Review: Apple iPad Mini (2021)

When Apple’s new iPad Mini came out of the box, it was love at first sight. A cloud formed above my head, and I began to imagine all the wonderful adventures ahead with this tiny tablet: reading all of my ebooks, writing to-do lists with the second-gen Apple Pencil, streaming Ted Lasso (again), and FaceTiming friends while scrolling through social media—whenever, wherever I want. 

It's easy to feel enamored with the thing. It comes in a few fun colors! It looks modern with slim borders around the screen, it has a USB-C charging port, and it's petite! Apple took its sweet time with proper upgrades to its smallest slate, but these improvements feel well worth the wait.

Then the love bomb wore off, and it didn't take long for reality to set in. I wasn't living out those fantasies. Perhaps partly because we're all still stuck in pandemic land. Instead of opening an ebook, I grabbed a paperback from my bookshelf. When I needed to jot down some notes, I reached for my Sailor Moon Moleskin and ballpoint pen. To binge-watch New Girl, I grabbed my remote. When hopping on a Zoom call, I opened my MacBook Pro. The iPad Mini stayed on my desk as a backup screen. 

That's not to say the sixth-generation iPad Mini isn't excellent—it is—but for $499, it’s more expensive than any Mini that came before. I strongly suggest evaluating how this Mini will fit into your life before it ends up as yet another screen in your household. It has the potential to do anything and everything, but it's probably not going to replace your phone, laptop, heck, even your notebook just yet.

To engineer the iPad Mini, Apple pointed a shrink ray at last year's iPad Air. Probably. From the (almost) edge-to-edge screen, Touch ID integrated into the top power button, and the USB-C port, it's obvious where its inspiration came from. 

The smaller build makes it so much easier to use one-handed than the 11-inch display on the Air or the 12.9-inch iPad Pro, especially if your hands are super small like mine. With both hands, it feels like I'm using a giant iPhone, specifically when typing messages or emails in portrait orientation. There's an 8.3-inch display here, which is larger than the 7.9-inch iPad Mini 5, but Apple managed to keep the tablet's body almost exactly the same. 

It's small enough to throw into most bags or freely carry around with you. I had no problem squeezing it next to my laptop on my small desk crammed with tchotchkes, beverages, and notebooks. It's the perfect size for traveling. Thankfully, as this tablet is designed to be used on the go, its Liquid Retina display manages to get bright enough to see outdoors. Walking down the street while reading an ebook in broad daylight, the text was plenty legible on max brightness.

But I do have one big gripe: the awkward placement of the front-facing camera. Because the iPad Mini is so small, the camera sits a lot lower in landscape mode than it does on bigger iPads. To try to make up for this, Apple threw in a 12-megapixel ultrawide-angle camera and Center Stage, a feature that debuted on the iPad Pro earlier this year that automatically shifts the camera to always keep you in the frame. 

In theory, this is supposed to make up for the horrifically unflattering angle the camera captures on FaceTime and Zoom calls. It sorta does, if you dedicate extra time before video calls to properly keep the iPad far enough away from you (otherwise, you'll be forced to stare at your double chin). You can use a tripod, which is a totally normal and common thing to do. Or Apple can save us all by just moving the damn camera.

Unlike Apple's new ninth-generation iPad, which uses an A13 chip, the iPad Mini packs the same A15 processor included in the new iPhone 13 and iPhone 13 Pro models. This tiny tablet is small but mighty. 

My day-to-day workflow didn't necessarily push the boundaries of horsepower, but common tasks like sending emails and texts, scrolling through social media, and FaceTiming—even in split-screen view—all worked without a hitch. And I had zero hiccups editing photos in Lightroom while watching a movie on Netflix using picture-in-picture mode. It's worth pointing out that the Mini did heat up when I ran several apps over a short period of time, though not alarmingly so.

Every morning, I used the iPad Mini to create To-Do lists in the Notes app and then as a second monitor to my MacBook with Sidecar the rest of the day. The latter is one of my favorite uses for the Mini. Since I split my time between my apartment in New York City and my parent's home in the suburbs, it's nice to always have a smol external monitor on hand. Depending on my schedule, I also used the Mini to jump on Zoom calls with colleagues.

Sadly, battery life struggled with all that activity. I managed to squeeze about five hours out of it, so almost a full workday. Apple claims up to 10 hours of web browsing or watching video on the Wi-Fi model and nine on the 5G variant. But when I streamed a Netflix show (with iMessage, Telegram, the Notes app, and Google Calendar running in the background) it hit 1 percent at around the six-hour mark. Unless you're using it lightly, don't expect it to last from 9 to 5. 

If there's one thing you take away from this review, it's that the accessories matter. Without the Smart Folio (or a third-party equivalent) and the second-generation Apple Pencil, then streaming movies and shows is likely the most fun you'll have with the Mini. Tack on both and the Mini can transform into a viable notebook, sketchpad, smart display, external monitor, TV, and ebook reader. If you're brave enough, it can also double as your primary iPhone.

I still prefer using those respective items over the Mini. The tiny screen can feel cramped, especially if you try to use it for work. But if you don't have an external monitor, or a notebook you regularly use, or a sketchpad, or a reading slate, then it can be all of those things. 

All of that that comes at a cost. This iPad Mini is the most expensive model to date at $499 for 64 gigs, but the Smart Folio and Pencil bring your total to a whopping $687 before tax. Need more storage? Your only option is 256 GB for $649, bringing that total to $837, which is a little more than the 128-GB iPad Pro and almost the price of an M1 MacBook Air (2020). And that's just for the Wi-Fi-only model. 

This iPad Mini stole the thunder from the iPhone 13 this year. But when you tone down the long-overdue redesign and push through the marketing lingo, this slate is a just very small, expensive screen at its core. It feels redundant without its accessories. That's especially true if you spend most of your time in one room with access to a laptop, a monitor, a TV, and plenty of notebook paper. 

The Mini feels like it was built for the post-pandemic era that's not quite here. If you're frequently reading or playing games on a train or at the coffee shop, it's great! But I'm still spending most of my time indoors, and it's tough to justify such a high price on a screen when I already have so many around me. 

I'll wait until Apple's tiny, cute, powerful tablet one day becomes more affordable. Until then, I'll stick to my pen and paper, budget e-reader, and flatscreen TV, all of which are always within arm's reach.