I really WANTED to love this. I really did. The first month, I was taking it everywhere, doing as much as possible with it. I had high hopes and dreams about our future.
But the honeymoon has ended and reality has set in. While the form factor is excellent, the relationship is just not working out. I am reaching for other options that are simply better at tasks than the mini—it has too many compromises. I will share my experience here in case anyone has a similar use case:
• not great for zoom calls: part of my use case is for work zoom calls. My prior iPad Air third generation had a smoother experience, surprisingly. Zoom unfortunately is not optimized for the new mini. It also took Zoom a month for them to fix a mini-specific bug with the self viewing camera. Now there is a crackling audio problem—yikes (just one more thing). Also, the self-facing camera is WORSE in low light (despite it being a better camera) than the iPad Air 3–defeats the purpose in lower-light work environments.
•it’s not that bright for movies/shows: I was trying to watch a show on the iPad mini in my kitchen, and I kept thinking that the brightness was all the way down. It was not. I didn’t think this would be that big of a deal with the 500 nits, but when it is a problem inside, it’s more an issue than I thought it should be.
• iPad OS is half baked—this has been discussed elsewhere, but it makes the Mini more compromised than it has to be.
•not great in portrait—while the “JS” topic has been well worn, I could probably tolerate it if other apps and screens were optimized for the portrait aspect ratio. Unfortunately, many are not. I’m constantly having to rotate the Mini to landscape. Again, while YMMV, for my workflow it’s inconvenient.
I could see people loving this and finding the great speakers, crisp screen, light weight, & USB-C very useful. For me, it’s just too expensive for too many compromises. Maybe an updated version in a few years will fit the bill.
But the honeymoon has ended and reality has set in. While the form factor is excellent, the relationship is just not working out. I am reaching for other options that are simply better at tasks than the mini—it has too many compromises. I will share my experience here in case anyone has a similar use case:
• not great for zoom calls: part of my use case is for work zoom calls. My prior iPad Air third generation had a smoother experience, surprisingly. Zoom unfortunately is not optimized for the new mini. It also took Zoom a month for them to fix a mini-specific bug with the self viewing camera. Now there is a crackling audio problem—yikes (just one more thing). Also, the self-facing camera is WORSE in low light (despite it being a better camera) than the iPad Air 3–defeats the purpose in lower-light work environments.
•it’s not that bright for movies/shows: I was trying to watch a show on the iPad mini in my kitchen, and I kept thinking that the brightness was all the way down. It was not. I didn’t think this would be that big of a deal with the 500 nits, but when it is a problem inside, it’s more an issue than I thought it should be.
• iPad OS is half baked—this has been discussed elsewhere, but it makes the Mini more compromised than it has to be.
•not great in portrait—while the “JS” topic has been well worn, I could probably tolerate it if other apps and screens were optimized for the portrait aspect ratio. Unfortunately, many are not. I’m constantly having to rotate the Mini to landscape. Again, while YMMV, for my workflow it’s inconvenient.
I could see people loving this and finding the great speakers, crisp screen, light weight, & USB-C very useful. For me, it’s just too expensive for too many compromises. Maybe an updated version in a few years will fit the bill.
