The New iPad Mini's OLED Display Is Stuck at a 60Hz Refresh Rate

On Monday, Apple announced an iPad Mini redesign that it says is the device's biggest update yet.

The tablet's old 8.3-inch LCD display has been replaced by an 8.5-inch OLED. Although the screen is larger, the tablet keeps its earlier footprint because the bezels are 24% thinner. The display reaches up to 1,200 nits peak HDR brightness and supports P3 wide color. For an extra $100, buyers can opt for glare-reducing nano-texture glass on the 256GB and 512GB models.

The new Mini's thinner, lighter body offers IP67 water and dust resistance, and it runs on Apple's A20 Pro chip, built on a 2nm process. Apple says the chip delivers up to 60% faster multithreaded CPU performance, up to 2.7x faster graphics, and up to 4.5x faster AI performance than the previous model. The 128GB and 256GB versions have a five-core CPU and one 16-core Neural Engine, while the 512GB version has a six-core CPU and a dual 16-core Neural Engine.

It's great to see the iPad Mini adopt an OLED display and a chassis 0.9 millimeters thinner than the last iteration, but it stings that the updated device still caps at a 60Hz refresh rate. For a device that starts at $699 (for the 128GB Wi-Fi model) in the US—a whole $200 more than the old Mini—we'd hope to see a faster, smoother refresh rate. The new Mini's most expensive model, which offers 512GB of storage, a nano-texture display, and cellular connectivity, is $1,249. Even Samsung's ultra-affordable Galaxy Tab A11 ($139) and Lenovo's Legion Tab Gen 3 ($399), both released last year, offer 90Hz refresh rates.

The new iPad Mini will hit shelves on November 6, 2026, with pre-orders opening on October 28.