Today, with a rather unexpected press release – Apple has announced two new iPad models, an all new iPad mini 5 and a new iPad Air.

This was rather unexpected because later on this month Apple has a keynote planned titled ‘It’s show time’ but this will likely be more focused on the company’s rumoured upcoming streaming service.

What’s new?

The new iPad mini doesn’t look that different from the outside, it is in fact very similar to the older iPad mini 3 and mini 4 from a few years ago.

The colours now also match the colours on offer with the iPhone XS, Silver, Space Grey (which is a lot darker now) and Gold.

iPad mini now also works with Apple Pencil, like the new iPad Air launched today it’ll only work with the first generation pencil, presumably because the second generation requires more expensive components, hence why it only works on the new iPad Pro.

Performance

This 5th generation is more of a revamp of the internals as it has a the A12 Bionic chip out of the iPhone XS and iPhone XR and this means now that the iPad mini 5 has 3x the performance of the mini 4 and 9x the graphics power.

The new iPad mini also has the same 802.11ac WiFi specs from the new iPad Pro models as well as the same 4G LTE performance.

Screen

The iPad mini 5 has the same compact 7.9-inch display, but now Apple has added True Tone support and it is now 25 percent  brighter than before.

“iPad continues to provide magical new experiences for a growing range of uses where it is the absolute best device, from playing games in augmented reality to note-taking and drawing with Apple Pencil, from streaming HD movies and editing 4K films to learning to develop apps with Swift Playgrounds,” said Phil Schiller, Apple’s senior vice president of Worldwide Marketing. “Today the iPad family takes two big leaps forward with an all-new 10.5-inch iPad Air that brings high-end size, features and performance at a breakthrough price, and a major upgrade to the 7.9-inch iPad mini, which also brings Apple Pencil, Retina display and the A12 Bionic chip to the many customers that love its compact size.”

Pricing and availability

The new iPad mini is available now on apple.com and it’ll be in Apple Stores and retailers next week.

iPad mini now starts at £399 in the UK and $399 in the US in Silver, Space Grey and the new Gold colour. Only two storage options are available; 64GB and 256GB.

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