Not faultless, but GREAT at what it does

I’ve been using the latest iPad mini 7 for a little over a month now and I have quite a bit to chat over with you.

This is my first iPad mini – in fact, this year has been a series of firsts for me as it was only this summer that I got my first iPad Pro as well. So, as an iPad newbie, how am I finding this new addition to my iPad family?

There is a line of argument that not that much has changed from the previous version, but then you could counter that by arguing did much need to change? After all, if it ain’t broke don’t fix it, right?

There aren’t many aesthetic changes to the 7th Gen mini – I think adding the word mini on the back is about it. Just a point though, if they can add the model name to MacBook Pro and the iPad mini, why not the Mac mini as well?

Before moving on – just looking at the design, although we have the signature iPhone-esque boxy, squared-off design we still have fairly sizeable bezels. Although they don’t offend, this smaller form factor would have benefited from a more edge-to-edge design.

So where does this iPad sit in Apple’s line-up then?

iPad mini 7 – where does it fit?

Out of the two iPads on my desk, I find myself reaching more often for the iPad mini as it is more of a general-use kind of tablet. I’ll reach for the Pro for specific reasons which are generally more creative, heavy-hitting tasks or typing and writing on – that keyboard is still so comfortable to write on!

But for content consumption, browsing and note-taking in particular it’s the iPad mini I inevitably reach for. The thing with the iPad mini is that it does a few things really well and doesn’t try to pretend to be what it’s not. For me, it sits perfectly between the iPhone and the iPad Pro.

You get the choice of four colours – Space Grey, Blue, Purple (which is what I went for) and Starlight. There are Smart Folio cases that more or less match the iPad colours as well. By the way, if you were wondering – if you have a case from an iPad mini 6 it will fit – the magnets are in exactly the same places – so you can save yourself some money there.

Apple this year did away with the miserable 64GB of storage – you now get three options starting at 128GB but with options of 256GB and 512Gb available. And there was no price bump in that minimum configuration either.

Although it’s the smallest iPad in their lineup, it’s not the cheapest. The 10th Gen iPad starts at £329 but if want Apple Intelligence that won’t be an option as it only uses the A14 Chip. Apple charges you a premium for the ultra-portability that’s part and parcel of the iPad mini.

The camera position hasn’t changed this year – which kind of makes sense. Most of the time you tend to hold the iPad in portrait mode so from that point of view it makes sense. I guess if you take a lot of FaceTime calls on here it might be a pain but unlike other iPads where the camera should alwaysbeen on the long edge, with the mini it’s not a slam dunk decision. I can kind of see why they left it where it was.

Display

The display is more or less a rinse and repeat from the mini 6 meaning it is still the same LCD 8.3-inch P3 wide colour, True Tone display.

And while you do get an Anti-reflective coating on the laminated display it is still only 500 nits of max brightness. Outdoors that’s not great – to give you an idea the iPhone 16s is twice that. And for a device that will mostly be used on the go the max brightness is something they could’ve or should have improved.

We still don’t get OLED which doesn’t surprise me as that can justifiably be called a purely Pro feature. But for a new iPad to be released with only a 60Hz refresh rate screen is not defendable. None of Apple’s devices are cheap – we pay a good price and in return, there are certain basics we should expect – and a 120Hz panel should be one of those basics. Hell – even most Android phones now come with 120Hz displays, so come on Apple…

Face ID is another basic we should have had which I’ll come back to later.

Of course, I can’t talk about displays on the iPad mini without touching on the jelly-scrolling phenomenon. For the uninitiated, jelly scrolling is when text appears to wave from left to right as you scroll with the iPad in portrait mode. It occurs because LCDs refresh line by line starting from the top line and with the iPad mini only refreshing at 60Hz this trait becomes more obvious.

I’d guess there is a good number of iPad mini users that will also use an Air or Pro and if you’re coming from those then the lack of ProMotion is almost a crime. While I’m not in the camp who claims jelly-scrolling ruins my enjoyment of the iPad, Apple could’ve done away with all this nonsense by just giving us ProMotion. And on a tablet starting at £500 – they probably should have included it.

One other feature it should have got though was Face ID. No argument can be offered as far as I can tell for why Apple didn’t give the iPad mini Face ID and do away with Touch ID – I mean all iPhone 16s get Face ID, so why not the iPad mini as well?

Pencil support & I/O

The 7th Gen iPad mini only supports two pencils The Pencil Pro at £129 or the USB-C Pencil which costs £79.

