iPad Mini finally gets a Retina Display

Apple’s new iPad Mini is here, and as expected it sports a high-resolution Retina Display.

Apple announced the iPad Mini with Retina Display ($399 for the 16GB model) today at its huge iPad press event in San Francisco, confirming rumors that have been swirling for the past year. It fixes the biggest flaw of last year’s iPad Mini (which is still sticking around for $299), while also packing in some newer hardware.

Just like the new iPad Air, the iPad Mini with Retina Display sports a new A7 processor (which includes the M7 coprocessor), a faster MIMO Wi-Fi antenna, and support for more LTE networks around the world. With the Retina Display, it features a screen resolution of 2,048-by-1,536, a huge improvement over the original Mini’s paltry 1,024-by-768 display. It will come in silver and white, or space gray and block (sadly, no gold option iPhone 5S fans).

intriguingly, even though the Mini was originally Apple’s “low end” offering, the new model is actually more expensive than last year’s. Indeed, the Mini with Retina and LTE will run you $529, more than the new iPad Air.

Outside of the specs and sharper screen, the new iPad Mini looks and feels about the same as last year’s. It still weighs around 0.7 pounds, and it’s sticking with the same 7.5 millimeter-thick display.

It’ll be interesting to see how the new Mini fairs against the iPad Air, which is thinner and lighter than Apple’s past iPads. I have a feeling most consumers would rather save $100 and go with the Mini Retina model, but the appeal of the iPad Air’s bigger screen may be hard to ignore, especially now that it’s more portable.

The iPad Mini with Retina is available “later in November.” Given the trouble Apple had producing A7 chips for the iPhone 5S, it makes sense for it to delay the release of this tablet for a bit.