is the iphone 13 mini really worth buying in 2021
well today we will find out because we're gonna compare it to all of these
different iphones including the lower price iphone se last year's 12 and 12
mini and the 13 and 13 pro and with that i have to say that this year apple has a
few secrets for the mini that you guys have to know to make a really good
decision with that we are going to compare the performance did apple slow
down this phone we're going to compare the speakers which almost nobody does
and even the speeds of 5g to see if apple fixed a major problem from before
and also talk about battery life screen sizes and more let's get prices out of
the way along with what you absolutely shouldn't buy at the base we have 400
bucks for the se and then at 600 bucks we do have the 12 mini which i would not
buy you guys will see here in a little bit as we do this comparison why i
wouldn't buy that and then for 700 you can either buy a 13 mini or an iphone 12
i'll be talking about that and then of course for 800 you can go for the 13 and
then a big jump of a thousand and 1100 for these larger phones now most of this
comparison if you're thinking about buying one of these you're going to be
looking at these ones right here at the lower end price now as far as design
differences all of these have the same new boxy design other than the iphone se
let's go ahead and pull these in here now i also have to point out that all
these less expensive phones they're all product red and you guys can see the
color difference between them last year i really didn't like the salmon colored
product red the se looked better but this year's 13 mini looks gorgeous i
love that dark deep red color now as far as those design differences between
these two phones you guys can see that we have these flat sides on the 13 mini
and the rest of the 12 and 13 lineup compared to the se which has the older
iphone 8 7 and 6 design with the rounded edges so personally i really prefer the
look and feel of the new 12s and 13s you have this nice flat sides that give you
a lot of grip compared to the rounded sides and you guys can also see the size
difference between these two phones even though the se has a smaller screen
overall it is larger and with that it is actually wider in your hand as well so
if you're somebody that's coming from an older iphone that uses this design of
the size the 13 mini is actually going to be smaller and narrower for you which
does help as far as comfort and on the front we have another major difference
as you guys could see without that home button and that little forehead we have
a much larger display we have 5.4 inches compared to 4.7 now you're probably
familiar with touch id iphones i've had them for years of course that is gone
but instead we do have face id which for the most part is a lot more convenient
it can automatically lock you into apps without even having to move your finger
down there to authenticate now as far as this plays i went ahead and adjusted
that top camera and you guys can see that the 13 mini has another major
advantage and that is brightness it can now reach 800 nits of brightness
compared to 625 on the 12s and the se and that really helps when you're
outside in bright lighting or just in bright environments now as far as
watching hdr video all the iphone 12s and 13s are the same at 1200 nits but of
course the se cannot pull that off so let's see how it compares you guys could
see there is a massive difference not only in brightness where the iphone 13
swimming janet is popping like crazy but also contrast because this is an oled
display like the rest of the 12s and the 13s you have those deep rich darks
instead of the lcd panel which for its time was actually the best now it just
cannot compare with the bright and nice and contrasty hdr oled display that's in
the iphone 13. now with that what i'm really curious about is how do the
speakers compare on the 13 mini compared to the 13 which is a larger size cost
100 bucks more and of course the older generation phones like the se which has
the same speakers as the iphone 8 and those are slightly better than the 7 and
the 6 so let's go ahead and compare them [Music]
[Music] all right wow that was a pretty big
difference between them you guys let me know your thoughts down in the comments
section i'll start out with the se which is the same as the eight and better than
the seven and six because it has an earpiece speaker and the difference is
dramatic louder better bass better mids and a huge thing is if you like to watch
videos with the se and the older phones you're not really having a balanced
sound between the bottom speaker and the left hand side one or the earpiece
speaker most of the sound comes from the bottom whereas with the se it is really
balanced because apple has upgraded the erp speaker with this new model it
sounds a lot better now with that said other than having a little bit louder of
an earpiece speaker one very interesting thing is that apple didn't really
upgrade the speakers compared to the 12 mini it sounds almost the same other
than slightly louder on the left hand side
where they actually did make a really big upgrade with the iphone 13 sounding
louder better in every way compared to the 12 so don't expect much better sound
if you already have a 12 minute and you want to upgrade to the 13 mini but from
an older phone the difference is really dramatic with that said if you're trying
to decide between a 13 minute or a 13 and you care about sound quality the 13
is definitely much better better bass more richer mids the highs are a little
bit more clear and it's a lot louder as well and now for what i'm very
interested in if apple limited the iphone 13 mini compared to the regular
13 and how that compares to the 12s now right here we have geekbench five open
and starting out with the se this thing has the a13 bionic with three gigs of
ram compared to the 12s which have the a14 bionic with four gigs and of course
the 13s with that new a15 also four gigs of ram now as far as ram i think four
