The iPad mini (starting at $499) gains a peppy processor for 2024, but Apple stops short of giving it the more drastic overhaul it deserves. Still, it’s a fine size, it’s well made, it has decent battery life, and it supports Apple Intelligence and the Apple Pencil Pro. If Apple’s other tablets are simply too large and you specifically want or need an iPad this size, the mini handles gaming, media playback, and light productivity well. Ultimately, the best iPad for most people is the standard $349 iPad thanks to its combination of size, price, and performance, so it remains our Editors’ Choice.
Design: Nothing New
Apple’s tablet lineup includes four iPads: the iPad Pro, the iPad Air, the iPad, and the iPad mini. The Pro and Air models are available in 11- and 13-inch sizes, while the standard iPad has a 10.9-inch screen, and the mini has an 8.3-inch screen. They all share the same basic design, which has remained largely unchanged for the last few upgrade cycles.
Left to right: iPad mini, iPad Air, iPad Pro (Credit: Eric Zeman)
The design consists of a large piece of glass set in an aluminum chassis with rounded corners and flat side edges. It’s a simple but classy look, and the materials are (as always) of the highest quality. This year, the mini is available in four colors: Blue, Purple, Space Gray, or Starlight. I received the Purple model for testing.
The iPad mini measures 7.69 by 5.30 by 0.25 inches (HWD) and weighs 0.65 pounds. It’s by far the easiest iPad to hold and use. Surely, the smaller hands of younger users will find it comfortable. It’s also the easiest to toss in a bag to carry around town. I was able to cram it into my compact camera bag and lug it around Manhattan for a full day of meetings. Importantly, my shoulder wasn’t begging for mercy when I returned home.
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(Credit: Eric Zeman)
The rest of the iPad lineup is larger and heavier. The $999 11-inch iPad Pro measures 9.83 by 6.99 by 0.21 inches and weighs 0.98 pounds, while the $1,299 13-inch model is even bigger at 11.09 by 8.48 by 0.20 inches and 1.28 pounds. Meanwhile, the $599 11-inch iPad Air (9.74 by 7.02 by 0.24 inches, 1.02 pounds) and the $799 13-inch iPad Air (11.04 by 8.46 by 0.24 inches, 1.36 pounds) are close to the Pro models in size and weight. Last, the standard iPad measures 9.79 by 7.07 by 0.28 inches and weighs 1.05 pounds.
The 11-inch models fit in larger purses and slings, messenger bags, and backpacks, but the 13-inch models need a more sizable bag for lugging about. If devices with 8-inch screens are your sweet spot, alternatives include Amazon’s line of Fire tablets, like the $99.99 Fire HD 8 (7.94 by 5.40 by 0.37 inches, 0.74 pounds), but it’s not nearly as capable as the iPad mini in any regard.
(Credit: Eric Zeman)
Apple keeps the controls and other basics unchanged. For example, the volume buttons and the combined power/Touch ID button sit on one short edge. These buttons have fantastic travel and feedback, but I would have preferred to see the mini adopt Face ID for facial recognition. Touch ID is incredibly reliable, but Face ID is often faster and more convenient than a button that moves every time you rotate the tablet. I registered four prints with the mini so I always had one resting near the scanner.
(Credit: Eric Zeman)
The USB-C port is on the opposing short edge and is joined by speaker grilles. You’ll get better data transfer speeds from this port, which Apple upgrades to USB 3 with support for 10Gbps. The physical SIM card tray is gone from the side edge of the cellular model in favor of eSIM. The 5G antenna is plainly visible on one side. The camera module contains a single lens, microphone, and flash and is tucked into the upper left corner of the rear panel. The Apple logo is large, chromed out, and reflective. There are no pogo pins for connecting to accessories like a keyboard.
(Credit: Eric Zeman)
Apple’s iPads are not waterproof, so keep the mini away from the pool. They’re not dustproof either, so best to leave the iPad at home when you go to the beach. If any iPad in Apple’s lineup should have an IP rating, it’s this one. It can be slippery, too, so it’s best to get some sort of folio or case.
