While the new iPad mini has an OLED display, the device does not support ProMotion, meaning the display's refresh rate is limited to 60Hz instead of 120Hz.
ProMotion support would have allowed for the iPad mini's refresh rate to automatically adjust from 10Hz to 120Hz depending on the content being displayed, but evidently Apple has kept the feature exclusive to the iPad Pro among iPad models for now.
In an interview with YouTuber and podcaster Christopher Lawley, Apple's vice president of hardware design David Pakula commented on the new iPad mini lacking 120Hz support, noting that its OLED display still has significantly faster pixel response times compared to the previous model with an LCD, resulting in reduced motion blur.
"Display experience is about more than just a single spec," said Pakula. "One of the things that's really cool about OLED is it actually has this really fast pixel response time. So it's like more than an order of magnitude faster than the pixel response time for an LCD display. And what that does is it makes everything really smooth. Motion blur is significantly reduced compared to LCD. When you pair that with the other things that I mentioned, the contrast, the brightness, and the color, this is just a killer display."
Apple says the new iPad mini can achieve a maximum brightness of 600 nits for standard content, up from 500 nits for the previous model, and up to 1,200 nits for HDR content. OLED technology allows for higher contrast and more vivid colors, as there is no backlight and individual pixels turn off completely to display true black.
Apple's tech specs indicate the new iPad mini has a 2,000,000:1 contrast ratio. The display still has 326 pixels per inch and P3 wide color support.
The new iPad mini is available to pre-order now, with U.S. pricing starting at $699, and the device launches on Friday, November 6.
