Apple iPad Mini 2024 overview: a brand new chip and Apple Intelligence don’t add as much as a lot.

I ought to confess proper up entrance that I’ve at all times beloved the iPad Mini. I’ve owned a number of; I’ve purchased them as presents for a number of members of the family. I desire a pill I can use to learn in mattress, throw into my overstuffed carry-on bag, or prop up on the toaster to assist me cook dinner dinner. The Mini is the one.

Each different one in all Apple’s tablets, from the $349 base mannequin to the efficiency monster that’s the M4 Professional, is about the identical factor: versatility. They’re massive slabs of glass that may be was something, as long as you might have the proper app or attachment. The Mini, however, with its 8.3-inch display, is nearer in measurement to an iPhone than to another iPad. It’s largely designed to be a go-everywhere gadget that isn’t your telephone. The larger iPads are more and more competing together with your laptop computer; the Mini very a lot nonetheless enhances it.

The Mini has at all times felt like an afterthought — up to date solely sometimes, pressured to run apps and an OS clearly designed for bigger screens — however the one-handed iPad was the one for me anyway.

This Mini, I feel, represents a brand new low for the product. It appears like an iPad designed by a provide chain, not by somebody who really desires you to love the product. It’s a bunch of latest and not-that-new elements smushed collectively, with none new specs or options to essentially set it aside — other than a whole lot of grand guarantees about how Apple Intelligence goes to vary all the pieces and also you’re completely going to want a tool that runs Apple Intelligence. So far as I can inform, that’s the entire pitch. Need Apple Intelligence? Need the small iPad? Get this one. You don’t have a alternative.

Apple Intelligence doesn’t exist but. One thing referred to as Apple Intelligence is transport subsequent week, however that’s solely the primary glimmer of Apple’s massive promise to reinvent the way in which you utilize your units. The complete product is months or years away. Till and except Apple Intelligence turns into game-changingly unimaginable, there are few good causes to purchase the brand new iPad Mini as a substitute of the previous one. 

It’s a superbly good pill, after all, in the way in which that every one iPads have been for years. If you would like an iPad Mini, purchase this one! It’s iPad Mini, and in addition your solely official alternative. However there’s not a lot right here to make you wish to improve from the 2021 mannequin and even the one earlier than. For studying and watching motion pictures, my 2018-era Mini remains to be holding up superb.

The one cause to purchase this iPad Mini is as a result of it’s the iPad Mini. It has little else going for it. You can spend $100 extra and get a significantly better pill within the M2 Air, or you can avoid wasting cash and discover an older or refurbished 2021 Mini. This Mini, at $499, is perhaps the worst worth within the iPad lineup.

There are three genuinely new issues about this Mini. The primary is that it helps the Apple Pencil Professional, which magnets to the aspect of the Mini to cost and join. The Mini can do the entire Pencil Professional issues different iPads can — all of the hovering and squeezing and barrel-rolling works simply superb, and should you’re a Mini-toting artist, this is perhaps definitely worth the improve all by itself. When you’ve got an older Pencil that sticks into the USB port, that’ll work, too, however the Mini doesn’t assist the Pencil 2, for some baffling cause.

The second change is the colours: the Mini comes within the typical house grey and the pale gold “starlight,” plus a brand new blue and purple. Mine is blue, and the colour is so faint that I needed to verify to verify I didn’t really simply have a silver mannequin. (There isn’t any silver mannequin.) Subsequent to my blue iPhone 16, it seems to be woefully pale.

Better of all, you get extra storage for the worth! That’s a win for certain. The Mini’s base mannequin now comes with 128GB of storage, which is sweet and lengthy overdue; $499 for a pill with 64GB of storage is simply foolish.

This new Mini is principally a rip-and-replace inner improve of the final mannequin, which is a little bit of a bummer. The entire different iPad fashions have moved the front-facing digicam to the middle of the panorama aspect of the gadget; on the Mini, it’s nonetheless stubbornly in portrait, although the kickstand on the official Good Folio case props it up in panorama mode. The “jelly scrolling” impact from the final mannequin remains to be very a lot current. The Mini additionally nonetheless makes use of Contact ID within the energy button. Face ID is so significantly better and quicker, particularly on a tool whose energy button is continually rotating in your arms, that going again to tapping my index finger felt like an enormous step backward.

