Apple iPad Mini 2024 review: missing pieces

I should confess correct up beforehand that I person ever loved the iPad Mini. I’ve owned several; I’ve bought them arsenic gifts for aggregate family members. I want a tablet I tin usage to publication successful bed, propulsion into my overstuffed carry-on bag, aliases prop up connected the toaster to thief maine navigator dinner. The Mini is the one.

Every different 1 of Apple’s tablets, from the $349 guidelines model to the capacity monster that is the M4 Pro, is astir the aforesaid thing: versatility. They’re large slabs of solid that tin beryllium turned into anything, truthful agelong arsenic you person the correct app aliases attachment. The Mini, connected the different hand, pinch its 8.3-inch screen, is person successful size to an iPhone than to immoderate different iPad. It’s mostly designed to beryllium a go-everywhere instrumentality that isn’t your phone. The bigger iPads are progressively competing pinch your laptop; the Mini very overmuch still complements it.

The Mini has ever felt for illustration an afterthought — updated only occasionally, forced to tally apps and an OS intelligibly designed for larger screens — but the one-handed iPad was the 1 for maine anyway.

This Mini, I think, represents a caller debased for the product. It feels for illustration an iPad designed by a proviso chain, not by personification who really wants you to for illustration the product. It’s a bunch of caller and not-that-new parts smushed together, without immoderate caller specs aliases features to really group it isolated — speech from a batch of expansive promises astir really Apple Intelligence is going to alteration everything and you’re perfectly going to request a instrumentality that runs Apple Intelligence. As acold arsenic I tin tell, that’s the full pitch. Want Apple Intelligence? Want the mini iPad? Get this one. You don’t person a choice.

Apple Intelligence doesn’t beryllium yet. Something called Apple Intelligence is shipping adjacent week, but that’s only the first glimmer of Apple’s large committedness to reinvent the measurement you usage your devices. The afloat merchandise is months aliases years away. Until and unless Apple Intelligence becomes game-changingly incredible, location are fewer bully reasons to bargain the caller iPad Mini alternatively of the aged one. 

It’s a perfectly bully tablet, of course, successful the measurement that each iPads person been for years. If you want an iPad Mini, bargain this one! It’s a bully iPad Mini, and besides your only charismatic choice. But there’s not overmuch present to make you want to upgrade from the 2021 model aliases moreover the 1 before. For reference and watching movies, my 2018-era Mini is still holding up fine.

The only logic to bargain this iPad Mini is because it’s the iPad Mini. It has small other going for it. You could walk $100 much and get a overmuch amended tablet successful the M2 Air, aliases you could prevention immoderate money and find an older aliases refurbished 2021 Mini. This Mini, astatine $499, mightiness beryllium the worst worth successful the iPad lineup.

There are 3 genuinely caller things astir this Mini. The first is that it supports the Apple Pencil Pro, which magnets to the broadside of the Mini to complaint and connect. The Mini tin do each of the Pencil Pro things different iPads tin — all the hovering and squeezing and barrel-rolling useful conscionable fine, and if you’re a Mini-toting artist, this mightiness beryllium worthy the upgrade each by itself. If you person an older Pencil that sticks into the USB port, that’ll work, too, but the Mini doesn’t support the Pencil 2, for immoderate baffling reason.

The 2nd alteration is the colors: the Mini comes successful the emblematic abstraction grey and the ray golden “starlight,” positive a caller bluish and purple. Mine is blue, and the colour is truthful faint that I had to cheque to make judge I didn’t really conscionable person a metallic model. (There is nary metallic model.) Next to my bluish iPhone 16, it looks woefully pale.

Best of all, you get much retention for the price! That’s a triumph for sure. The Mini’s guidelines exemplary now comes pinch 128GB of storage, which is bully and agelong overdue; $499 for a tablet pinch 64GB of retention is conscionable silly.

This caller Mini is fundamentally a rip-and-replace soul upgrade of the past model, which is simply a spot of a bummer. All of the different iPad models person moved the front-facing camera to the halfway of the scenery broadside of the device; connected the Mini, it’s still stubbornly successful portrait, moreover though the kickstand connected the charismatic Smart Folio lawsuit props it up successful scenery mode. The “jelly scrolling” effect from the past exemplary is still very overmuch present. The Mini besides still uses Touch ID successful the powerfulness button. Face ID is truthful overmuch amended and faster, particularly connected a instrumentality whose powerfulness fastener is perpetually rotating successful your hands, that going backmost to tapping my scale digit felt for illustration a immense measurement backward.

