The Verge Editor’s Choice: Apple’s new iPad mini

“Apple’s decision to upgrade the iPad mini for the first time since 2015 was surprising for a product line that many had assumed was dead,” Sam Byford writes for The Verge. “But having just returned from a two-week trip around Europe where I used the 2019 mini as my only computer, my only question is: what took Apple so long? It’s a wonderful product without parallel.”
“The iPad mini is the perfect vacation computer. My trip involved a lot of low-cost carrier flights with strict baggage limits, so I was traveling super light, and I always appreciated the minimal impact. I never regretted carrying the iPad mini around with me, even though I had a giant phone in my pocket,” Byford writes. “I use an iPhone XS Max, which itself has one of the biggest screens you can get on a phone, at 6.5 inches. That doesn’t sound that much smaller than the iPad mini’s 7.9-inch display on paper, but the two devices just aren’t comparable.”
Apple’s new iPad mini brings Apple Pencil support, Retina display and the A12 Bionic chip.
 
“The A12 processor is another important inclusion,” Byford writes. “The new mini’s A12 is the same chip you’ll find in the current iPhone XS. Its performance is phenomenal, and I feel like there’s enough headroom in this little tablet to last another several-year stretch of Apple forgetting it exists.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Almost perfect, the new iMac mini is, but imagine it with an OLED display and a TrueDepth Camera in place of the anachronistic Home button and it’d be the perfect little iOS tablet! It’d be impossible to avoid buying.
So, the 2019 iPad mini a great product with some real headroom for improvement. Hopefully, Apple will step up the update schedule (for everything not called “iPhone”) and go for a fully modern iPad mini in 2020!
SEE ALSO:
Macworld UK reviews Apple’s 2019 iPad mini: ‘A surprising and powerful tablet’ – April 19, 2019
Teardown of Apple’s new 5th-gen. iPad mini – April 2, 2019
Hands-on with Apple’s new 10.5-inch iPad Air and 7.9-inch iPad mini – March 29, 2019
Apple’s new 5th-gen. iPad mini is a modern version of a small classic – March 22, 2019
Uh, for whom is Apple’s new iPad mini intended? – March 18, 2019
Apple launches all-new, A12 Bionic-powered 10.5-inch iPad Air and 7.9-inch iPad mini – March 18, 2019