Design & Build Quality

So, I have owned the iPad mini for about 6 months now and I have to say it’s the most powerful compact tablet I have ever use and yes, it is still the one the most powerful you can buy today. Starting off with the design, the iPad Mini overhauls everything about the previous generation iPad Mini featuring a all-new 8.3 inch screen giving us the larger screen real estate that we have been asking for years. Though we can see that there are couple of bezels all around, I find that the experience is still indeed very pleasing for me to hold it without my hands blocking any parts of the screen. The iPad Mini is just a tad bigger than an iPhone Pro Max, hence holding and storing in small bags makes it a joy to have around. Moving on, the liquid retina display as colour accurate as you expect, producing up to 500 nits of brightness and supports the P3 wide colour gamut that os accurate for ProRes video edits as well as True Tone technology that is gret for Dolby Vision content; delivering the best true-to-life colours that are highly useful for photo editing and video colour grading. It is also fully laminated with anti-reflective coating and fingerprint-resistant oleophobic coating. If you are looking at a potential 120Hz refresh rate ProMotion technology, the iPad Mini unfortunately does not support it, so refresh rates are still stuck at 60Hz max. In my day-to-day use, there was little to no lag when used with high frame rate games or the 2nd Generation Apple Pencil. Next, the speakers function decently well too with balanced stereo output. They aren't the loudest but the sound is crisp and worth using for video calls or movie watching session. It never distorts at high volume levels and retains the depth and detail with sufficient soundstage and distinct left and right channels. The bass is deep, the mids are crisp and vocals come off with sparkling highs and never sounded shrill to the ear. Audio content with Dolby Atmos support can be played with full compatibility, enhanced by thr use of Spatial Audio with AirPods Pro (2nd Generation) or the AirPods Max. There are also dual microphones that did well in picking up my voice during calls. In my time using it across Zoom, Skype, Discord and FaceTime, I never had a single person feedback that they couldn’t hear me or I sounded muffled. To make this experience even better, there is Center Stage which allows the software to intelligently recognise where you are and pans the cameras to follow you to keep you in frame as you move around the area. Pretty cool, consider how we don't usually do presentations or share content with one another while seated at the same spot all the time. If there are more people in the frame, the camera does also zoom out to keep everyone in frame for FaceTime and more. In terms of camera quality, the iPad Mini has a 12MP front-facing TrueDepth camera of f2.4 aperture that has a wide 122 degree field of view. It can do up to 1080p HD video recording of 60 fps​, or extended dynamic range videos up to 30fps with image stabilisation applied to all settings mentioned​. On the back. there is a new and improved 12MP Wide camera with a flash but no LIDAR scanner like the iPad Pros. Featuring a ƒ/1.8 aperture with 5x digital zoom, the pictures captured were near the top quality of something you would expect from an iPhone and were mostly sharp and crisp with Wide colour capture, exposure control. noise reduction, Portrait mode, smart HDR for photos, and auto image stabilisation. You can also do 4K video recording up to 60 fps and slow‑motion video at 1080p up to 240 fps as well as Time-lapse video with stabilisation​. With the iPad Mini, we don't have Face ID embedded hence, we will be stuck to TouchID. Still, it isn't a bad thing, considering how advanced and fast TouchID can be, I will still pick it over FaceID any day.