The iPad mini’s small size is its biggest feature. It’s a perfect travel companion and would be a great tool to have on a trip where carrying a larger tablet or laptop would be cumbersome.
Display: Sticking With LCD
The mini’s screen appears to be a direct carryover from the 2021 iPad mini. It is an LED LCD that measures 8.3 inches across the diagonal with 2,266 by 1,488 pixels for a density of 326 pixels per inch. That’s actually sharper than all the other iPad displays, which have a pixel density of 264ppi. The standard iPad and iPad Air also use LCDs, while the Pro models upgrade to OLED. It would be nice to see OLED trickle down to the more affordable iPads one day.
(Credit: Eric Zeman)
The screen is fully laminated and has anti-reflective and fingerprint-resistant oleophobic coatings. The brightness tops out at 500 nits when viewing SDR content. It also supports True Tone for automatic white balance adjustments and wide color (P3). It’s a better display than that of the standard iPad, which lacks special coatings, and it matches the quality of the iPad Air. I was able to use it outdoors under full sunlight with little glare and easy visibility.
It relies on a standard 60Hz refresh rate that matches the iPad and iPad Air but not the variable ProMotion refresh rate (up to 120Hz) of the iPad Pro. Jelly scrolling, or uneven banding that appears when you slide content up and down the screen, was a major issue for the last iPad mini. Apple has adjusted its software to account for this, but the issue remains. To my eyes, it’s less severe and harder to notice, but it’s still there. Jelly scrolling will surely bug some people, while others won’t even notice it.
Performance: Fast Enough for Apple Intelligence
The Apple A17 Pro processor is almost the whole story for the 2024 iPad mini. It’s critical that each Apple product released this year supports Apple Intelligence, and that means the mini gains the A17 Pro from the iPhone 15 Pro lineup. It’s curious why Apple didn’t opt for the iPad Air’s M2 chip, but the company hasn’t said why it’s using the year-old phone chip instead.
To refresh your memory, the A17 Pro relies on a 3nm process. It features a 6-core architecture with two performance cores and four efficiency cores. Benchmarking the chip suggests the top core has a speed of 3.77GHz. The A17 Pro has a five-core GPU and a 16-core NPU (Neural Engine), which are key for Apple Intelligence. Apple boosts the iPad mini’s memory from 4GB to 8GB, which is a huge upgrade. The tablet comes with 128GB of storage ($499), 256GB of storage ($599), or 512GB of storage ($799).
(Credit: Geekbench/AnTuTu/3DMark/PCMag)
I measured performance using a handful of benchmarking apps. Starting with the CPU, I ran Geekbench 6, and the mini achieved a single-core score of 2,972 and a multi-core score of 7,362. Those marks are basically identical to the A17 Pro in the iPhone 15 Pro (2,928, 7,268) and much faster than the 2021 iPad mini (1,610, 4,714). For further comparison, the standard iPad scored 1,573 and 4,097, and the M2 iPad Air scored 2,581 and 9,887 on the same test.
For everyday tasks, I ran the challenging AnTuTu test. The iPad mini scored 1,551,685, the iPad Air scored 2,197,677, and the iPad Pro scored 2,746,950.
Last, I ran 3DMark to assess GPU and gaming performance. On this test, the mini reached 3,109 frames at 18.6 frames per second, the iPad Air scored 6,914 frames at 34.5fps, and the iPad Pro scored 8,576 frames at 51.5fps.
All this is to say that the iPad mini runs really well. It easily outpaces the A14 Bionic of the standard iPad and the A15 of the old iPad mini, though it falls short of the more powerful M2 and M4 chips found in the Air and Pro models, respectively. It’s more than quick enough for browsing the web, gaming, productivity, and streaming media. And yes, it has the power needed to run Apple Intelligence (more below).
