Apple iPad mini (2021) Review: Big dog energy

The latest and greatest iPad mini is finally here after two long years of waiting. While it has a striking new look and several great features, it’s still essentially the same small iPad that users have gotten to know over the past nine years.

This time around, the most significant changes relate to the new design, 2nd-gen Apple Pencil support and of course, the star of the show, a USB-C port. If you’re a casual iPad user, likely, these upgrades won’t mean much to you, but if you like to push the iPad to its limits in terms of power, function and form, these updates are going to make you very happy.

It’s also helpful to think of this year’s iPad mini (2021) as a smaller iPad Air since, functionally, that’s what it is. While the iPad mini may have started out as a smaller version of the base-level iPad, Apple has made it clear with its 2021 refresh that the mini is much more.

There are still some downsides with the new iPad mini, though, including its reasonably expensive $649 price tag, a notable $120 jump over the iPad mini (2019)’s cost.

Specs

What I like about the iPad mini

Over the past few years, iPads have become mainly media consumption devices for me, but I used one as my main PC in high school, and I often imagine being able to do all of my work on a small tablet again.

The iPad mini isn’t the perfect PC replacement — the iPad Pro is more suited to that — but it’s actually become a relatively useful secondary device whenever I want to work on the couch or take a computer to go.

Since the iPad mini features Apple’s new A15 chipset and 4GB of RAM, it’s fast enough to handle most tasks I threw at it. For instance, I was able to edit 4K footage and it’s become my new go-to Photoshop and Lightroom tool for basic edits. While the small 8.3-inch screen size might seem counterintuitive for tasks like this, it’s actually not that bad since you can pinch and zoom easily to pan around whatever image you’re editing. It’s also fairly high resolution (2266 x 1488 pixels) with a density of 326 pixels per inch (ppi), which looks quite sharp on such a small display.

Pair this with the tablet’s small size, big battery and new, less reflective screen, and you’ve got a great travel tablet. I used the mini to review video footage out in the field on a shoot, and it was fantastic to tuck it perfectly into my small camera bag. Its battery also lasted all day long and then some.

The model Apple sent me for review also includes 5G connectivity. Using an iPad with a data plan and not going through that extra step of setting up a hotspot is amazingly convenient. If you plan to use your iPad on the go a lot, a data share plan might be worth signing up for.

If you want to use this tablet to draw or use Photoshop, I’m happy to report that it’s excellent for this purpose since it works with the 2nd-gen Apple Pencil. Plus, the stylus is reactive and it feels natural. The small size also makes using the Pencil feel like drawing in a small sketchbook, especially since you can magnetically attach it to the top of the iPad mini. This and the new Quick note function included in iPadOS 15, help make the Pad mini a really convenient digital notepad for jotting things down on the go.

Too close to the sun

While the iPad mini is almost perfect, it does still include a few issues.

My first complaint is a minor one, but sometimes when I pick up the iPad with my thumb on the screen, I’ll notice light LCD warping. This isn’t a functional issue, but it’s a bit concerning to see from such an expensive device, especially when I haven’t encountered the same problem with any other iPads. Speaking of the display, while it looks fine, it would have been great if Apple included a more vibrant OLED screen in the iPad mini given how much I’ve enjoyed editing photos on it.

Moving past those problems, I’ve also found the iPad mini a bit of a pain to type on. When you’re holding it in landscape mode, it’s a bit too wide to type comfortably without splitting the keyboard, but even that takes mental gymnastics to get used to. Typing in portrait orientation or with the iPad mini on a table, is slightly better, but for most, the iPad mini likely isn’t the best typing tool.

The tablet’s speaker placement is decent and sounds great for such a small device, but it takes up so much of the side of the device that Apple placed both power and volume buttons on the top of the tablet.

Further, if you hold it in landscape, it puts both buttons on a side, making either the power or volume keys awkwardly placed at the bottom corner of the tablet. This has caused me to accidentally hit the buttons a lot, which is a little annoying.

Other fun new features and specs

There are a few other important features included in the iPad mini that didn’t excite me as much, but are definitely still worth mentioning.

One of the more fun ones is ‘Center Stage,’ a video chat feature that pans the camera to follow you. It’s a pretty fun effect and makes me feel like I’m on my own TV show, so I’ll chalk this up as a win for the mini.

“While the 12-megapixel f/1.8 aperture wide camera on the back of the mini is decent, it doesn’t shoot the most outstanding photos or videos.”

The iPad mini is also a pretty great iOS gaming device. Since it’s as portable as a phone but has significantly more screen real estate, your hands crowd the screen less. I mostly played Stardew Valley, but the new iPad mini has the potential to be an iOS gaming powerhouse.

When I tested the iPad mini with Geekbench, it hit a single-core score of 1,586 and a multi-core score of 4,643. This puts the mini squarely on par with the iPad Air.

While the 12-megapixel f/1.8 aperture wide camera on the back of the mini is decent, it doesn’t shoot the most outstanding photos or videos. That said, I did shoot footage with it for this review video and was impressed with the results. It’s not as good as a mirrorless camera, but it’s very close to iPhone level.

The power button on the new mini is also a Touch ID sensor, and while I found that it worked well, the placement could have been better because it’s a little awkward to use.