Although the Pencil Pro costs more you get the cool Barrel roll feature which lets you rotate the barrel to change the orientation of shaped pen and brush tools, Hover, Squeeze and Double Tap to quickly switch between tools – and the Haptic feedback too. All in all, I think it’s worth spending the extra for those functions – oh and it’s Find My compatible too.

On the positive side though you can connect your iPad to a TV or external display using a USB-C to HDMI adapter. Adapters that support HDMI 2.0 can output video at 4K resolution and 60Hz.

Speaking of that USB-C port it has improved this year and offers twice the data transfer speeds. The USB-C port on the iPad mini (A17 Pro) supports USB 3.1 with transfer speeds of up to 10 Gbps so if you regularly transfer files via an external SSD that will come in useful for you. You’ll get Wi-Fi 6E compatibility too if your router supports it.

All iPad minis are now eSIM only in case you were thinking you could still choose to have a physical SIM card option.

The battery life is not something I’ve noticed which I guess means it’s ok. Because the nature of what I tend to do on the mini is less intensive it typically lasts me a day and a half with a zero to full charge taking about 90 minutes.

Apple Intelligence

The iPad mini didn’t get an M-series chip but it did get the A17 chip from the iPhone 15 which means the iPad mini is your cheapest option if you want to buy into Apple Intelligence which is now rolling out in more and more regions.

All iPads feel fast & snappy and this one certainly doesn’t disappoint. Even if I’m using CapCut, Lightroom or Photoshop it never seems to struggle or slow up. The A17 Pro has a 30% faster CPU and a 25% faster GPU. All you need to know is that it’s quick. It comes with a 16-core Neural Engine, a 6-core CPU with 2 performance cores 4 efficiency cores and a 5-core GPU.

Although as we all know the roll-out of Apple Intelligence has been messy it is gradually starting to become more useful. We’ve now got Writing Tools, Image Playground, the new look Siri (even if it’s not actually that much better yet) and Clean-Up in the Photos app. One thing you can be certain of though is that now Apple has ripped the AI-chord we’ll see more and more features quickly. This week The Verge reported that Apple are even working on an ‘LLM Siri’ to compete with ChatGPT.

Never far away in any story about an iPad is Multi-tasking. Even on the iPad Pro, I’m not a fan of Stage Manager which because of the smaller screen isn’t even an option on the mini but you do get Split View which in my opinion is way more useable – particularly in this smaller form factor.

Final thoughts

As I mentioned earlier, part of the charm and appeal of the iPad mini is that’s not trying to be something it’s not. There is something adorable and affectionate about picking up the iPad mini.

Whereas the iPad Pro and iPad Air have direct competitors the mini doesn’t. You could argue that some of the foldables get close, but they are first and foremost phones – this, on the other hand, is a pure tablet through and through.

When I first started to use the iPad Pro this summer I remember writing that the iPad felt like a less intense way to work – well the iPad mini takes that relaxed feeling to a whole new level. This thing is just so much fun to use.

I’d almost argue that it’s a good job we didn’t get an M chip and magnetic connectors for a keyboard – that’s not what this iPad is all about. But that’s not to say it’s all play and no work for the iPad mini. Apple knows who they are selling to and a lot of these iPads end up in the corporate & professional world. Pilots love them as do doctors and nurses. That’s where its portability, durability & size-factor wins out.

The fact that Apple didn’t decide to ditch the iPad mini this year or leave it languishing untouched for years has to be a good sign. Although we’ll probably never get the iPad mini Pro that some folks have wanted it does seem to suggest that Apple is invested in the iPad mini being part of their Apple Intelligence future. And for that, we should be grateful.

Who’s the iPad 7th Gen for? If you have an iPad mini 5 it’s a no-brainer but if you have an iPad mini 6th Gen the choice is a little tougher. If you’ve used your current mini to death and the battery is starting to suffer then you have two options.

You could bag yourself a bargain from the Apple Refurbished store. Checking today I found a 256GB iPad mini 6 for only £459 or a 64GB model for £379. But just remember that you won’t be able to use Apple Intelligence on those models – so if that’s important to you, bear that in mind.

Although at £499 the iPad mini 7 isn’t cheap – which is why we should’ve had ProMotion and Face ID on here, it’s possibly the best iPad out there.

Turns out that this year, the word mini has been pretty lucky for Apple!