A very powerful new spec is the Apple A17 Professional chip, the identical one you’d discover in final yr’s iPhone 15 Professional and Professional Max. Effectively, not precisely the identical one: the 15 Professional’s chip has six CPU cores and 6 GPU cores, however the Mini has six CPU and 5 GPU. This has led some good individuals to conclude that these are so-called “binned” chips, which suggests they got here out of the manufacturing course of unable to achieve most efficiency for no matter cause. (Right here’s explainer of the way it all works.) It’s a traditional sufficient observe, but it surely does point out that you simply’re not getting the perfect of the perfect — and even the perfect of final yr’s greatest.

In my exams, the Mini is round 30 % quicker than the previous Mini each in CPU and GPU efficiency (which matches Apple’s advertising and marketing) and scores barely decrease throughout the board than the iPhone 15 Professional and Professional Max. The M4-powered iPad Professional blows it out of the water on each entrance, and the M2-powered Air additionally beats the Mini badly on each rating however single-core CPU efficiency. (Which completely tracks for boring chip design causes, but it surely doesn’t actually matter in on a regular basis use.) Even the M1 iPad Air, which got here out in 2022, bests the Mini in most benchmark exams.

After I push the Mini, I do discover its limits. It was capable of deal with Name of Obligation: Warzone even on excessive settings, with solely the occasional dropped body, however as quickly as I cranked issues up in Murderer’s Creed Mirage, it stuttered so badly that the sport grew to become onerous to play. The sport even drops frames on medium settings. In Madden NFL Cell, Actual Racing 3, and clearly any informal recreation I attempted, the A17 Professional held up properly. I doubt most individuals on the lookout for a Mirage machine are excited about a Mini anyway, so relaxation assured, this’ll Wordle simply superb. The battery holds up okay, too: I killed it in about 8.5 hours of studying, streaming Neighborhood on Peacock, and taking part in numerous video games. That roughly tracks with my regular iPad expertise.

In additional on a regular basis use, the brand new Mini feels one beat quicker than the final mannequin. Apps open a quarter-second faster, iMovie renders barely faster, and picture edits really feel only a smidge extra fast. The M2 Air feels one other beat quicker and the M4 Professional possibly one other half-beat past that. The M4 is nicely into diminishing returns territory for many issues, and also you’d actually solely discover the distinction between any of them aspect by aspect. They’re all very quick.

Nevertheless it nonetheless issues that the Mini is comparatively underpowered. My recommendation with iPads (and most devices) has lengthy been to purchase probably the most highly effective factor you’ll be able to afford and plan to make use of it ceaselessly. And if Apple Intelligence actually goes to be good and essential, you’re going to want all of the horsepower you will get. This new Mini in all probability is the only least highly effective gadget that may run Apple Intelligence. (The bottom iPad, which is unquestionably much less highly effective than the Mini, is the one iPad Apple sells that doesn’t assist the function.)

That’s a very massive drawback for the Mini as a result of to purchase this one now’s totally a wager that Apple Intelligence goes to be instantly definitely worth the improve. Would you wager that Apple’s AI, which hasn’t shipped but and gained’t ship in whole till a minimum of subsequent spring and doubtless nicely after, might be unmissably nice earlier than the subsequent Mini comes out? I definitely wouldn’t. Apple has some good concepts about what Siri can do in your behalf and the way AI may make it simpler so that you can do math issues or write emails, however a lot of these options are nonetheless new and imperfect, and plenty of others simply straight-up don’t exist.

And wait, dangle on: should you’re doing a whole lot of handwritten math or writing a ton of emails, you’d doubtless relatively have a much bigger display or a keyboard attachment, wouldn’t you? The brand new Mini ostensibly exists for a consumer who desires the best possible pen expertise, one million new AI-enabled productiveness instruments, and absolutely the smallest display that provides them each, irrespective of the tradeoffs. That’s a fairly tight Venn diagram, should you ask me.

There are such a lot of different attention-grabbing issues Apple may do with the Mini. It may give it iPhone Professional Max-level imaging and a Digicam Management button and make this the gadget it hopes Hollywood will use to make motion pictures. (I’m vehemently in opposition to individuals taking pictures in public with iPads, however the Mini is sufficiently small to get away with it — and a viewfinder this massive can be wonderful.) Apple may make a charging dock that turns it right into a music or good residence controller a la the Pixel Pill. It may construct a Spine-style controller and make it a handheld console. As a substitute, all you get is identical flimsy cowl, which is just too costly and always coming unstuck from the again of my gadget. 

The entire pitch for the brand new Mini, other than the truth that it’s the iPad Mini, is that it’s the smallest iPad made for Apple Intelligence. Apple Intelligence higher be a hell of an improve as a result of, with out it, the brand new Mini isn’t a lot of an improve in any respect.

Pictures by David Pierce / The Verge