Battery: Good Enough
Apple claims the iPad mini delivers as much battery life as its larger stablemates. That means up to 10 hours of browsing the web or watching video via Wi-Fi. We test battery life by streaming HD video over Wi-Fi with the screen’s brightness all the way up. In this scenario, the tablet lasted 7 hours and 23 minutes—up by 42 minutes compared with the 2021 model (6 hours and 41 minutes) and 33 minutes compared with the iPad Air (6 hours and 47 minutes).
(Credit: Eric Zeman)
The iPad charges via USB-C. Apple includes a 20W charger and a high-quality braided USB-C cable in the box. Using the included charger, the tablet took 1 hour and 50 minutes to recharge fully from 0% to 100%.
Bottom line, the tablet can last through transcontinental and most trans-Atlantic flights, which should be plenty for most people.
Connectivity: A Sweet Radio Suite
Most of the mini’s radios get an upgrade, and that’s good news. Bluetooth graduates from version 5.0 to 5.3, Wi-Fi moves from version 6 to 6E, and the 5G model is available with support for sub-6GHz signals.
The iPad mini’s wireless performance basically equaled that of the M2 iPad Air in testing. The small tablet reached 5G download speeds of 385Mbps and upload speeds of 128Mbps, compared with the Air’s 378Mbps and 118Mbps.
(Credit: Eric Zeman)
For Wi-Fi, when tested close to my 1Gbps router, the mini scored 564Mbps down and 122Mbps up, whereas the Air reached 555Mbps down and 128Mbps up. When moved all the way to the edge of the network, speeds slowed to a still-respectable 101Mbps down and 31Mbps up.
The tablet’s GPS/GNSS radios did a fine job locating me as I wandered throughout Manhattan. They easily pinpointed and followed me while I walked down Broadway and through Union Square Park.
The Bluetooth 5.3 radio ensures solid and power efficient connections with your favorite wireless earphones and headphones.
Audio: A Stereo Soundstage
Like its predecessor, the iPad mini has stereo speakers—one on each short edge. This makes for stereo sound that’s most effective when you hold the tablet in landscape orientation.
Testing music first, I streamed our bass test track, The Knife’s “Silent Shout.” While the bass doesn’t necessarily thump with authority, it still comes across with enough weight to fill out the track. Switching to Dream Theater’s “Night Terror,” a track with more guitar and traditional rock vocals, provides a mostly balanced sound that’s free of distortion even when maxed out, though I would have preferred a little more bass here.
For video, YouTube videos and other streamed content sounds good coming through the speakers. Surround effects aren’t going to rock your world, but they don’t get lost below the dialogue, either. The opening fight scene from Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness presents plenty of detail.
At maximum volume, the iPad mini pushes out 90.0dB, which is loud enough to fill a bedroom or other small space with sound.
Camera: Fine for Casual Use
Apple keeps the iPad mini’s camera a simple affair. It has a single 12MP wide-angle camera on the rear with an aperture of f/1.8. It supports up to 5x digital zoom and Smart HDR 4 processing and includes a True Tone flash. Shots I took in a shady Union Square Park show proper exposure, accurate color, and sharp focus.
(Credit: Eric Zeman)
The front-facing ultra-wide camera captures 12MP photos at f/2.4. You can take advantage of 2x digital zoom to adjust the angle of view and the Retina Flash with True Tone for darker scenes. The selfies I captured look a little too sharp, but again, the lighting, color, and tone are all accurate to the scene.
(Credit: Eric Zeman)
(Credit: Eric Zeman)
Mind-bogglingly, the selfie camera is still centered on the short edge. This means you have to hold the tablet in a portrait orientation for the best FaceTime results. The rest of Apple’s tablet lineup has moved the selfie camera to the long edge, allowing for a centered video chat experience when the tablet is attached to a keyboard (or held sideways).
(Credit: Eric Zeman)
The rear camera supports video capture at resolutions up to 4K and frame rates up to 60fps. The tablet supports 3x zoom in video, slow motion, and time-lapse. The front camera is limited to 1080p resolution but can still squeak out 60fps with cinematic video stabilization. The test footage I shot looks quite good. It doesn’t live up to the iPad Pro’s Pro Res capabilities, but it’s absolutely usable for general video-taking purposes.
