Apple iPad Mini (A17 Pro, 2024) Review: Portable and Powerful

I similar the Pencil Pro chiefly for its caller “squeeze” capableness that triggers the instrumentality palette. It feels much intuitive than double-tap, particularly portion rapidly jotting notes down. It besides has a built-in gyroscope sensor, which lets you alteration the predisposition of the tools arsenic you twist them, giving you finer control. You could prevention immoderate currency and get the Apple Pencil USB-C instead, which the iPad Mini besides supports, but that exemplary skips galore important features similar wireless charging, unit sensitivity, double-tap, and squeeze.

The Pencil Pro often dips to $95 connected Amazon, truthful the $26 quality is easy worthy it. But it bears repeating: Would it person killed Apple to support second-gen Apple Pencil support?

Snappy and Smart(ish)

Powering the iPad Mini is the A17 Pro, astir the aforesaid processor arsenic the 1 successful the iPhone 15 Pro. Nearly. The spot wrong the iPhone 15 Pro has a six-core CPU and six-core GPU, whereas the iPad Mini has a six-core CPU and five-core GPU. That means a tiny deed to graphics performance, but successful reality, you'll apt ne'er announcement this unless you're playing the astir graphically demanding games.

Not excessively agelong ago, I started reusing the older 2021 Mini (I needed a tiny tablet to ticker TV connected during a infirmary enactment with a household member), and honestly, I haven't noticed a large leap successful show with the 2024 model—at least, with the mundane tasks astir radical are utilizing these tablets for. I've utilized the seventh-gen Mini for note-taking, streaming Gilmore Girls successful the inheritance passim the workday, checking emails erstwhile I don't consciousness similar grabbing my laptop, speechmaking an ebook connected the Kindle app, and watching YouTube videos. It tin grip each of these tasks with ease.