It is smaller than a standard iPad but costs more, yet does not have the top performance and best features of the iPad Air, let alone the Pro. It is a middle-ground product for those who want a step up in quality over the standard iPad and a nicer look but do not necessarily want to pay for the premium elements of the Air and Pro and want a smaller size.

Again, it is an odd product and not really a third product, after your phone and laptop, so much as a fourth, as most buy it in addition to a bigger iPad Air or Pro.

They are fun to use though, and the new version, announced today, promises some helpful upgrades for the curious customer. The changes can be broken down into a few things.

The most notable, physically, is the bump to the new A17 Pro chip, which Apple claims has a 25 percent faster GPU, 30 percent faster CPU, and 100 percent faster Neutral Engine, for on-device AI tasks. Will you actually notice the difference? Unless you are the rather odd customer that performs high-stress tasks on an iPad Mini, then no, at least not for now, but as iOS versions get more and more taxing, with more on-board AI integration, that might not be so in three or four years time. Even then though, I would expect it to be a difference of kind, not type.

On-paper performance measures are usually selected on the most favorable tests and do not directly track to real-world performance improvements. There is a new WiFi 6E chip, a faster USB-C port — though just for data transfer, not charging — and it now supports the Apple Pencil Pro, which is handy for digital artists who prefer the smaller frame of the iPad Mini. There are also new colors — hoorah… — and they are totally unremarkable. They are not as bright as the iPhone 16 range, which is either a good or bad thing, depending on how you see it.

Worth noting too; as with the new iPhone line, most of the AI “Apple Intelligence” features that Apple is advertising this one will be unavailable at launch. It is coming “this fall” apparently, but only in drips and drabs, and expect to be waiting until sometime next year to get most of the promised features — and do not be surprised if some never ship.

It starts at $499 for the Wi-Fi only version, or $649 for the cellular variant, and is available for pre-order now, shipping next Wednesday.

One way to view this is as a nice upgrade on an existing model. The other is to say it is only $100 less than the iPad Air — or the same price as a year-old one — which is faster, has a better, bigger screen, some more premium design touches, a landscape selfie camera for video calls, and supports magic keyboard attachments, rather than just Bluetooth ones.

It is clear that the iPad Mini is not a great seller, and therefore they are scraping sales from a small group of customers, and using it to easily upsell customers to the Air — “hey, it is only $100 more.” It makes business sense but also makes the Mini a worse product, and I wish they treated it more like the iPad Pro line, where the smaller 11″ version has the same specs as the 13, but gets slight discount for the smaller screen.