Apple Debuts $699 Water-Resistant iPad Mini With OLED Screen

Apple Inc. on Monday unveiled a revamped iPad mini with an OLED display, water-resistant design and faster chip, kicking off a week of product launches.

The tablet, priced at $699, features an 8.5-inch OLED, or organic light-emitting diode, screen that delivers deeper blacks, brighter whites and improved contrast. Apple has increased the display size from the previous 8.3 inches by slimming down the bezels around the panel. The redesigned device also includes a new “Acoustic Display” audio system that places the speakers beneath the display, helping to make this the first iPad with an IP67 dust and water resistance rating.

The new iPad mini is 14% thinner and 13% lighter than its predecessor, and Apple has repositioned the front-facing camera so that it’s better suited for FaceTime calls and video conferencing.

Inside, it features the A20 Pro chip, an upgrade from the A17 Pro processor in the previous iPad mini, which started at $599. It’s being offered with standard and matte nano-texture display options and storage configurations ranging from 128 to 512 gigabytes. Fully outfitted with the maximum amount of storage, an etched matte screen and cellular connectivity, the tablet can cost as much as $1,249.

Apple has also upgraded the new model with its N1 networking chip, bringing Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 6 to the iPad mini. Cellular models are equipped with the company’s C2 modem.

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The latest iPad mini kicks off a series of late-October product introductions from Apple. Later this week, the company plans to unveil a new iMac and 14-inch MacBook Pro with the M6 chip, before closing out the week with its first touch-screen MacBook Pro.

Pre-orders for the new iPad mini begin Wednesday and it goes on sale Nov. 6. The latest model comes in “midnight” and “starlight” color options.

The A20 Pro chip on the iPad mini is being offered in two versions: The 128- and 256-gigabyte models include five CPU, or main processing cores, while the higher-end configuration has six cores. Both use seven graphics cores. The higher-end variant also has a dual 16-core Neural Engine for enhanced artificial intelligence processing.

Apple is holding a launch event Wednesday in Los Angeles, where members of the press and content creators will get hands-on time with the new devices. The introductions cap a busy year of product releases for Apple, including last Friday’s launch of the iPhone Duo, its first foldable smartphone.

Bloomberg News first reported on the new iPad mini last year. The company is also working on a new low-end iPad, OLED iPad Air and refreshed iPad Pro for the first half of next year.