Apple has just announced a new iPad Mini in a somewhat unremarkable press release. It's the first upgrade for Apple's smallest tablet since 2021. The new mini starts at $499. It's available to pre-order now and goes on sale next Wednesday.

The new Mini is primarily a technical innovation: It has a new A17 Pro chip, which, according to Apple, has a 30 percent faster CPU, a 25 percent faster GPU and a Neural Engine that is twice as fast the previous model. The device also supports the new Apple Pencil Pro, which is a nice touch for the mini artists out there, and has 128GB of storage instead of 64GB in the base model. (These AI models need as much space as possible.) The Wi-Fi 6E chip is faster, the USB-C port is faster, everything about the iPad Mini is the same as before, only this time faster.

The only real design change with the new Mini is the colors. Apple has become more colorful in many of its products this year, with the Mini available in new purple and blue models. However, in photos they look more muted than vibrant. So don't expect the iPhone 16's stunning new colors.

The last generation Mini was a pretty big overhaul, with a new design and a USB-C port, as well as a number of technical improvements. Given that this was the first redesign since the original Mini in 2012, it's not particularly surprising that this Mini looks very similar to the last Mini. The big spec increase also makes sense: Since Apple is fully committed to AI and Apple Intelligence, it needs all the power it can get on virtually every device in its lineup. Apple also mentioned in its release that the new device can run hardware-accelerated ray tracing, which should make some high-end games look better, but it's clearly an AI-focused upgrade.

The Mini has always been something of an oddity in Apple's tablet lineup, much like the iPhone SE: there are fans who love it for its smaller size, but Apple has always hinted that there aren't that many of those fans. Yes, pilots love their iPad Minis, but it seems clear that most people prefer the big screen to the small one.

Apple updated the rest of the iPad lineup earlier this year, adding the super-powerful M4 chip to the Air, redesigning the Pro and lowering the price of the base model to $349. The Mini, as it has in the past, looked like an odd tablet, leading some people to wonder whether Apple actually planned to continue making the Mini. But it seems Apple is content to keep the Mini on a slightly different update cadence than the rest of its tablets.