Apple's smallest iPad has been around for years and it has its fans. The advantages of a smaller tablet include a lower price and easier portability. It can slide into big jacket pockets or small bags,

The bigger iPads are increasingly competing with your laptop; the Mini very much still complements it. The Mini has always felt like an afterthought — updated only occasionally, forced to run apps and an OS clearly designed for larger screens — but the one-handed iPad was the one for me anyway.

The iPad mini (2024) is set to launch this week. The first reviews for the newest iPad are being published. There's a lot of good — and some bad.

Apple today introduced the new iPad mini, supercharged by the A17 Pro chip and Apple Intelligence, the easy-to-use personal intelligence system that understands personal context to deliver intelligence that is helpful and relevant while protecting user privacy.

The price for the Apple iPad mini 7 is the same as before, starting at $499 for the Wi-Fi version with 128GB of RAM, and $649 for the Wi-Fi + Cellular variant.

Apple’s A17 Pro is key to the essence of this tablet’s upgrade. To make that clear, Apple is calling it the iPad mini with A17 Pro, not iPad mini seventh-generation. The chip update means that it’s capable of running Apple’s take on AI, called Apple Intelligence, which arrives soon.

The 2024 iPad mini is a solid and necessary update to the best small tablet on the market. It still delivers the full iPad experience in a compact package.

It was a lean few years for the iPad. The tablet fell out of favor with Apple, as the company turned its focus to other categories like mobile, content,