OLED iPad Mini on Sale Today: Is the $699 Upgrade Worth It?
By Sidra Salman · November 6, 2026 Today is Apple's biggest hardware day of the year. Five new products go on sale at once — including the first MacBook Pro with a touchscreen — but the one I keep coming back to is the smallest and cheapest of the five: the new OLED iPad mini, starting at $699. It is the biggest overhaul of Apple's smallest tablet in years. The screen is finally OLED, the chip is a genuine leap, and — for the first time on any iPad — it carries an official water-resistance rating. It is also $200 more expensive than the model it replaces, which puts it in an awkward spot: $100 above the entry-level 11-inch iPad Air. So the question isn't whether the new mini is better. It is. The question is whether it's worth $699, and for whom. Here's what I found after reading Apple's announcement coverage from MacRumors, GadgetHacks and several launch-day roundups, and comparing the numbers against the previous mini and the iPad Air. What actually...