Apple iPad mini A20 Pro review: the best small tablet but with a big price

All-round upgrades fit a bigger OLED screen in a smaller and lighter body with water resistance for first time

The new iPad mini takes Apple’s fan-favourite tiny tablet and upgrades just about everything about it, including giving it a new OLED screen, serious performance, speakers embedded into the display and even water resistance, all with a big new price tag.

The eighth-generation iPad mini costs from £699 (€749/$699/A$1,099), which is £200 or equivalent more than the original price of its predecessor as RAMageddon continues to bite. That makes it uncomfortably expensive, costing £270 more than the base model iPad (A16) and only £50 cheaper than the bigger 11in iPad Air M4.

The new mini reads like a wishlist from small iPad owners. The tablet is about 1mm thinner, 38g lighter and slightly smaller compared with its predecessor, but still manages to fit in a 0.2in larger screen. The mini is the first iPad to have IP67 water resistance, which means trips to the beach or pool are less fraught with danger. Even the video call camera has been moved to a more sensible position in the landscape edge of the tablet. It lacks Face ID, though, making it reliant on the Touch ID fingerprint scanner in the power button.

The new 8.5in OLED screen is the star of the show: bright, vibrant and with inky blacks to make the absolute most of your content. But it lacks the “ProMotion” display technology Apple uses on many of its other devices to keep scrolling and interactions super smooth. It is particularly jarring when you move from a modern iPhone with its 120Hz screen back to the iPad with its relatively slow 60Hz display.

The new speaker system has a pair of tweeters that fire out of slimline gaps between the screen glass and aluminium body with woofers that play directly through the screen. They sound really very good for something this slim, with direct, powerful audio you can’t block with your hand while holding the sides of the tablet.

Screen: 8.5in Super Retina XDR OLED (326ppi)

Processor: Apple A20 Pro (5- or 6-core CPU)

Connectivity: wifi 7 (5G eSim-only), Bluetooth 6, Thread, USB-C, Touch ID

Water resistance: IP67 (1 metre for 30 mins)

Inside the new iPad is the A20 Pro chip from the iPhone 18 Pro and Duo, which absolutely flies. It comes in two versions depending on storage, with all but the most expensive model having one fewer CPU cores and half the NPU performance. Most will not miss it.

The battery lasts a solid nine to 10 hours of active screen use for lighter tasks such as browsing the web, answering emails, taking notes, watching movies or viewing photos. Playing games dents the battery to more like six to eight hours. The tablet charges to about 50% in under 30 minutes using a 35W or greater USB-C power adaptor (not included) and reaches 100% in about 100 minutes.

The battery will last more than 1,000 full-charge cycles with at least 80% of its original capacity and can be replaced for £115. Other out-of-warranty damage, including screen repairs, costs £519.

It contains 35% recycled material. The company breaks down the tablet’s environmental impact in its report. Apple offers trade-in and free recycling schemes, including for non-Apple products.

The iPad mini A20 Pro costs from £699 (€749/$699/A$1,099). For comparison, the iPad costs £429, the iPad Air 11in costs £749, and the iPad Pro 11in costs £1,199. The iPhone Duo costs £1,999 and the Lenovo Legion Tab 5th gen costs £649.

The iPad mini is the best small tablet available. That was true for previous models and is doubly true for the new one. Almost everything about it has been upgraded – the screen, the body, the camera, speakers and chip – yet it feels and works very similarly to the last few iPad minis.

The mini has a loyal following for whom the bigger screen than a phone and the portability of a compact tablet are the sweet spot. They are typically public transport commuters, people who fly a lot or those that have turned to it for a notepad replacement. They will love this revamp.

But you also see a lot of them in the workplace. Minis are used on building sites, as payment systems in stores, check-in terminals for greeters, by waiting staff in restaurants or in universities used for handwritten notes and marking up scientific papers.

The iPad mini isn’t quite the perfect small tablet. The screen should be faster and it is jarring that it isn’t, particularly at this very high price. It still lacks Face ID. And for most people the cheaper basic iPad or iPad Air is a better buy.

Pros: compact and light design, top performance, 10-hour battery life, great OLED screen, water resistance, landscape camera, USB-C, great speakers, full multitasking and external display support, long software support, recycled aluminium, Apple Pencil Pro support.

Cons: very expensive, screen not 120Hz, no Face ID, small size is cramped for some uses.