Apple’s New iPad Mini Is a Powerful Throwback
A tablet that looks like 2016 but plays like 2019
It’s been four years since Apple updated its iPad Mini, the pint-sized 7.9-inch tablet popular among children and professionals who need a screen large enough for work (or play) but small enough to slip into a coat pocket.
In that time, Apple has essentially rewritten its slab design language. The iPhone dropped its sharp edges in favor of an all-curved design, buttons traded mechanics for haptics to mimic movement, and screens flowed like water to the outer edges of each device.
Apple’s new iPad Mini, however, is a design throwback, thawed like Sylvester Stallone’s cryogenically frozen Demolition Man to tackle the tablet challenges of a new generation of users.
At a glance, the iPad Mini 5 is a match for 2015’s iPad Mini 4, right down to physical Touch ID button. That’s right — Apple has delivered a new tablet with a mechanical home button. In an era when the iPhone hasn’t had a movable home button since 2016, and when the iPhone XS and iPad Pros don’t even have home buttons at all, this decision is mind-boggling. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve always been a fan of that button — but this is 2019, not 2015.
Even though it seems like Apple missed an opportunity to reinvent the iPad Mini, it does align with some of the decisions Cupertino has made on other recent tablet introductions. The education tablet has a mechanical home button and large bezels, and none of Apple’s tablets, not even the high-end iPad Pro, include the haptics-driven 3D Touch, which lets you press harder on the screen to access additional features.
Apple stuck with the 2,048x1,536 Retina display, which at this size looks fantastic, but it’s hard to ignore the large white borders around the screen. Even when Apple delivers LCD-based Retina screens on cheaper devices like the iPhone XR, it manages to deliver all-screen devices. One throwback consumers will probably appreciate is the inclusion of a 3.5-millimeter headphone jack.
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So, what’s going on here? Is there an iPad Mini team at Apple working in the basement, completely unaware of the design work being done aboveground at the spaceship campus? What’s the purpose of a $399 tablet that looks like it turned left at 2016, got lost, and emerged in 2019 saying, “Hey guys, what’s President Hillary Clinton up to?”
Apple might tell you that the Mini (and the new iPad Air) fills a utility/performance gap between the $299 education iPad ($329 outside the education market) and the pricier, more stylish, and more powerful iPad Pro line. The Mini’s success with kids and industries where a midsized and relatively affordable tablet is a must perhaps encouraged Apple to stay the course on design.
Put simply, there are zero design surprises in the new iPad Mini. It’s still just 0.24 inches thick and 0.66 pounds. (The chassis measures 8x5.3 inches.) My hand is large enough that I can easily wrap my fingers around it, but the Mini is also light and thin enough that it’s quite easy to hold with just two fingers squeezing a single corner. That exquisitely svelte design (thinner even than the 0.3-inch-thick iPhone XS) belies some astonishing power. Because even though Apple didn’t mess with the iPad Mini’s body, it replaced most of the components.
Apple’s iPad Mini runs the exact same CPU as the iPhone XS: the A12 Bionic (Geekbench scores are virtually identical), which now makes it the second-largest screen running that mobile CPU. (The new iPad Air has it as well.)
This upgrade takes the Mini from being primarily a content consumption device to a tiny little workhorse.
Raw power
I have an old Retina iPad Mini that I use primarily for email and web browsing, and despite accommodating iOS 12, it can now barely handle those tasks. This new iPad Mini is light-years away from that experience.
As an iPhone X user, I’m well acquainted with the A12 Bionic’s capabilities. Backed by almost 3 GB of RAM, the chip is no less powerful in the iPad Mini.
The processing power is further enhanced by the Mini’s new Apple Pencil support (sold separately for $99). Now every iPad, from the education iPad to the iPad Pro, supports an Apple Pencil. Having grown accustomed to the redesigned Apple Pencil that magnetically connects to and charges on the iPad Pro, I’m disappointed that Apple is pairing the iPad Mini with its previous-generation pencil. Charging that thing with the included adapter is annoying, and I do not like watching the Pencil roll away on my table. Even so, it’s just as good a drawing implement as the new Pencil, recognizing pressure and drawing angle. (There are no touch controls on the old Pencil.) As I drew, I forgot which pencil I was holding and just got carried away in the process.
The Mini is now as effective at Procreate drawing as it is at email. It can also handle an Adobe Premier Rush CC video editing project with as much ease as it can a webpage.
On the iPad Mini, iOS 12.2 runs like a champ, and the device had no trouble handling split-screen apps (up to three) and dragging and dropping images from one window to another.
This is also an excellent augmented reality companion. The iPad Mini might even be better at AR than the iPhone XS or iPad Pro. It’s not because of raw performance; rather, it’s due to the combination of excellent AR chops, a larger screen (twice the real estate of an iPhone XR), and the iPad Mini’s ergonomically friendly design, all of which could make it the perfect AR platform for children. I had a blast trying out Froggipedia and the ultra-silly but visually impressive Wonderscope.
Apple also updated the cameras on the iPad Mini, adding a good-enough 7 MP FaceTime Camera on the front and an 8 MP camera on the back. Both shoot HD video and take decent pictures, but with all the photographic acrobatics capable on even the iPhone XR, it’s hard to get excited about these shooters.
The iPad Mini is an excellent action-gaming device. I played Asphalt 9: Legends, where the cars look almost real and the locales are lush and chaotic, and the graphically intensive NBA 2K19 without a hitch. Plus, with a screen roughly the same size as my Delta in-flight entertainment system, the iPad Mini is a solid portable theater. Playback is bright, sharp, and saturated, and the stereo speakers get impressively loud. Most of the time, though, I paired the Mini with my AirPods. The tablet’s also a good listener. I all but whispered, “Hey Siri,” and the voice assistant responded every time. Did you know you can use Siri to open apps?
One thing I did notice is that after intense gameplay or hours of drawing, the metal back of the iPad Mini did feel a little warm.
Touch ID integration works quickly and smoothly for unlocking the device and logging into apps. (I enabled LastPass Touch ID integration.) It’s a shame Apple didn’t use all that white space above the screen to add Face ID.
Battery life was excellent. I got anywhere from 12 to 14 hours, depending on activity. There are a few other updates worth noting on my silver 256 GB, Wi-Fi + Cellular LTE iPad Mini ($749). In addition to a nano-SIM, it supports eSIMs, which will make it easier to jump from one carrier to another. It also has fast 802.11ac Wi-Fi and Bluetooth 5.0.
Overall, I’m a fan of this new iPad Mini. It hits the sweet spot between pocket-sized power and big-screen creativity. Charging $399 for the 64 GB base model, while not necessarily a mistake, is a potential missed opportunity for Apple. A $199 iPad Mini, even a slightly retro, time-traveling model like this one, would have sold out.
