🤔 Apple has explained why its new iPad mini doesn’t have ProMotion support
💨 ProMotion unlocks 120Hz refresh rate for smoother on-screen motion
🤷♂️ Apple explained that it thinks the reduction in motion blur by virtue of moving to an OLED constitutes a big upgrade on its own
😎 It comes alongside boosted brightness and contrast for the new iPad mini, plus being a bigger screen in general
Apple announced its new iPad mini this week, its first with an OLED screen, and to a few people’s surprise, the device doesn’t support Apple’s ProMotion tech.
This would have allowed it to have a higher 120Hz refresh rate (and variable refresh rate), as opposed to a more standard 60Hz, for smoother on-screen action – it seems odd as to why it wasn’t included.
However, as per MacRumors, we finally know why. In an interview with YouTuber and podcaster Christopher Lawley, Apple’s VP of hardware design, David Pakula, has explained that its OLED screen still has faster pixel response times than the previous LCD model, resulting in reduced motion blur.
As Pakula stated in the interview, “Display experience is about more than just a single spec” and that “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.”
His sum-up for the new iPad mini’s OLED screen is that when “you pair that with the other things that I mentioned, the contrast, the brightness, and the color, this is just a killer display.”
It appears therefore that Apple saw more of a benefit in simply upgrading to OLED rather than going the whole hog with a ProMotion-enabled screen, which will remain an iPad Pro-exclusive feature for the time being. Maybe in a future iteration Apple may bring ProMotion to the mini, but today isn’t that day.
Delving into the specs, the new iPad mini’s screen is larger at 8.5 inches and has a max brightness of 600 nits – the old model only went up to 500, for reference. For HDR content, it’ll also go as high as 1200 nits for impactful highlights.
Being an OLED also means this screen benefits from deeper, inky blacks, more vivid colors and stronger dynamic range, as evidenced by the rated 2,000,000:1 contrast ratio on Apple’s spec sheet. The screen also retains a 326ppi pixel density and P3 wide color support.
Apple announced its new iPad mini with some significant upgrades this week, including not only an OLED screen, but also the new A20 processor for beefier performance, stronger water and dust resistance with IP67 and better speakers.
The new iPad mini launches on November 8 and starts at $699.
Up next: iPhone Air 2 gets closer to early 2027 release date, says new rumor
Reece Bithrey is a journalist with bylines for Trusted Reviews, Digital Foundry, PC Gamer, TechRadar and more. He also has his own blog, UNTITLED, and graduated from the University of Leeds with a degree in International History and Politics in 2023.