Deals: iPhone 17 series on sale, OLED-packing iPad mini and touch-enabled MacBook Pro launch
Apple launched the iPhone Duo last week and unlike most of its releases, it hasn’t been smooth sailing. So, let’s look at the non-folding iPhones instead, plus the two new releases from this week – the theme this week was “OLED”.
We’ll start with a nice middle ground – the Apple iPhone 17. The vanilla 18 isn’t coming out for a few more months, so this is the current offering. We rarely see discounts on Apple products, but this vanilla model is €180 off for the base 256GB variant. The upgrade to 512GB storage is crazy expensive, though.
The Apple iPhone Air is from the same generation as the 17. It has a larger 6.5” display (vs. 6.3”), but in some ways it is smaller – it’s thinner (5.6mm vs. 8mm) and lighter (165g vs. 177g). It’s around 3mm wider, though (74.7mm vs. 71.5mm), so it’s up to you to decide whether you want more screen size or easier one-handed use.
With a tiny 3,149mAh battery, the Air doesn’t last as long as the vanilla phone – 12:44h vs. 14:59h Active Use Score. It uses a version of the Apple A19 Pro chipset that gives it slightly more performance in some tests. Note that the Air has only one camera, a 48MP 1/1.56” wide module, while the vanilla iPhone 17 also has a 48MP 120° ultra-wide. The Air costs less than the vanilla model, especially if you need more storage, so it’s worth comparing the two.
There’s also the iPhone 17 Pro. It brings multiple upgrades over the vanilla model, including a proper A19 Pro chipset (with a 6-core GPU, not a 5-core one like the Air), more RAM and a 48MP telephoto camera with a 4x/100mm lens plus pro-grade video tools. The new iPhone 18 Pro offers relatively few upgrades over the 17 Pro, the big one being the powerful A20 Pro chipset.
The iPhone 17 Pro Max is still around too for those who want a 6.9” screen instead of a 6.3” one. Note that the new iPhone 18 Pro Max feels like a bigger upgrade over the 2025 model, which may make it easier to justify the extra cost of the new model.
Here are the prices for the iPhone 18 Pro and iPhone 18 Pro Max. There’s a small €70 discount on the 512GB Pro, but in general they are selling at MSRP.
Moving on, Apple refreshed the iPad mini. The previous mini came two years ago. The new model is the first mini with an OLED display and, even better, there is a nano-texture glass option for the 8.5” panel (up from 8.3” for the old LCD model). This does cost extra, though. Early Geekbench results suggest that the new Apple A20 Pro chipset with 12GB of RAM tops the iPad Pros in the single-threaded test (by 8%), but having fewer cores means that the Pros still win the multi-threaded test (by a whopping 53%). But the Pros have M5 chips – the M4-powered Air tablets lose on both the single- and multi-threaded tests.
Apple iPad mini (2026)
coming November 6, 8.5" OLED, Apple A20 Pro, Wi-Finano-texture glass available on 256GB and 512GB versions for €130 more
You can still buy the old iPad mini (2024). It’s cheaper, though we’re not sure that the savings are worth it. The new model is slimmer (5.4mm vs. 6.3mm) and lighter (255g vs. 293g), while losing only a bit of battery capacity (4,900mAh vs. 5,078mAh). We expect that the chipset will easily make up the difference – the A20 Pro is a 2nm part, while the 2024 mini uses a 3nm A17 Pro. Note that the OLED display on the new mini still runs at 60Hz, so you’re not getting a high refresh rate either way. One thing you do lose if you go with the old model is that the 2026 mini is rated IP67, while the 2024 mini lacks an official water resistance rating.
We mentioned the iPad Airs and they are worth a look – the 11” model from earlier this year is cheaper than the new mini. It has an IPS LCD instead of an OLED panel (60Hz, of course).
The other new release this week is the MacBook Pro with PROLED XDR display – this is not only the first OLED display on a MacBook (a 120Hz Tandem OLED at that), it’s also the first touch-enabled display on a MacBook. The notch is gone, replaced by a Dynamic Island – there is no Face ID hiding inside, it’s only a camera. Impressively, these M5 Pro and M5 Max powered laptops are 200-300g lighter than non-touch MacBook Pros, depending on the exact models you are comparing. They are also quite a bit more expensive too.
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