Okay, it's a new iPad mini.
It looks exactly like the old iPad mini,
and the one before that,
and the one before that.
Seriously, here's a first channel iPad mini
from 2012, and here's the new one.
They look almost identical from the outside.
Same form factor, same aluminum body,
same giant bezels, same headphone jack,
same camera placements, even the same Smart Covers.
If you had any previous iPad mini and have secretly
replaced it with this new one, there's a chance you might
not even notice the difference.
All of the changes to the new mini are on the inside,
and they're pretty significant, which they should be,
seeing as it's been almost four years since the
iPad mini 4 was released.
Now, these internals are really similar to the new
iPad Air, which Apple also announced this week.
I've actually got one here, but Dieter is really excited
about reviewing it, so he's going to do that next week.
I'm going to focus on the mini, which, honestly,
I've grown really fond of over these past few days.
It's been a really fun review.
(light hip music)
I asked people what they wanted to know about the
iPad mini on Twitter, and the most popular questions,
by far, were either “Why does this exist?”
or “Why should I buy one?”
Which are pretty fair questions, but I think they have
a really simple answer:
because you want a killer small tablet.
That's it!
That's the whole reason this new iPad mini exists.
There simply isn't another tablet at this size
that can compete.
Small Android tablets usually have much slower processors
and are really designed for watching video.
There isn't a great app ecosystem.
And there just aren't any small Windows tablets,
apart from the Surface Go, which is still really big
compared to the mini.
With the new mini, you get basically the entire
feature set of the new iPad Air in a small,
premium package with more tablet app support
than basically anything else in the market.
If you are the sort of person who wants a powerful,
small tablet, the new iPad mini is the best choice,
full stop.
I mean, it's basically the only choice.
Now, that's not to say this new iPad mini is perfect
or even that it's state-of-the-art.
It kind of feels like Apple put together a bunch of stuff
from the iPad parts bin, and called it a day.
But the good news is that the iPad parts bin
is full of pretty good parts.
So it worked out.
Here's what's new.
You've got an A12 processor with Apple's Neural Engine,
an updated 7.9-inch display with Apple Pencil support,
new cellular radios with gigabit LTE
and dual-SIM support in the cell model,
a new 7-megapixel front-facing camera with an
f/2.2 lens.
Then, there's the old stuff.
You've still got a physical Touch ID button on the front.
There's no Face ID or fancy haptic button here.
Two stereo speakers on the bottom.
On the back, it's the same old 8-megapixel
f/2.4 camera, which takes extremely medium photos,
and there's a Lightning connector on the bottom,
not USB-C like the new iPad Pros.
Apple told me that they think of USB-C as an iPad Pro
feature and that it was also really important
to maintain compatibility with the existing ecosystem
of iPad mini accessories and use cases.
So, they stuck with Lightning.
I get that.
You can't really swap out an old mini for a new one
with no disruption if you change the port.
But at this point, Apple's connector situation
is just super confusing.
Is the future USB-C or not?
Someone, anyone, let me know.
Apple Pencil support is equally confusing.
The new iPad Pro came out late last year
with the second-gen Pencil that
magnetically clips onto the side of the iPad
and charges wirelessly. But the new mini doesn't have
any of that.
Instead, you've got Apple's first-gen Pencil,
which, yeah.
(light music)
Using the old Pencil is why I say it feels like Apple raided the
iPad parts bin.
The new Pencil is so much better than this one.
It's easier to hold, it's easier to charge,
it's easier to keep track of, it
doesn't have a silly cap for you to lose.
If there was killer competition for small tablets,
I bet Apple would've gone with the second-gen Pencil
on the new mini. But there isn't,
so you get the first-gen Pencil.
Do your best to hold on to the cap.
The Pencil itself feels just like the first-gen Pencil
on any other iPad.
It's fast and responsive.
It works great across apps that supported it,
and it generally makes the iPad feel like
much more than just a consumption device.
But it's not bundled in a box.
It's another $99, which raises the total cost
of the new mini to $500 to start.
That feels like a miss.
If Apple is serious about the Pencil on the iPad,
it should start putting it in the box.
(upbeat music)
Aside from Pencil support, the display is very nice
in the way that premium Apple LCDs
are always very nice.
It's laminated, unlike the cheapest iPad,
so it feels like you're touching the pixels,
and it's got wide color support and a respectable 500
nits of brightness.
What it doesn't have is ProMotion, which is Apple's
fancy variable refresh rate tech that makes
scrolling super smooth.
I love ProMotion. I think it's the best.
But I honestly didn't find myself missing it too much
on the mini's small screen.
The A12 processor on the iPad mini is the same chip
in the iPhone XS and XR, so it's plenty fast.
I didn't encounter any slowdowns or lags
as I edited photos in Lightroom,
played a few games, and tried a couple AR demos.
The mini runs the same iOS 12 as other iPads,
which means you can multitask on a mini,
which is hilarious on a screen this small.
Here's two open apps, a popover window,
and a video window going all at once, and everything is
working just fine.
Now, I'm on record saying iOS 12 is too limited
to support replacing a laptop with the iPad Pro,
but the mini doesn't have to carry
any of those expectations.
So, to me, the trade-offs feel way more acceptable.
So those are the highlights apart from battery life,
which, honestly, I haven't had enough time to test.
Apple quotes about 10 hours of video playback time,
and the mini has been running for more than a day so far.
No iPad has ever really had battery life issues,
so I'm not that worried about it.
Speaking of the other iPads, it's worth noting that
Apple's got a pretty intense lineup of tablets now.
There's the cheap $329 9.7-inch iPad with the
slower processor and a just-okay display,
the new $399 iPad mini and $499 iPad Air,
which basically share a spec sheet, aside from screen size
and a Smart Keyboard connector on the Air,
and the two sizes of iPad Pro, which are marketed
as full-on laptop replacements and start at $800.
Like I said, Dieter's going to review that new Air soon,
but there's basically an iPad in every price point
between $300 and $1,500 now.
That's a lot.
After using the new iPad mini for a while,
I grew pretty fond of it.
Phones and tablets have just been getting bigger and bigger
for years now, and it's refreshing to use a tablet
that stubbornly remains small.
I liked reading on it better than my big iPads.
I felt less rude using it in meetings than my phone
or my laptop, and I was less bothered
by the many limitations on iOS 12
because the mini is so obviously a secondary computer.
And iOS devices have been getting increasingly complicated
and expensive lately,
and reviewing them often feels like I have to figure out
if they're worth the huge cost premium.
Reviewing the mini, on the other hand, has been really fun
because it's obviously worth $399 if you want
a small tablet, especially considering the last mini
went for four years without any changes.
This thing is built to last.
The question is really just if you want a
killer small tablet and how you use it.
That is really up to you.
Hey, everybody. Apple put out the iPad Air this week as well.
It's basically got the same specs as the mini
and a larger screen.
Dieter's going to review that next week,
so keep it locked, YouTube.com/TheVerge.