gigabytes should be the standard i think three is still a little bit small unless
all you do is maybe take some pictures every once in a while and maybe make
phone calls but with that said let's go ahead and start our cpu benchmark all
right we have a result and the 13 mini is quite a bit faster than the se in the
multi-core it's a 50 faster and in single core about 30 faster and along
with that extra gig of ram this thing is gonna be much quicker and lasts you many
more years than if you spend the money and buy the se now compared to the 12
mini and the 12 the 13 mini is 15 faster in multi-core and about 9 faster in
single core which isn't really that big of a difference so i really wouldn't
care about performance now as you guys see the 13 and 13 mini the performance
is basically the same very small differences even smaller than last year
so you're not really trading off any performance if you're going with the
smaller phone and what's very interesting is that if you compare it to
this phone the 13 pro with six gigs of ram the results are still very similar
we have less of a difference this year than we did last year with the 12
compared to the 12 pro so as far as performance this is the smallest kind of
loss you get by going with the smaller phone and the next two categories that
i'm going to cover are extremely extremely important one of them that
you're probably suspecting the other one that you're not let's start off with
that one with the iphone 12 mini not only did people complain about the
battery life but i actually found that the reception was much worse than the
iphone 12 and that caused me not to be able to use it even though i really
liked it as you guys could see in this download test with 5g i got a 124
megabit per second download compared to 197. that's close to half the speed not
only that in certain parts of the city i literally did not get a signal with the
iphone 12 mini but i did with the regular 12 and the 12 pros so that was a
deal breaker for me so what happens with the 13 minute is it still limited with
suckier reception well i actually did a speed test and as you guys could see we
got the same 201 actually slightly faster than the 12 and an upload speed
of actually 34 whereas the old mini was much lower and then comparing that to
the iphone 13 we got 203 here and a slower download just for that test so
yes apple did fix the modem and the antenna problem with the 13 mini
compared to the 12. now i'll let you guys know why that is
in a second but if we open up the se if you're thinking about upgrading from an
older iphone and an se the eight or the seven you guys could see that without
the 5g with the lte we get a download to be the 57 and that's not even super fast
5g that's just your normal slower 5g um so you definitely are gonna get better
reception with the mini and much faster speeds it's pretty much four times
faster and now let's talk about battery life and if the 13 mini has enough
battery life for most people now apple said that it got an extra hour and a
half of battery life compared to the 12 mini and that battery life is actually
the reason why most people did not buy the 12 mini this thing didn't last very
long but how's that compared to the other phones well apple gave us some
different quotes but mr who's the boss actually did an insane battery test he
had to change his plans for the evening because of how long it took and he gave
us some really great answers and we have some big improvements now the se lasted
just about three and a half hours which is terrible that is terrible battery
life uh he didn't test the 12 but i've tested it before and in previous tests
it's about five hours of battery life where the 13 mini gets six and a half
hours of battery life now what is very interesting is that the 13 mini now
beats out the iphone 12 which most people were happy with that then got a
little bit less than six hours of screen on time so if you're somebody that
didn't buy a 12 minute because the battery life you went with the 12 but
you would like a smaller phone the 13 mini is now better and six and a half
hours is great for most people now of course if you're trying to compare it to
the iphone 13 that got about 7 hours and 45 minutes so apple coded about an hour
more than the 13 mini in reality it's actually a little bit better than that
but overall battery life has been fixed and that is why we see nice speed
improvements here in the 5g speeds i think apple had to slow down the 12 mini
because of the poor battery life slow down the reception use less wattage and
that gave you worse reception and worse speeds where now with the 13 mini apple
doesn't have to do that now along with that we should also talk about charging
of course all the 12s and 13s support magsafe so you can attach like this you
can charge with that you can also use different accessories for example we
have wallets and the cool thing about wallets is that with a 12-minute or the
13-minute they fit perfectly on the phone itself so i've done tests where it
really doesn't fall off with the mini phones compared to the 13 or the 12
whereas there's a lot more room for this to slide around so that is definitely a
benefit the same thing goes for apple's little charging pack that they came out
with magsafe that fits perfectly on those phones as well and of course with
the iphone se we do not have that capability for magsafe same thing with
older iphones and i will say max safe has been a game changer i love attaching
my phone to my little car mount being able to charge
while i'm using gps and having that convenience charging at home
using different accessories magsafe is awesome and i think it's well worth
getting a newer phone to have that capability and the last secret that i
want to cover has to do with charging now unfortunately if you're using
magsafe apple is still limiting that charging to 12 watts compared to 15
watts with the regular 13s the 12s the pro models so you are still limited
because it has that larger battery compared to last year's 12 mini it will
take even longer to charge but with that said if you are using wire charging what
