It might not be packing every feature – but it’s enough…for now

In many ways, the iPad mini offers the best of everything – it’s just let down in one area in a pretty major way.

A new version of the iPad mini was released late last year – catchily called the iPad mini (A17 Pro) – yeah, I know, it rolls off the tongue, huh, and it was inevitably met with a mixed or lukewarm reaction – but is that fair?

In the hater’s defence, I’ll admit this release was more of a refresh than a re-launch – but is that a bad thing? After all, the iPad mini is ever so good at what it does, which begs the question did it need a total makeover? Sometimes, manufacturers make improvements that aren’t needed and are guilty of making changes just for change’s sake.

iPad minis trump card

Without a doubt, where the iPad mini wins out is in two crucial areas – size and price. Putting to one side the 10th gen iPad, it’s still the cheapest way to get into the Apple ecosystem – and, dare I say it, Apple Intelligence.

The iPad mini I bought was the cheapest one in the lineup and cost only £499, and so far, after a couple of months of use, I haven’t got that much bad to say about it.

Many of the ‘missing’ features and functionality that folks are saying they were hoping to see on this latest release kind of fly in the face of what this iPad mini represents. Some of those features would blow the price point and make it into more of an iPad mini Pro – and for the record, in my mind, that would be a mistake anyway.

And as for its other unique calling card – its size, it’s just about perfect. I think Apple has hit the sweet spot in that regard. It’s big enough to be useful and productive but small enough to still fit into coat pockets, handbags and even jean back pockets.

Let the iPad mini be what it is and not try to force it to be what it’s not.

Display-gate

I found that I reach less for my iPhone now – even with its huge 6.9-inch OLED display. What makes that odd is that in every way, the iPhone display beats the iPad minis hands down, but that extra inch-and-a-half of the 8.9-inch, in reality, makes a huge difference in day-to-day use.

A lot’s been said about the display on the iPad mini – so let’s get into it shall we?

Firstly, the bezels. Bezels have never been something that causes me to lose sleep – whether it’s on a Mac, iPhone or iPad. Yeah, I’ll grant you that the slimmer bezels on the iPhone 16 Pro Max and iPad Pro – but they are different beasts.

When you grab the iPad mini, there is a natural tendency to hold it more like a notebook or E-Reader – upright in portrait mode, and in that context, the slightly larger bezels don’t offend. If anything, they lean into what the iPad mini is all about – remember what I said about not trying to make this iPad something it’s not. Also, just remember how thick the bezels used to be on an iPad mini – so Apple did listen and I think has slimmed them down as much as possible.

Brightness and the refresh rate were two other areas that were much discussed when the iPad mini was first shown to us. It only has 500 nits of brightness, which is a little on the stingy side when you compare it to the iPhone’s 2000 nits peak outdoor brightness.

However, these devices are designed to be used in different ways. The iPad Pro is far less likely to be used on the fly but needs its brightness because of the nature of the work you’ll tend to do with it. The iPad mini is designed to be carried and used away from home most of the time so a bit of a brighter panel would’ve been handy. Would I like it to be brighter – yup – but have I ever found it unusable…nope!

The number of times I use it in direct sunlight is pretty limited, so the brightness, although not brilliant, is a bit of a non-problem. Anyway, for reference, it’s the same brightness as the equally portable MacBook Air – and you don’t hear many complaints about that panel, do you?

Again horses for courses. Remember this iPad mini cost me £499!

Now, let’s chat about the refresh rate. Sheepishly, Apple makes no mention under the tech specs about the display on the iPad minis page that this display is only 60Hz.

I’m braced and ready for the incoming on this one – but I don’t honestly give a flying hoot about it – and here’s why.

For starters, I’m not a gamer – you may be, and I can see why the lower refresh rate is an issue for you – but I can only review and speak as I find. For me, it’s never been an issue. When I’m using the iPad mini, I don’t tend to be sitting here ferociously scrubbing up and down. Sure, I scroll, but at a kind of ‘normal’, sane speed, and in that user case, the 60Hz is not an issue.

I’m not sitting here A/B’ing it against my iPad Pro. That iPad has a very different role to play. It’s generally used for more creative, higher-end tasks – but even then I don’t pick up on the 120Hz refresh rate. The brightness, the black blacks, the tandem OLED and the pure clarity of the iPad Pros panel – sure, they slap you in the face and are undeniable, but the 120Hz versus 60Hz – nah, not an issue.

Chip time

I know that mentioning Apple Intelligence is a bit of a joke right now, but it will get there – if AI is something that bothers you that much.

But my point here is that this iPad mini is ready for it – in other words, it’ll see you right for years to come. It’s got Apple’s A17 chip in it, although again, like the refresh rate they don’t tell you on the tech spec page how much RAM it has. But as it’s Apple Intelligence ready we know it has 8GB of memory as that’s the minimum requirement for it. And for all those saying not that much changed with this iPad mini – that’s twice the RAM of the previous model.

