iPad Mini 2024 review continues

More than ever, the 7th-gen iPad mini splits the difference between Apple’s smartphones and tablets. You won’t fit it in your pocket, but it fits nicely in a small bag. You won’t be drawing complex drawings on its 8.3-inch display, but you will be writing notes or using the latest Apple Pencil to edit small pictures. You could spend hundreds of dollars more on a more capable iPad or opt for a smaller screen that seems to support iPadOS better than its bigger brothers.

We’re still finishing up benchmarks and battery tests for a full review, but the iPad mini is still worth reviewing, especially considering Apple Intelligence—the first pieces of which are set to debut in Oct. 28. So I thought, sitting at my desk, one hand holding the 13-inch iPad Pro M4, the other with the 6-inch iPad mini, which is expected to be shipped from Wednesday. Which one should I choose? I think the iPad mini fits into my life a lot better than a big tablet with more horsepower, and while it’s not revolutionary, this is the best version of the mini we’ve had in years. The only question is how much Apple Intelligence will really change the way we can use the tiny iPad.

How would you compare the two? One starts at $1,300 for its size. Apple’s thinnest, most powerful, and not to mention most expensive iPad to date. Compared to that, the humble mini starts at $500. It actually has the same Air-like chassis as the 6th-gen iPad mini from 2021. Now, it comes with double the RAM—up to 8 GB—and 128 GB of boot storage compared to the last generation’s 64 GB. same original price tag. Looking at the retail price, it’s a better deal with updated specs. More than ever, the iPad makes the case for small tablets over large Rosetta Stone-sized slates.

iPad Mini 2024 Review: Build Quality

The iPad mini shares the same chassis as the 2021 model. It’s very similar to the Air, which means it’s 6.3mm thin—perfect for most purposes, though, with its usual wide bezels. Unlike the Air, it comes in fun colors like light blue and purple. My dark gray iPad review unit looks fine, if normal, but the purple makes me jealous. Besides the new chip, an added benefit to go with this year’s iPad is its WiFI 6E connection and USB-C port that supports data transfer up to 10 GB/s, double that of Type 6.

While the iPad Pro was the standard treatment of Apple’s latest silicon, the M4 chip, the 2024 iPad mini has the A17 Pro chip, the same processor found in the iPhone 15 Pro. You already know that this new iPad will be faster than the 2021 version with its A15 Bionic CPU, but it’s still the same thing. The iPad mini is an Apple tablet at its core but with the added compatibility of the Apple Pencil Pro—my favorite stylus.

Unfortunately, like all other iPads from 2024, they are only compatible with Pro and Apple Pencil USB. If you have a 2nd-gen or older Apple Pencil, it won’t stick or work with the new iPad. Apple said this is because the M4 iPad Pro needs to redesign its interface to fit its new slim form factor. Whatever the truth, it’s still a pain for anyone planning to move from the previous mini to the 7th-gen.

As for the cameras, it’s exactly what you’d expect. There is a 12MP rear sensor and a 12MP wide-angle front-facing camera. It’s useful for family photos a bit, but let’s be honest: you’re not buying an iPad for its camera at any price. The front camera uses Center Stage, which adjusts the zoom level to keep you in the frame. I used it during a long video call, and it works well enough. However, I experienced about 20% battery drain in 40 minutes when using video calling with the mid-frame feature in the Microsoft Teams app.

You’re still only looking at Apple’s flavor of LCD, “Liquid Retinae,” and its standard brightness is good enough. We have already had the opportunity to play with Apple’s AI capabilities in iOS 18.1 Beta, and with that feature of the same set included in the iPad, it will not change the way you use your tablet.

iPad Mini 2024 review: Apple Intelligence and iPadOS 18

Although it’s been enough time to wait for the iPad mini update, the real reason Apple has brought this late entry is Apple Intelligence. The company’s latest iPadOS 18.1 release candidate gives a great idea of ​​how users will adapt to the tech giant’s AI features. These include Writing Tools, notification summaries, and several additional photo editing features such as cleaning.

Starting with Clean Up, I found it to be a huge improvement from the early beta days, but like Google’s Magic Eraser, it’s not a fix for all your fake photos. It can erase background details much better than objects in the foreground, and you may find it leaves behind object trails or shadows. At least it’s a relatively simple system. All you need to do is circle the object with your finger or Pencil, and Apple will automatically remove it. The only problem is how long it takes to load when you click the Clean button within the Apple Photos app.

Writing Tools is much more than a mixed bag. I personally have no reason to use any feature rewriting tools that will make my emails sound more “professional”. The test feature is not bad. It will also change the sentences in my emails to correct any accidental comma fragments. Unfortunately, I can’t currently display Writing Tools in Google Docs. Maybe that could change in the future, but Google is promoting its AI tools in Workspace apps.

Summarizing can be useful, although the basic “Summary” feature boils down a long email to the point where it loses all nuance. I prefer the “Highlights” feature, which makes the email bullet points. It does a great job of taking a long product short full of PR mumbo jumbo and making it shorter and more clear, although I still need to jump back to the original text to test the AI ​​function.

The new Siri interface is a great improvement. Instead of a large floating orb, Siri is now presented as a wavy, colorful border. The upgrade also allows you to set it to send a text to Siri, which works great if you don’t want others around you to wonder why you’re asking the assistant, “How do I take a screen recording?”

Apple’s improved Siri should have all the product information on Apple’s support pages linked to the main language model. However, when I ask common product questions like “How can I use my iPad to scan documents?” or “How do I fix a photo when someone blinks?” used Internet-based effects rather than anything directly from Apple. This will probably change in the full release, but for now, using Siri is the same as before.

Apple has improved iPadOS since it last released a smaller iPad in 2021, but some of those features still aren’t available on the smaller-screen iPad. For example, the iPad mini 2024 cannot use Stage Manager on the 8.3-inch display to perform many tasks better. Instead, you are limited to Split View.

Even on the 13-inch iPad, Stage Manager couldn’t write about the lack of flexibility like macOS. Even with Split Screen, smaller-screen iPads are no better at multitasking than your regular iPhone. You can drag multiple windows to the 6.2-inch display of the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 6. Of course, it probably wouldn’t be intuitive on such a small display, but I’d like to have the option.

iPad Mini 2024 Review: A Tablet I Can Actually Use

Along with the Apple Pencil and the regular Apple folio, I didn’t feel like I was missing anything from the iPad mini despite its size. It’s nice to have a device that’s small enough to type with my thumbs in landscape mode yet larger than my iPhone for watching videos or taking notes. I don’t need it to be anything more than it is, which could be bad news for Apple’s AI ambitions as they currently stand.

Instead, the iPad mini acts as a familiar companion, hanging next to my MacBook, where I can focus on important things. I keep the little guy facing away for notifications, bring up the calendar, or—more likely—bring up YouTube when my brain is frying so much it’s about to boil and pop out my ears.

We are completing our full calibration and battery testing, and will update this review once that is complete. At the moment, the iPad Pro or the larger iPad Air would be the Apple tablets I’d recommend, but the mini feels like the iPad I’ll actually use day-to-day.