I’ll be honest: I’ve always loved the iPad Mini. I own several. I purchased this as a gift for multiple family members. I want a tablet that I can read in bed, toss in my overstuffed carry-on bag, or stand over the toaster while I prepare dinner. That’s the mini.
Apple’s tablets are all pretty much the same, from the $349 base model to the performance monster M4 Pro. versatility. These are large glass plates that can be transformed into anything with the right apps and attachments. The Mini, on the other hand, has an 8.3-inch screen, making it closer in size to an iPhone than other iPads. It is primarily designed as a device that you can carry anywhere other than your phone. The large iPad is increasingly competing with laptops. The Mini still complements that.
The Mini always felt like an afterthought – it was updated only occasionally and needed to run apps and an OS clearly designed for a larger screen – but the one-handed iPad was my thing anyway. It was perfect.
I think this Mini represents a new low for this product. It feels like an iPad designed by the supply chain rather than by someone who actually wants you to like the product. It’s a hodgepodge of new and not-so-new parts, with no new specs or features to really differentiate it. Aside from the many grandiose promises of how Apple Intelligence is going to change everything, and you absolutely are going to change everything, you need a device that runs Apple Intelligence. As far as I know, that’s the whole pitch. Need Apple Intelligence? Want a smaller iPad? Get this. You have no choice.
Apple Intelligence doesn’t exist yet. something called Apple Intelligence ships next week, and it’s just the first glimpse of Apple’s big promise to reinvent the way you use your devices. A complete product is months or years away. Until Apple intelligence becomes game-changingly amazing, there’s little reason to buy a new iPad Mini instead of your old one.
Of course, like all iPads before it, it’s a perfectly fine tablet. If you want an iPad Mini, buy this! It’s a great iPad Mini, and it’s also the only official option. But there’s not much that would make you want to upgrade from the 2021 model or any previous model. For reading and watching movies, the 2018 Mini is still fine.
The only reason to buy this iPad Mini is because it’s an iPad Mini. There’s little else you can do. You can spend an extra $100 and get a better M2 Air tablet, or you can save money and find an older or refurbished 2021 Mini. At $499, the Mini may be the worst-priced iPad in the lineup.
There are three really new things about this Mini. The first is that it supports Apple Pencil Pro. The Apple Pencil Pro magnetically attaches to the side of the Mini to charge and connect. The Mini can do everything the Pencil Pro can do on other iPads. Hovering, squeezing, and barrel rolling all work fine. If you’re an artist who carries a Mini, this alone might be worth the upgrade. If you have an older Pencil that plugs into a USB port, that will work too, but the Mini doesn’t support the Pencil 2 for some mysterious reason.
The second change is color. The Mini now comes in new blues and purples in addition to the typical space gray and pale gold ‘Starlight’. Mine is blue, but the color is so pale that I had to make sure I didn’t actually only have the silver model. (There is no silver model.) It looks awfully pale next to my blue iPhone 16.
Best of all, you get more storage for the price. That’s certainly a win. The base Mini model comes with 128GB of storage, which is a long-awaited bonus. $499 for a tablet with 64GB of storage is ridiculous.
This new Mini is essentially a complete replacement for the last model’s internal upgrades, which is a bit disappointing. All other iPad models have moved the front-facing camera to the center of the device in landscape orientation. On the Mini, the kickstand on the official Smart Folio case supports it in landscape mode, but it’s still stubbornly portrait-oriented. The “jelly-like scroll” effect of the previous model is still firmly intact. The Mini still uses Touch ID for the power button. Face ID is so great that going back to tapping your index finger felt like a big step back, especially on a device where the power button is constantly rotating in your hand.
This new Mini is essentially a ripped-and-replaced internal upgrade from the last model.
The most important new spec is the Apple A17 Pro chip, the same one found in last year’s iPhone 15 Pro and Pro Max. Well, not exactly the same. The 15 Pro’s chip has six CPU cores and six GPU cores, while the Mini has six CPU cores and six GPU cores. Five GPU. This has led some smart people to conclude that these are so-called “binned” chips, i.e. ones that have come out of the manufacturing process without being able to reach maximum performance for some reason. It has become. (How this works is well explained here.) This is a normal enough habit, but it’s also possible that you’re not getting the best of the best, or that you’re not getting the best of last year’s best. It shows that you are not even getting anything.