And the core counts are pretty healthy as well – it’s got a 6-core CPU, a 5-core GPU and the same 16-core Neural engine as all of Apple’s other current devices. So, I’d say for £500 this iPad mini is packing a pretty decent punch.

Bits and bobs

There are no media encoding or decoding engines. Although the use case for that is going to be pretty limited it means that although you can run Final Cut and DaVinci Resolve on here, it’s not going to be the best experience. The limit of the video work I do on the iPad mini is adding some captions to videos using CapCut and exporting short 1080p videos.

Yes, it has USB-C which is handy from a charging point of view – but it’s the slow USB-C port on here. But, again, thinking of who this mini is probably most aimed at and who’ll end up using it the most, maybe that isn’t as big of a problem as I’m thinking it might be.

At least now you can use external SSDs to transfer some files directly to the iPad rather than waiting for cloud syncing – but I wouldn’t suggest trying to move anything too large about as it’s only a USB 3 port with transfer speeds of up to only 10Gb/s. From a charging perspective, I just topped it up from 45% – 100% in about 45 minutes.

That’s a good point though – the battery on the iPad mini feels as if it goes on forever. It’s a bit like with my AirPods Pro – you just forget that this thing ever needs charging.

Freed from having to support and charge a keyboard the battery life is brilliant on here. Where the iPad Pro certainly suffers from having the case & pencil attached for most of its life, the mini just goes on forever.

Although I would never want a Magic Keyboard type of accessory on here, the case which I got about a month or so into using it is priceless – it just takes using the iPad to another level.

Take note

I mentioned earlier that the design of the iPad mini makes it feel more like a notebook – well, I guess that’s the reason that I find myself jotting down notes on here way more than the iPad Pro.

I’m no artist – so the only thing I use the pencil for is note-taking and photo editing – and on here, because of the pencil, both feel so natural. If I’m on a call and have to take notes, it’ll always be the iPad mini that I have to hand.

Unlike the iPad Pro where I don’t want to de-nature the screen at all, because I use the iPad mini more like a notebook, I’ve recently started using a Paperlike protector on it. It does away with that scratchy feeling you get using the pencil natively on the glass and just makes the whole experience feel more natural – and paper-like. I know, who’d of guessed right.

I’m generally not big on screen protectors and never use them on my phone or iPad Pro – but because of the way I’ve started to use the iPad mini using the Paperlike screen protector has been a natural addition.

Cameras

I don’t think many of us would naturally ever reach for the iPad mini to take pictures, but where it should shine is for FaceTime, Zoom & Teams calls – but sadly I never use the iPad mini for those – I always reach for the iPad Pro.

It’s not because the cameras or mics suck – it has a 12MP front-facing Centre Stage camera and decent enough mics – but they stuck the camera in the wrong place. Even the base iPad now has the camera on the long edge, but for whatever reason Apple didn’t bother moving it this time around.

It’s such a shame. For the way that I use this iPad mini, it would have been the perfect device to use for meetings – but with the camera in the wrong place it just feels too awkward and clumsy – such a shame.

It’s even more of a miss as the mini has DisplayPort compatibility and will also support one 4K external display at up to 30Hz. There’s no Stage Manager option on the iPad mini – but with an external display attached, it does give you the option to work from a bigger display – something that might be handy if you’re using Lightroom and editing photos for example. With the Espresso portable display I used it scaled up perfectly as well.

In every way except the camera being in the wrong place this iPad mini is the perfect, portable solution to get most of your daily work done on the fly with great battery life.

Even though this iPad mini is more budget-minded, it has the same Wi‑Fi 6E and Bluetooth 5.3 connectivity as my iPad Pro – making it quick and solid to use pretty much anywhere – I’ve had no drop-outs or connectivity issues whatsoever.

With Apple’s recent announcement of their first C1 Modem though, how long do you think it’ll be until we find that modem in an iPad mini – well any iPad come to that. Honestly, I know it’s early days for Apple and modems, but considering the massive difference that Apple silicon had on everything it went into if the C1 modem can deliver similar improvements to power efficiency, then we are on the edge of yet another huge step forward.

Overall iPad mini experience

From someone who hadn’t even owned or used an iPad regularly until last summer, I’m suddenly finding that life with an iPad suits me ever so well.

Whereas the iPad Pro tends to stay put in my studio, the mini is nearly always with me. When I stop for lunch during the day – it’s the iPad mini I reach for to look at Apple News. If I want to settle back on the sofa in the evening and watch some YouTube – generally it’ll be on the mini. For note taking it’s a no-brainer and more and more these days I even find myself doing some light photo edits on it as well. The fact I can use the same Pencil Pro on both iPads is a big win and with that Paperlike finish on it now it makes the whole experience so much more tactile.

The one big mistake they made in my mind was the placement of the camera – and that is such a massive shame. As I said before. With the camera where it should be, on the long edge, this iPad mini would have very nearly been perfect.