Apple’s latest iPad mini looks like the compact tablet upgrade I’ve been waiting for, combining a larger OLED screen with a slimmer, lighter design and flagship performance.
However, one increasingly outdated limitation stops it from being an instant recommendation – especially now that the iPad mini carries a much more premium price tag.
The new iPad mini is close to small tablet perfection
The new iPad mini offers a pretty substantial boost over what came before it, bringing with it both the expected and the unexpected.
The highlight of the experience is, of course, the screen. The big difference with this model is the introduction of OLED tech, representing an all-round upgrade on the IPS LCD screen that came before it.
As we’ve already seen from a litany of OLED-enabled phones and tablets, the tech tends to offer much deeper blacks, more vibrant colours, better contrast and an all-round better screen experience, whether that’s scrolling through apps, playing games or catching up on a series on Netflix.
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Image Credit (Apple)
That also allows for a jump in brightness, peaking at 1200nits for HDR content and dropping to as low as 1nit for comfortable viewing in pitch-black environments. I also like that the optional nano-texture glass – similar to that of the iPhone Duo’s inner screen – is now an option, even if you have to pay extra for it.
That’s coupled with a rather unexpected screen expansion, growing from 8.3 inches to 8.5 inches, but crucially, without increasing the footprint – this is still supposed to be a small-screen tablet, after all.
Instead, Apple shrunk the bezels by 24%, which has the dual effect of also making the small-screen tablet look more premium – a good thing too, considering the increased price.
Image Credit (Apple)
Despite all this, it’s almost 1mm thinner – 5.4mm, down from 6.3mm – and it weighs just 255g, only a few grams more than Apple’s iPhone 18 Pro Max, more than ticking the right boxes for a portable tablet. It’s also the first iPad to offer any official dust and water resistance, rated at IP67.
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By most accounts then, it sounds like the perfect small-screen tablet. It has a great screen, it’s lightweight and slim, and with Apple A20 Pro power, it’ll leave the majority of Android-based tablets in the dust. There’s just one problem that I can’t get over: the inclusion of a 60Hz refresh rate.
60Hz in 2026 is a hard pill to swallow
Reading over the announcement press release earlier this week, I was only really searching for one thing: the refresh rate. Surely, I thought, with the jump to OLED, a three-generation silicon jump, a slimmer design and thinner bezels, Apple would pair the premium hardware with the 120Hz ProMotion tech found on iPhones – but that wasn’t the case.
Instead, the iPad mini continues to offer a bog-standard 60Hz refresh rate. In fact, I can’t even call it bog-standard any more, because I can’t remember the last time I saw a non-Apple tablet with 60Hz. Android slabs of all shapes, sizes and most importantly, price points, offer at least 90Hz, with more premium tablets like the Honor MagicPad 4 offering a blisteringly fast 165Hz.
Image Credit (Apple)
As I’ve said many times before, the refresh rate is a core part of the experience because it dictates just how smooth and responsive the screen looks and feels. Apple does claim that the OLED panel’s faster pixel response time reduces motion blur compared to older LCD models, but it’s still not as fast as proper 120Hz alternatives.
It makes a big difference in games, sure, but it’s felt throughout the operating system. 120Hz panels offer a cleaner, stutter-free scrolling experience with smoother animations when going between apps, and they can ramp up or down the refresh rate depending on what’s on-screen to better improve battery life.
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That might not’ve mattered to iPhone owners a few years ago with the majority of Apple’s tech still running 60Hz panels, but with all models of iPhone (barring the budget ‘e’ series) offering 120Hz ProMotion support since the iPhone 17 collection last year, more Apple users’ eyes are now tuned and used to that smoother experience. Going from that back to 60Hz could well be jarring – it has been for me and previous iPads, anyway.
No longer the truly budget tablet it once was
I think this would’ve been an easier pill to swallow had this been a few years ago – y’know, when the iPad mini was comparable in price to the entry-level iPad rather than the more premium iPad Air that the new model is closer to.
Image Credit (Apple)
Cast your mind back by 10 years, back when the iPad mini would set you back around £319/$399, compromises were much easier to accept. The tablet wasn’t in the same price league as a premium tablet, so of course you’re not going to get niceties like a high refresh rate that Apple has long designated for its top-end tech.
However, the iPad mini is no longer that same cheap tablet. Following a consistent creep-up in prices over the past four generations of mini, the new model now starts at £699/$699 with just 128GB of storage.
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That’s an increase of £380/$300 compared to the iPad mini you could buy back ten years ago, and it’s definitely no longer in that same entry-level territory. At this higher price, things like a high refresh rate become the standard, not the exception – as long as you’re not Apple, that is.
Of course, there’s the glaring problem in that the iPad Air – a tablet that’s more expensive and more tech-packed than the new mini – also offers a 60Hz refresh rate. Apple couldn’t exactly slap it onto the cheaper mini without making the Air look oddly under-equipped.
Image Credit (Trusted Reviews)
The problem with that is that an iPad Air with a 120Hz refresh rate essentially becomes an iPad Pro, as refresh rate is one of very few differences between the models at the moment – that, and not using the very latest M-series silicon, of course.
It essentially means Apple has backed itself into a corner that it can’t get out of without some serious changes across the entire tablet line-up – changes that I don’t think Apple will be willing to make any time soon. And that’s a shame because, really, the new iPad mini is so close to being the perfect small-screen tablet.