In my testing, the Mini was about 30% faster than the older Mini in both CPU and GPU performance (which is consistent with Apple’s marketing), and scores slightly lower overall than the iPhone 15 Pro and Pro Max. It will be. The iPad Pro with M4 outperforms the Mini in every way, and the Air with M2 also significantly outperforms the Mini in every score except single-core CPU performance. (This is for completely boring chip design reasons, but it’s not really relevant for everyday use.) Even the 2022 M1 iPad Air beats the Mini in most benchmark tests.
When you push the Mini, you realize its limitations. I was able to handle it Call of Duty: Warzone Even on high settings, there were only occasional frame drops, but as soon as I cranked it up, Assassin’s Creed Mirage, The stuttering was so bad that it became difficult to play the game. The game drops frames even on medium settings. in Madden NFL Mobile, Real Racing 3, And clearly, the A17 Pro held up well in whatever casual games I tried. I think there are very few people looking for it. mirage Anyway, the machine is thinking about Mini, so don’t worry, this is Wordle it’s okay. The battery lasts pretty well too. After reading or streaming for about 8.5 hours, the battery died. community I play a variety of games on Peacock. This is pretty much my normal iPad experience.
In more daily use, the new Mini feels a beat faster than its predecessor. Apps open a quarter of a second faster, iMovie renders a little faster, and image editing feels just a little more instant. The M2 Air feels an extra beat faster, and the M4 Pro probably feels an extra half a beat faster than that. The M4 is pretty much in the realm of diminishing returns in most respects, and it’s only when you put them side by side that you really notice the difference between them. Everyone is very fast.
But it’s still important to note that the Mini is relatively underpowered. My advice when it comes to iPads (and most gadgets) is to buy the most powerful one you can afford and plan on using it forever. And if Apple Intelligence is really going to be great and important, it’s going to need all the horsepower it can get. This new Mini is probably not the most powerful device that can run Apple Intelligence. (The base iPad is clearly less powerful than the Mini, but it’s the only iPad sold by Apple that doesn’t support this feature.)
This new Mini is probably not the most powerful device that can run Apple Intelligence.
This is a particularly big problem for Mini. Because by purchasing this now, you’re completely betting that Apple Intelligence will be worth the upgrade right away. Apple’s AI hasn’t shipped yet, and it’s not expected to ship until at least next spring, and probably long after that. Next Will there be a mini too? Certainly not. Apple has some good ideas about what Siri can do for you and how AI could make it easier for you to solve math problems or compose emails, but those capabilities Much of it is still new and incomplete, and many of its other features don’t work at all. Doesn’t exist.
And wait a minute. If you do handwritten calculations or write a lot of emails, you’ll probably want something that comes with a larger screen and keyboard. The new Mini is ostensibly the absolute best pen experience, a million new AI-enabled productivity tools, and It’s the absolute smallest screen that does both, regardless of the tradeoffs. It’s a pretty strict Venn diagram, if you ask me.
There’s a lot more Apple can do with the Mini. Adds iPhone Pro Max level imaging and camera control buttons, this It’s a device Hollywood hopes to use to make movies. (I’m hugely against people taking photos in public with iPads, but the Mini is small enough that it’s fine. And a viewfinder this big would be great.) Apple turns it into music and a smart home. A Pixel Tablet-like controller that might make a charging dock. You can build a Backbone style controller to turn it into a handheld console. All you can get instead is the same flimsy cover, which is too expensive and keeps falling off the back of the device.
The new Mini’s pitch is that, aside from the fact that it’s an iPad Mini, it’s the smallest iPad made for Apple Intelligence. Apple Intelligence better be a great upgrade, because without it, the new Mini wouldn’t be an upgrade at all.
Photography: David Pearce/The Verge
