Unlike the first six models in the series, which were labelled by generation, the last two have been explicitly defined on Apple’s website by their chip–so this is officially the “iPad mini (A20 Pro).”
With the exception of the very expensive Pro models at the top of the range, iPads in general tend to be bought by customers more interested in consuming media than churning through difficult processing tasks. The chip upgrade is therefore more a matter of future-proofing the new mini to be able to manage everyday tasks several years from now. iPad owners, to Apple’s chagrin, tend to hold on to them for a long time.
Those casual users may be prompted to make an early upgrade by similarly major upgrades to the mini’s screen. Movies and TV shows should look better on this hardware, which is slightly larger as well as promising substantially better picture quality.
The A17 Pro iPad mini had an 8.3-inch “Liquid Retina” LED screen with a resolution of 2266 x 1488 and a maximum brightness of 500 nits. The A20 Pro mode improves on those specs in every way, coming in at 8.5 inches, a “Super Retina XDR” branding, OLED technology, and a resolution of 2316 x 1512 (that’s the same sharpness, just covering a larger area). As for brightness, the new mini is capable of a maximum standard brightness of 600 nits, and can go all the way up to 1,200 nits peak brightness on HDR content.
OLED is the headline upgrade there. The technology delivers deeper blacks than LED, richer and crisper colors, and better handling of HDR content. On top of that, the new mini brings the option to add nano-texture glass to the display, something which was previously restricted (at least in Apple’s tablet range) to the iPad Pro. It isn’t offered on the current iPad Air or standard iPad. it’s only available on the 256GB and 512GB models, and costs an additional $100.
Aside from the chip and screen, the mini’s third major upgrade is its design. Despite the inclusion of a larger screen its length and width are virtually identical to the previous model (they’ve actually shrunk a tiny bit, from 195.4 x 134.8 mm to 195.3 x 132.6 mm), but the device is a lot thinner (from 6.3 mm down to 5.4 mm) and significantly lighter (from 0.65 pounds/293g down to 0.56 pounds/255g). In a nutshell, the mini is now more portable than ever.
