It has earned a reputation as a quality tablet for people who want something small, comfortable, and portable, but its small screen and comparatively limited processing power have restricted its appeal, making it best suited to watching media or playing games. With the 2026 version, the iPad mini is more competitive than ever. Its chip is current, its speakers are better, and, most impressively, it trades its 8.3-inch IPS screen for an 8.5-inch OLED that can hold its own against other premium tablets.
There isn’t much more you can ask of an iPad this small. But at just $50 less than the larger, more powerful iPad Air (11-inch), the iPad mini still has a hard time making a case for itself. The most immediately noticeable change to the 2026 iPad mini is its display.
At 0.2 inches larger than the 2024 iPad mini’s screen, the difference might not sound like much, but it has a meaningful impact on a tablet this small. Beyond providing a bigger view of photos, video content, and lengthy documents, the extra space makes it easier to work with multiple windows, giving you more room to view them and adjust their size and location. One of our biggest complaints about the prior mini was its bezels, which felt large for a tablet of its size.
This time, Apple managed to fit a larger screen in a slightly smaller tablet (7.69 × 5.22 × 0.21 inches and 0.56 pounds for the 2026 mini versus 7.69 × 5.3 × 0.25 inches and 0.65 pounds for the 2024 mini) by reducing the bezels by 24 percent. The result is a streamlined viewing experience that feels more modern and appropriate for a new Apple product. And you’ll certainly want to watch content on the 2316 × 1512 OLED display, which packs 326 pixels per inch.
OLED displays often lack the brightness of their LCD-LED counterparts, but the gap has narrowed in recent years. The new mini is brighter than its IPS-based predecessor, with Apple claiming full-screen brightness of up to 600 nits, compared to 500 nits on the previous model. It’s also much better suited to HDR content, with peak HDR brightness reaching 1,200 nits for highlights and a contrast ratio of 2,000,000:1.
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