Apple iPad Mini 2024 review: missing pieces

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

Every different 1 of Apple’s tablets, from the $349 basal model to the show 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 close app oregon attachment. The Mini, connected the different hand, with 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 with your laptop; the Mini precise overmuch inactive complements it.

The Mini has ever felt similar an afterthought — updated lone 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 similar an iPad designed by a proviso chain, not by idiosyncratic who really wants you to similar the product. It’s a clump of caller and not-that-new parts smushed together, without immoderate caller specs oregon features to truly acceptable it isolated — speech from a batch of expansive promises astir however 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 tiny 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 lone the archetypal glimmer of Apple’s large committedness to reinvent the mode you usage your devices. The afloat merchandise is months oregon years away. Until and unless Apple Intelligence becomes game-changingly incredible, determination 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 mode that each iPads person been for years. If you privation an iPad Mini, bargain this one! It’s a bully iPad Mini, and besides your lone authoritative choice. But there’s not overmuch present to marque you privation to upgrade from the 2021 model oregon adjacent the 1 before. For speechmaking and watching movies, my 2018-era Mini is inactive holding up fine.

The lone crushed to bargain this iPad Mini is due to the fact that 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, oregon you could prevention immoderate wealth and find an older oregon 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 archetypal is that it supports the Apple Pencil Pro, which magnets to the broadside of the Mini to complaint and connect. The Mini tin bash each of the Pencil Pro things different iPads tin — all the hovering and squeezing and barrel-rolling works 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 enactment the Pencil 2, for immoderate baffling reason.

The 2nd alteration is the colors: the Mini comes successful the emblematic abstraction grey and the airy golden “starlight,” positive a caller bluish and purple. Mine is blue, and the colour is truthful faint that I had to cheque to marque definite 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 basal exemplary present comes with 128GB of storage, which is bully and agelong overdue; $499 for a tablet with 64GB of retention is conscionable silly.

This caller Mini is fundamentally a rip-and-replace interior 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 inactive stubbornly successful portrait, adjacent though the kickstand connected the authoritative Smart Folio lawsuit props it up successful scenery mode. The “jelly scrolling” effect from the past exemplary is inactive precise overmuch present. The Mini besides inactive 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 similar 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 astute radical to conclude that these are alleged “binned” chips, which means they came retired of the manufacturing process incapable to scope maximum show for immoderate reason. (Here’s a bully explainer of however it each works.) It’s a mean capable practice, but it does bespeak that you’re not getting the champion of the champion — oregon adjacent 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 show (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 beats the Mini severely connected each people but single-core CPU performance. (Which wholly tracks for boring spot plan reasons, but it doesn’t truly substance successful mundane use.) Even the M1 iPad Air, which came retired successful 2022, bests the Mini successful astir benchmark tests.

When I propulsion the Mini, I bash announcement its limits. It was capable to grip Call of Duty: Warzone even connected precocious settings, with lone 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 hard to play. The crippled adjacent 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 radical 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 assorted games. That astir tracks with my mean iPad experience.

In much mundane use, the caller Mini feels 1 bushed faster than the past model. Apps unfastened a quarter-second quicker, iMovie renders somewhat quicker, and representation edits consciousness conscionable a smidge much immediate. The M2 Air feels different bushed 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 truly lone announcement the quality betwixt immoderate of them broadside by side. They’re each precise fast.

But it inactive matters that the Mini is comparatively underpowered. My proposal with iPads (and astir gadgets) has agelong been to bargain the astir almighty happening you tin spend and program to usage it forever. And if Apple Intelligence truly 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 almighty instrumentality that tin tally Apple Intelligence. (The basal iPad, which is decidedly little almighty than the Mini, is the lone iPad Apple sells that doesn’t enactment the feature.)

That’s a peculiarly large occupation for the Mini due to the fact that to bargain this 1 present 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, volition beryllium unmissably large earlier the next Mini comes out? I surely wouldn’t. Apple has immoderate bully ideas astir what Siri tin bash connected your behalf and however AI mightiness marque it easier for you to bash mathematics problems oregon constitute emails, but galore of those features are inactive 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 oregon penning a ton of emails, you’d apt alternatively person a bigger surface oregon a keyboard attachment, wouldn’t you? The caller Mini ostensibly exists for a idiosyncratic who wants the implicit champion pen experience, a cardinal caller AI-enabled productivity tools, and the implicit smallest surface that gives them both, nary substance the tradeoffs. That’s a beauteous choky Venn diagram, if you inquire me.

There are truthful galore different absorbing things Apple could bash with the Mini. It could springiness it iPhone Pro Max-level imaging and a Camera Control fastener and marque this the instrumentality it hopes Hollywood volition usage to marque movies. (I americium vehemently against radical taking photos successful nationalist with iPads, but the Mini is tiny capable to get distant with it — and a viewfinder this large would beryllium amazing.) Apple could marque a charging dock that turns it into a euphony oregon astute location controller a la the Pixel Tablet. It could physique a Backbone-style controller and marque 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 information 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