Bezels are useful for devices that you can’t just hold in the flat of your hand. Provides a place to hold on to.

Also, this is an LCD screen. The substrate is rigid. An OLED, like on the iPhone is on a flexible substrate and can be bent at the edges to connect to the circuit board. That lets you put the screen closer to the edge.

I think it's so that the fingers holding the device don't obstruct the view/ don't get counted as touch event.

Ipad Mini is such a good size. My friend lent me his Mini2 when he borrowed money from me and used it for a good 6 months i think and it was marvelous. I didn't use it all that much but later got an Air 2 and used it maybe slightly less. Then I got an iPad Pro 11" but only used it for a while and don't really touch it too much anymore. I feel maybe an ipad mini I would use more. But the jelly scroll really has me urked and I kinda want OLED on it, so there is definitely room for a Pro version if they wish, but the iPads are overwhelming with 5 sizes already.

So that they can release a successor model with thinner bezels.

In reality this may be to (1) to keep costs down and (2) to distance the iPad mini from the more premium iPhone Pro Max.

All in all, this device leaves me wondering who this is for? iPads are mostly used for media consumption, no matter how Apple wants to position them. Not sure why this necessitates AI hardware, but perhaps people really start using iPads for productivity/creativity workloads that can make use of “Apple Intelligence” (the silliest moniker since “Spatial Computing” and “Retina Display”).

The comparatively small difference in screen real estate between an iPhone Pro Max and the iPad mini makes the latter rather pointless. Perhaps they are targeting people with a smaller iPhone who want another device to watch YouTube. What could have made a difference is a folding display. I think the iPad mini would have been the ideal candidate for that.

The iPad mini is a second-class product in Apple's lineup. It rarely gets updated, and if you use one you will see how poorly UI is scaled. I was really hyped up and really wanted one, but after using one I gave up on the idea. The 60 Hz LCD screen is also among the worst screen of all the products Apple currently sells.

It's about 9mm which is not that thick. It really does make a difference in how you can hold it one-handed and without accidentally touching the screen. Most phones and thin-bezel tablets need to be held very carefully.

somewhere to grab it without putting your fingers on the screen?

Maybe I'm weird, but I don't mind having a bit of bezel around the screen. It makes the device easier to grab without extra touches or fingerprints on the screen. It's also a good place for cameras and front-facing speakers. (Although I don't think any iPad has front facing speakers.)

> Why is the bezel so thick?

How else were they supposed to make room for the extra 4GB of RAM required to support Apple Intelligence?

It's likely they're repurposing slightly older display inventory to preserve margins, recoup R&D costs and to bring overall component costs lower since this is meant to be a cheaper device.

>Why is the bezel so thick?

So you have somewhere to actually hold the bloody thing.

Bezelless gadgets look great in photos but are impractical as fuck to handle.

My thoughts exactly, when I first saw it I thought I had landed on a launch article from 2014

Screens come in standard sizes. It might simply be that they can't fit all the parts inside, including the battery, without making the device bigger than the standard screen size and so you get bezels. Bigger devices have more room in them and many of the parts are just the same size.

Honestly with a tablet I prefer some bezel so I can hold it without touching the screen. I have both a 9th Gen iPad and an M2 iPad Pro, I use the “inferior” one almost exclusively.

because the target audience of mini ipads are babies.

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