a lot of people didn't know is that the 12 mini was also fairly limited in my
test it got about 12 or so watts instead of the full 20 watts from of those newer
adapters but with the 13 mini it was running at about 16 and a half watts it
actually peaked at over 17 maybe 17 and a half watts of charging so if you want
fast charging definitely use a cable and you will get faster speeds than even the
12 mini when you're charging with the cable now with that said you actually
don't need to have a 20 watt adapter an 18 watt old one will work just fine to
get the maximum performance so don't think you have to go buy a new one if
you have an older one now of course we do recommend going with an anchor
charger they're currently not yet a sponsor with us but this guy right here
is i think 11 or 12 bucks it also has folding prongs which are very nice and
apples one doesn't offer that so i'll go ahead and leave a link to that down in
the video description below and before i give my final verdict we have to cover
the cameras just like last year the 13 mini has the same exact cameras as the
13 which is an amazing thing but this year of course the 13s and the 13 mini
have the same cameras from the 12 pro max so we have that sensor stabilization
we have the ultrawide that's also been improved so that is awesome and when we
compare it to the 12 mini you guys can see just how much larger those camera
lenses are now of course the 13s don't have the three times telephoto that
comes with the 13 pro but other than that if you guys want to
see how the cameras compare to say the iphone 12s
or the 12 pro max you guys could actually go and check out my camera
comparison that's very detailed and if you're wondering is it really worth the
pro camera to get that extra telephoto and the other updates such as the larger
sensor i actually have a video that came out i think that was yesterday posted
you guys can check that out and see if that telephoto really makes a difference
for you along with the upgraded ultra wide lens now those videos are available
but let's see how much better is the 13 mini's camera compared to the single
camera that is on the iphone se here's a regular shot in normal lighting and you
guys can see how much more detail we have with the new mini and here's a shot
with night mode which of course the sc does not have it looks so much better
having that capability and then with the front facing state camera we also have
night mode it makes low light shots look much better and much more detailed and
then if you're somebody that wants to zoom without a telephoto here is how the
zoom shot looks with apple's upscaling and then of course we have the ultra
wide lens which is very helpful and a lot of different scenarios gives you
really nice angles and then a regular selfie shot this has actually blur from
the portrait mode that you can get and the same thing goes with portraits using
that standard lens that capability makes your photos look a lot more professional
you can blur out background so if you're somebody that's considering these phones
i would definitely say if you care about camera quality at all
you have to go with the 13 mini so what is my final verdict on the iphone 13
mini is it worth upgrading to from an older iphone in even the iphone 12 mini
and is it worth buying instead of a much cheaper iphone se and should you spend
more money potentially and get the 13 or the same amount of money get the 12.
those are a lot of answers uh to give you guys but i'll straight up say yes it
is worth it if you wanted a smaller phone last year but you didn't go for it
buy it now if you cared about the battery life and it wasn't good enough
now it is it even beats out the 12 and the other features such as the better
processor brighter display and if you like having a smaller phone i would buy
it instead of the iphone 12. now with that said
if you have older phones and you kind of like that smaller size i would still say
go for there's so many more improvements for the extra money i would definitely
not get the 12 mini 400 less since that is still for sale you get so many
improvements especially the antennas and that reception that matters a lot and
much better battery life as well and then the cameras and then compared to
the 13 well if you're somebody that watches a lot of videos you listen to
music with the built-in speakers or you play games having that larger screen
with the better speakers is nice but outside of that unless you know you need
killer battery life the 13 mini still delivers it has very little downsides
and you save a hundred dollars and have a much more smaller compact phone that
just fits so nicely in the hand and then that mini size with the wallet or the
mac safe power pack that works out really well so this year i actually am
very happy with the 13 mini and the last secret actually
is that right now based on all the info we have apple is not going to be making
another mini phone so if you wanted to upgrade from an older iphone or from the
12 mini or you just want a small phone it is worth buying it this year with the
13 mini with that new processor the better cameras because going into the
future it looks like apple is going to have a new version of the se a cheaper
one that is not going to be matching up to their flagship phones it's going to
be lower processor worst cameras so there will be a lot of other drawbacks
in order to get the smaller size compared to right now if you're buying a
13 mini it is most of what the 13 offers for a lower price same performance ram
cameras it is a really nice phone if you like that smaller size so there you guys
go let me know your thoughts down in the comment section below of course you guys
could pick up one of those chargers for your phones with the link that's a great
price and click that subscribe button above if you guys want to help us reach
a million subscribers and see more videos check out one of those great
camera comparisons right over there this has been max and i will see you in the
next video [Music]