boom, featuring a faster chip and neural engine as well as new colours.

The tech titan has also doubled the minimum amount of storage to 128GB, while maintaining the same price – from $799.

This follows Apple cutting the price of its new iPhones by as much as $100 and pausing hikes across is new Apple Watch Series 10 and AirPod’s range.

The new iPad mini, will feature a A17 Pro chip – the same used in the iPhone 15 Pro, which it says delivers a “huge performance boost for even the most demanding tasks”, including power-hungry AI workloads, with its neural engine two-times faster than the previous generation.

Apple's new iPad mini in blue – one of the new colours.

Apple’s vice president of worldwide product marketing Bob Borchers said the A17 Pro chip would also deliver faster connectivity as well as support for the Apple Pencil Pro, released earlier this year.

“The new iPad mini delivers the full iPad experience in our most portable design at an incredible value,” he said.

Under the hood, the new iPad mini features a 6-core CPU made up of two performance cores and four efficiency cores which Apple says delivers a 30 per cent boost in CPU performance. Graphics performance has also been improved, with a 5-core GPU, which Apple says delivers a 25 per cent jump over the previous generation.

Australians have to wait until December for the release of the AI features, dubbed Apple Intelligence, which includes new writing tools to “refine words” and summarise text, an image wand to transform rough sketches into polished images and a redesigned voice assistant Siri.

The new iPad mini with Apple Intelligence will be available in Australia in December.

Apple says people will be able to communicate with Siri more naturally, with the AI assistant able to understand voice prompts, even if a user stumbles over their words.

OpenAI’s ChatGPT will also be integrated into iPadOS 18. Apple says privacy protections are built-in, so a user’s IP address is obscured and “OpenAI won’t store requests”.

“Users can access ChatGPT for free without creating an account,” Apple said.

The new iPad mini supports Wi-Fi 6E, which delivers up to twice the performance of the previous generation, so users can download files, play games online, and stream movies even faster. Apple says the USB-C port is now up to two-times faster than the previous generation, with data transfers up to 10Gbps.

Apple says the new iPad mini is more sustainable, as the company races to achieve its 2030 carbon neutral goals, using 100 per cent recycled aluminium in the enclosure and fully-recycled rare earth elements in all magnets, gold plating and tin soldering in multiple printed circuit boards.

The iPad mini, which comes in blue, purple, starlight, and space grey, is available for pre-order now and general availability on October 23.

Originally published as Apple launches faster new iPad mini with double storage for $799