iPad Mini: Same Tablet, £100 More Than at Launch

Search for an iPad mini in the UK and Google hands you a retailer listing, a forum thread, and a refurbisher selling a 2019 model. What none of the top results mention is that Apple has quietly put £100 on the current iPad mini since it went on sale, without changing a single component inside it.

The mini Apple sells today is the same A17 Pro machine it launched in October 2024. Same chip, same 8.3-inch screen, same 128GB of base storage, same four colours. The price is the only thing that moved.

Here is what it actually costs across the UK market, where the money leaks, and why I would not buy one from Apple this week.

The iPad mini price in the UK, then and now

Apple put the launch price in writing itself. Its UK newsroom announcement of 15 October 2024 says the new iPad mini started at "£499 for the Wi-Fi model", with the cellular version at £649 and tablets in shops from 23 October.

This is what the same tablet costs on Apple's UK store today:

• 128GB Wi-Fi: £599
• 256GB Wi-Fi: £699
• 512GB Wi-Fi: £899
• 128GB Wi-Fi + Cellular: £749
• 256GB Wi-Fi + Cellular: £849
• 512GB Wi-Fi + Cellular: £1,049

My arithmetic: that is £100 on the Wi-Fi model, a rise of 20.04%, and £100 on the cellular model, a rise of 15.41%. Nothing about the hardware changed to earn either one.

If that feels familiar, it should. It is the same move Apple made across the rest of the iPad range, where the cheapest models took the steepest increases. The mini just did it more quietly, because almost nobody tracks its price.

Apple's refurbished iPad mini costs more than a new one

The refurbished store is where most people assume the saving lives. For the iPad mini, right now, it is the opposite, and this is the single most useful thing in this post.

Apple's refurbished A17 Pro iPad mini is £509 for 128GB, £599 for 256GB and £769 for 512GB. The cheapest new, sealed, boxed equivalents tracked across UK retailers are £475.99, £549.00 and £699.00.

My arithmetic on the three tiers:

• 128GB: Apple's refurb is £33.01 dearer than new, 6.93% more
• 256GB: £50.00 dearer, 9.11% more
• 512GB: £70.00 dearer, 10.01% more

The penalty grows as you climb the range, which is the opposite of how a used-stock discount is supposed to behave. Apple is not pricing its refurbs against the market. It is pricing them as a fixed percentage off its own list price, and the market has simply walked away from that list price.

To be fair to Apple, a refurbished iPad does come with a new outer shell, a new battery and the full one-year warranty, which I have gone through in detail in my guide to Apple Refurbished in the UK. That is worth real money on a Mac. It is not worth paying a premium over a factory-sealed box of the identical product.

The £150 cellular tax, and the £594 gap that undoes it

Apple charges exactly £150 for mobile data on the iPad mini, and it charges exactly £150 at every storage tier. It is the same £150 on the entry-level iPad, which is £429 Wi-Fi and £579 with cellular. A flat number applied across the range like that is a pricing decision, not a reflection of what the modem costs.

Elsewhere the cheapest new 5G minis run £594.00 for 128GB, £699.00 for 256GB and £799.00 for 512GB.

Put those two lists side by side and one line jumps out. £594.00 buys a 5G iPad mini. Apple wants £599 for the Wi-Fi-only one. By my maths that is £5.00 less for a tablet that does strictly more.

Buy from Apple and the cheapest route to an iPad mini is to give up mobile data. Buy anywhere else and mobile data is free, with change. At 512GB the pattern holds in a milder form: the street charges £100 for cellular against Apple's £150, a third less for the same feature.

Apple charges 78.1p per gigabyte, exactly like the cheap iPad

Going from 128GB to 256GB costs £100 for 128 extra gigabytes. Going from 256GB to 512GB costs £200 for 256 extra gigabytes. My arithmetic: both steps land on 78.1p per gigabyte.

That figure should look familiar if you read what I found on the 11th-generation iPad, where Apple charged 78.1p per gigabyte at both storage steps as well. Two different iPads, two different chips, two different price brackets, one identical rate. Apple's storage pricing is a formula, and it is not connected to what flash memory costs.