The astir important caller spec is the Apple A17 Pro chip, the aforesaid 1 you’d find successful past year’s iPhone 15 Pro and Pro Max. Well, not precisely the aforesaid one: the 15 Pro’s spot has six CPU cores and six GPU cores, but the Mini has six CPU and five GPU. This has led some smart group to conclude that these are alleged “binned” chips, which intends they came retired of the manufacturing process incapable to scope maximum capacity for immoderate reason. (Here’s a bully explainer of really it each works.) It’s a normal capable practice, but it does bespeak that you’re not getting the champion of the champion — aliases moreover the champion of past year’s best.

In my tests, the Mini is astir 30 percent faster than the aged Mini some successful CPU and GPU capacity (which matches Apple’s marketing) and scores somewhat little crossed the committee than the iPhone 15 Pro and Pro Max. The M4-powered iPad Pro blows it retired of the h2o connected each front, and the M2-powered Air besides thumps the Mini severely connected each people but single-core CPU performance. (Which wholly tracks for boring spot creation reasons, but it doesn’t really matter successful mundane use.) Even the M1 iPad Air, which came retired successful 2022, bests the Mini successful astir benchmark tests.

When I push the Mini, I do announcement its limits. It was capable to grip Call of Duty: Warzone even connected precocious settings, pinch only the occasional dropped frame, but arsenic soon arsenic I cranked things up successful Assassin’s Creed Mirage, it stuttered truthful severely that the crippled became difficult to play. The crippled moreover drops frames connected mean settings. In Madden NFL Mobile, Real Racing 3, and evidently immoderate casual crippled I tried, the A17 Pro held up nicely. I uncertainty astir group looking for a Mirage machine are reasoning astir a Mini anyway, truthful remainder assured, this’ll Wordle just fine. The artillery holds up okay, too: I killed it successful astir 8.5 hours of reading, streaming Community on Peacock, and playing various games. That astir tracks pinch my normal iPad experience.

In much mundane use, the caller Mini feels 1 hit faster than the past model. Apps unfastened a quarter-second quicker, iMovie renders somewhat quicker, and image edits consciousness conscionable a smidge much immediate. The M2 Air feels different hit faster and the M4 Pro possibly different half-beat beyond that. The M4 is good into diminishing returns territory for astir things, and you’d really only announcement the quality betwixt immoderate of them broadside by side. They’re each very fast.

But it still matters that the Mini is comparatively underpowered. My proposal pinch iPads (and astir gadgets) has agelong been to bargain the astir powerful point you tin spend and scheme to usage it forever. And if Apple Intelligence really is going to beryllium bully and important, you’re going to request each the horsepower you tin get. This caller Mini astir apt is the azygous slightest powerful instrumentality that tin tally Apple Intelligence. (The guidelines iPad, which is decidedly little powerful than the Mini, is the only iPad Apple sells that doesn’t support the feature.)

That’s a peculiarly large problem for the Mini because to bargain this 1 now is wholly a stake that Apple Intelligence is going to beryllium instantly worthy the upgrade. Would you wager that Apple’s AI, which hasn’t shipped yet and won’t vessel successful full until astatine slightest adjacent outpouring and astir apt good after, will beryllium unmissably awesome earlier the next Mini comes out? I surely wouldn’t. Apple has immoderate bully ideas astir what Siri tin do connected your behalf and really AI mightiness make it easier for you to do mathematics problems aliases constitute emails, but galore of those features are still caller and imperfect, and galore others conscionable straight-up don’t exist.

And wait, bent on: if you’re doing a batch of handwritten mathematics aliases penning a ton of emails, you’d apt alternatively person a bigger surface aliases a keyboard attachment, wouldn’t you? The caller Mini ostensibly exists for a personification who wants the absolute champion pen experience, a cardinal caller AI-enabled productivity tools, and the absolute smallest surface that gives them both, nary matter the tradeoffs. That’s a beautiful tight Venn diagram, if you inquire me.

There are truthful galore different absorbing things Apple could do pinch the Mini. It could springiness it iPhone Pro Max-level imaging and a Camera Control fastener and make this the instrumentality it hopes Hollywood will usage to make movies. (I americium vehemently against group taking photos successful nationalist pinch iPads, but the Mini is mini capable to get distant pinch it — and a viewfinder this large would beryllium amazing.) Apple could make a charging dock that turns it into a euphony aliases smart location controller a la the Pixel Tablet. It could build a Backbone-style controller and make it a handheld console. Instead, each you get is the aforesaid flimsy cover, which is excessively costly and perpetually coming unstuck from the backmost of my device. 

The full transportation for the caller Mini, speech from the truth that it’s the iPad Mini, is that it’s the smallest iPad made for Apple Intelligence. Apple Intelligence amended beryllium a hellhole of an upgrade because, without it, the caller Mini isn’t overmuch of an upgrade astatine all.

Photography by David Pierce / The Verge