Surprise, Apple’s iPad Mini With Retina Display Now On Sale Starting At $399

The Apple Store has come back online after a surprise outage this evening and the previously announced iPad mini with Retina display is now on sale. The sale data had not been announced previously, Apple had only specified ‘November’.

Springing a release out like this unannounced is somewhat of a surprise for many, who will wake up tomorrow morning likely with slipping ship dates.

The pricing begins at $399 for the 16GB WiFi model and $529 for the 16GB LTE model. The top of the range is the 128GB with cellular connectivity for $829.

As of time of publish, shipping times were 1-3 business days for the 16GB and 32GB WiFi models and 5-10 business days for the cellular models. Some are seeing delivery times anywhere from November 19th through December 5th. Though Apple CEO Tim Cook used the phrase ‘it’s going to be an iPad Christmas’ on its earnings call, he also acknowledged that not everyone who wanted an iPad mini would be able to get one before the year was out due to supply constraints. So if you must have one, you should probably hop to it.

Though a leaked internal document showed a small sampling of countries would be able to order the device today, we’re seeing countries outside of those few (which included Australia, China, Hong Kong, Japan, New Zealand, Singapore and the US) able to order. Update: The Retina Mini is also now available on the UK Apple Store (starting at £319).

If you’ve got some curiosity about the new iPad Mini with Retina display left over, you can check out our full hands-on here. Apple released its iPad Air, which we’ve had a chance to review and opinionate on. And which has already marked up 5x the adoption rate of the iPad 4.