The open market does not follow the formula. Going from £475.99 to £549.00 is £73.01 for 128GB, which by my maths is 57.0p per gigabyte. Going from £549.00 to £699.00 is £150 for 256GB, or 58.6p per gigabyte. That is 25% to 27% below Apple's rate.

The practical version: £549 buys a new 256GB iPad mini on the open market, which is £50 less than Apple charges for a refurbished 128GB one. You get double the storage and a sealed box for less money.

Ignore the refurbished iPad mini 6

Apple still lists the 2021 iPad mini 6 in its refurbished store at £459 for 64GB and £539 for 256GB. On a page full of bigger numbers, £459 reads like the sensible budget option. It is the worst buy on the entire page.

My arithmetic: £459 for a refurbished 64GB mini 6, against £475.99 for a brand new A17 Pro mini with 128GB. That is a difference of £16.99, or 3.70%, and for it you get two chip generations, double the storage, and a tablet nobody has opened before.

There is a harder line underneath the price, too. Apple Intelligence needs an A17 Pro or an M-series chip on iPad. The mini 6 runs an A15 with 4GB of memory and does not qualify. Buying it in late 2026 means buying out of every AI feature Apple has shipped so far and everything it ships next, for the sake of £17.

The iPad mini 8 is close enough to change the answer

Everything in this section is a leak rather than an Apple announcement, so treat it accordingly. On 25 September, MacRumors reported that its contributor Aaron Perris had pulled iPad mini 8 references and official product images out of Apple's own code: an A20 Pro chip, an OLED panel, a slightly larger screen, a landscape front camera and a vibration-based speaker system. Separate reporting points to a launch by the end of October.

References inside shipping Apple code are a firmer signal than the usual supply-chain chatter, because the assets have to exist before the product does. They are still not a date, and Apple has slipped iPad launches before. I would treat late October as likely rather than certain.

What it does to today's decision is straightforward. The current mini turns two years old in October, Apple is charging £100 more than it did at launch, and the replacement is a handful of weeks out. Paying Apple's full £599 in the last week of September is the worst possible timing on all three counts.

So, concretely:

• You want a mini now and price is the point: £475.99 new elsewhere. Not £599 from Apple, and not £509 for Apple's refurb.
• You can wait until November: wait. Either you get the OLED mini, or you get this one cheaper once it is last year's model.
• You need mobile data: £594.00 on the open market, never £749 from Apple.
• You already own a mini 6 or a mini 7: nothing here justifies upgrading before the mini 8 is actually announced.

iPad mini FAQ

How much is an iPad mini in the UK?

Apple charges £599 for the 128GB Wi-Fi iPad mini, £699 for 256GB and £899 for 512GB, plus exactly £150 for mobile data at any tier. The cheapest new 128GB Wi-Fi model tracked across UK retailers is £475.99, which by my maths is £123.01 or 20.54% below Apple's price.

Is Apple's refurbished iPad mini worth buying?

Not at today's prices. Apple's refurbished A17 Pro mini is £509 for 128GB while a brand new sealed one sells for £475.99 elsewhere. By my maths the refurbished unit costs 6.93% more than new, and the penalty widens to 10.01% at 512GB. The warranty and new shell are genuinely worth something, but not a premium over an unopened box.

Should I wait for the iPad mini 8?

If you can hold out until November, probably. MacRumors found iPad mini 8 references in Apple's own code on 25 September 2026 and reporting points to a launch by the end of October, though that remains a rumour rather than an announced date. The current mini is nearly two years old and Apple is charging £100 more for it than at launch, so waiting costs you very little.

My take

The iPad mini is the best small tablet anyone makes, and I still use mine most evenings. That is exactly why the pricing irritates me. Apple has added £100 to a two-year-old product, priced its own refurbished stock above the open market, and left a 64GB tablet that cannot run Apple Intelligence sitting on the shelf at £459.

None of that is a reason to avoid the mini. It is a reason to avoid buying it from Apple. Wait four weeks if you can, and if you cannot, the £475.99 sealed box is the only number on this page I would hand over money for.

Source: Apple introduces powerful new iPad mini built for Apple Intelligence, Apple Newsroom UK. Current prices checked on Apple's UK store on 29 September 2026; market prices from PriceSpy UK the same day.