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Performance

Moving on to performance, the iPad Mini has the A15 Bionic chip with 64-bit architecture and an 6 core CPU and 5 core graphics processors with 16-core Neural Engine that fly through apps without a problem. So far, I haven't got it to a point where an app crashes but when gaming intensively, the chassis would heat up a bit. Doing some heavy RAW photo editing with the Apple Pencil, I didn't notice much lag too. When video editing, the footages loaded fine and there was enough power in the processor to drive the iPad. I also often use Augmented Reality apps and watch videos on Netflix or YouTube and the experience is as seamless as it gets. Of course, the experience couldn't have been completed without iPad OS 16 that helps me organise my files and plug into USB drives like what I did on a MacBook Pro. Now, with consistent updates, many bugs were fixed and the software is stable. There is also the ability to connect to both a Bluetoot mouse and keyboard support so I could use the entire system like a on-the-go laptop though I hardly do so. Coming from a MacBook perspective, most gestures work similarly too. Of course, the 2nd generation Apple Pencil with its 9ms low latency, drawing, and scribbling texts is efficient and much like using a real physical pen and paper. Those who multi-task seriously will beneift greatly from split view where two apps can be open side-by-side. Now, Stage Manager does also organise your opened app for easy switching, overlapping windows of different sizes, drag and drop or opening from the dock itself is very much possible. With every update to iPadOS, the experience gets even better and never fails to wow us time and time again with interesting features that can be useful for different variety of users. First up, message and emails can now be unsend, edited or editied or even be recovered if accidently deleted. To make work collaboration easier, a new app FreeForm is added to share content across Files, Numbers, Pages, Reminders and Safari. In some sense replicating the Google ecosystem of apps like Google Docs, Sheets and many more by sending an invite link to join the particular document via FaceTime and communicate easily via the Message thread. One of the exciting features we have all been enjoying thus far is Live Text that texts us easily extract written content straight out of photos, saving us tons of time retyping our notes that we took photos of or having to use a third-party optical screen reader to do so. Indeed, AI and Machine Learning have made it so much better at recognising not just typed text but also handwriting of any sorts, If you are a frequent traveller, the text can be translated to speak to a local with the translate app that picks up the spoken audio and translates it in real-time. Pushing the boundaries, the system can do just tapping and holding on the object itself to remove its background. And yes, too many of us are too many of us are having too fun making stickers to make fun of one another. One of the most important additions here, is the new Focus Modes. More often than not, we find ourselves needing a break from distraction and that's when these Focus Modes comes in handy. There are a few presets like Do Not Disturb, Sleep, Driving, Work and even even custom one to allow us the ability to mute notification of allow for some important exceptions.

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Connectivity & Portability

In terms of connectivity, the iPad Mini (6th Generation) supports the latest Bluetooth 5.0, Wi-Fi 6 and LTE. You may also pick the version that allows for Nano-SIM for 5G support though there is a lack of wide UltraBand support. The battery life is claimed to be up to 10 hours of use but heavy workloads like gaming or streaming movies will drain it quicker than it should last. The USB-C port supports a single external display support monitors such as the Pro Display XDR or 4K monitors like the LG UltraFine series of displays up to 30Hz refresh rate. Alternatively, you can also use AirPlay 2 to cast your content to any compatible screen which works efficiently and effectively. Like the usual, there is still no 3.5mm audio jack for audio use. The package also comes with an 20W charger to fast charge the battery.

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PROS​

• Modern Design

• Compact Size

• Bezel-less Design

• A15 Bionic Powerful Chip

• Ultra-wide Camera

• Up to 256GB Storage

• P3 Wide Colour Gamut & True Tone

• Consistent Stable iPad OS Updates

• Apple Pencil (2nd Gen) Support

• USB-C Fast Charging

• Bluetooth 5.0

• Wi-Fi 6 & LTE

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CONS​​​

• No Expandable Storage​

• No 3.5mm headphone jack

• No Wireless Charging

• No Compatible Keyboard

 

The Bottom Line

All in all, the iPad Mini (6th Generation) is a very user-friendly tablet that finally has the look and feel of what we have been wait years. It has the sheer power of a modern tablet, unleashing a new ways for us to work and play on it effortlessly. It is the best compact tablet you can buy with iPad OS 16 as of yet and it is indeed on the more expensive spectrum of price ranges. Whether you are designer, student or just a regular Joe using it for play, the iPad Mini does not disappoint with its powerful CPU and GPU performance. The iPad Mini comes in Space Grey, Starlight, Purple and Pink colours to showcase your personality.