Ultimately, I have no doubt that the iPad mini has the best camera system of any 8-inch tablet.
Apple Pencil: Hover Time
The mini gets more Apple Pencil features when compared with the old model, putting it on par with the M2 iPad Air. It supports both the $129 Apple Pencil Pro and the $79 Apple Pencil USB-C. The old mini supported the $129 second-generation Apple Pencil.
The additional features include squeeze to select, barrel roll for rotating pen tips, haptic feedback, hover, Find My support, and free engraving. The first four really help improve the experience, particularly for artists, who have far more control over the pen tip than you get with the second-gen Pencil.
(Credit: Eric Zeman)
I tested both the Apple Pencil Pro and Apple Pencil USB-C with the iPad mini, and both worked flawlessly. The mini’s small size makes it a wonderful note-taking device, and the Apple Pencil is a natural, if pricey, choice to make it even more useful.
Apple does not make a keyboard accessory for the iPad mini, though the tablet supports third-party Bluetooth keyboards.
Software: It’s All About Apple Intelligence
The iPad mini ships with iPadOS 18, but you should update it to iPadOS 18.1 right away in order to get some early bug fixes and, more importantly, Apple Intelligence.
The upgrades to iPadOS 18 may feel minor, but they still do a decent job of moving the platform forward: The new Calculator app is exceptional, the Freeform and Notes apps gain useful improvements, and you get far more options to personalize the tablet. It’s a shame that you don’t get the Stage Manager multitasking tool.
As for Apple Intelligence, it offers a handful of features now, with more to follow later this year and even more in 2025. The most important tools you have access to right away include Writing Tools, a new Siri, enhancements in Apple Photos, and changes to Apple Mail and Messages. Writing Tools appear in most apps that are compatible with the Apple Keyboard and allow you to change the tone of emails and texts, summarize text content, and create Smart Replies. Siri is better able to handle natural language requests, has a new appearance, gains a more natural-sounding voice, and supports typed text input. Apple Photos now allows for natural language search, automatically generates memories, and lets you erase things from photos.
Before using object removal in Apple Photos (Credit: Apple/PCMag)
After using object removal in Apple Photos (Credit: Apple/PCMag)
In testing these features, I found the iPad mini performed just as quickly and delivered the exact same results as the iPad Pro and iPhone 16 Pro Max. It helped me skip some long emails thanks to shortened (and, thankfully, accurate) summaries, and improved some of my photos by allowing me to erase objects from the background.
These features may feel a bit lightweight, but it’s important that the mini is on the same footing as the iPad Air and iPad Pro released this year. The 10th-generation iPad from 2022 is now the odd tablet out. Moreover, Google’s Pixel Tablet and some of Samsung’s Galaxy Tab S10 models already have access to AI-based features. AI is coming to our phones and tablets, so it’s good to have a supported device.
Verdict: Apple’s Smallest iPad Gets Smarter
The iPad mini remains a well-built and highly portable tablet. Apple’s A17 Pro chip and twice the memory make nearly all of the 2024 model’s improvements possible. The processor gives the tablet a huge push forward in performance while allowing it to run Apple Intelligence and support the advanced Apple Pencil Pro. We also like that its Bluetooth and Wi-Fi radios have been upgraded. Despite these strengths, there’s still room for improvement. Waterproofing the mini would open up new use cases, and centering the camera would make it better for video chats. Even so, the iPad mini is a solid choice if you prefer its small size and plan to use it mostly for note-taking or entertainment. Otherwise, casual users can opt for the standard iPad to save some money, while students and creators should consider the more powerful iPad Air for productivity.
Cons
The Bottom Line
The iPad mini is more powerful than ever thanks to its A17 Pro chip and ability to handle Apple Intelligence, but many other aspects of the tablet remain the same.
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About Eric Zeman
Managing Editor, Consumer Electronics
