Right now, the iPad mini with an A17 Pro and 8Gb of RAM is $399 through some retail partners. It was released in October of 2024 and through BestBuy’s price matching, Total Tech Program and my lack of sales tax in New Hampshire, I paid $399 for a device that lists for $499 and received 2 years of AppleCare+ and no other taxes collected. Great deal and an exceptional value. I continue to tell everyone who will listen that if you buy 2-3 Apple Devices every year, TotalTech at $170 a year is a fantastic deal to cover AppleCare on everything before you factor in all of the other perks.
About me and my setup before iPad mini:
I’ve owned every iPad from the first one to most of the Air models and almost every Pro model including my 13” M4 iPad Pro with Nano Texture Display. Being an iPad 9.7-12.9” owner since the beginning, my major gripe was the lack of a keyboard and trackpad which Apple fixed with the Magic Keyboard and unlocked exceptional productivity for a device that’s an exploded mobile operating system. It was such a revelation that from 2020, I never traveled with my MacBook Pro. I could do about 80% of my work on an iPad Pro with a keyboard and trackpad connected short of some heavy-lifting creative tasks that were hamstrung only by Apple and Adobe’s slow embrace of mobile software. Today, MacOS is still my preferred work environment. Everyone agrees an M4 iPad is held back only by its software.
My routine when not traveling has been to put iPad Pro on a stand at my desk for MLB games, stock tickers, social media feeds and weather alerts. My iPhone, docked to an Anker charging stand would mostly sit unused for the entirety of the day except to deliver music and maps to me when I leave the house for a walk/jog/hike/office visit/errands. At the end of my work day, I’d leave my MacBook Pro docked to a Thunderbolt hub and 32” display and grab my iPad Pro, placing it in the Magic Keyboard for cooking, notes, social media, emails, messages and such no matter where I was on my property like down by the docks, in bed, on the couch or in the kitchen. I’ll add that If I’m not persuing creative approaches, the iPad Pro goes with me to coffee shops and on every car journey because I don’t like typing on phones so if I get a text message or email, I’ll usually grab the iPad Pro with cellular and respond there.
iPad mini, after a few days of use is taking time away from my iPad Pro which is mind blowing to me.
Life with iPad mini:
Something surprising happened since picking this up. Following setup, I’d start casually grabbing it and carrying it around the house. The mini fits in my cargo shorts and pants pockets of my mostly-outdoors-hiking-pants that have larger pockets. It fits in the tank bag of my motorcycle and I can hold it with one hand with my thumb and index finger around the backside then interact with my other hand.
The display actually has a higher pixels per inch than two of my other devices at 326 PPI (MBP @ 254, iPhone at 460, iPad at 264). So clarity of this display compared to my OLED iPad Pro or MiniLED MacBook Pro is actually more crisp and I just wish it was slightly brighter outside or had a nano-texture display.
I found triaging emails, reading RSS feeds, Instapaper stories or Reddit to be most of what I navigate to. Anything that may prompt typing like MS Teams, Slack, Safari or Messages I avoid because I’m not prepared to thumb through when I can literally get up and go to my MacBook Pro and compose the message even faster. In a way, it’s a very similar use case of my iPhone but because the iPhone screen is so limiting and software so basic by comparison to iPadOS, the iPad Pro replaced my iPhone entirely when I’m not on the go but, through a failure of my own ambition (?), the iPad Pro 13 attached to a Magic Keyboard is larger than the iPad Air and less capable so I’m sort of in this awful space of wanting iPadOS apps but not wanting all of the weight and heft of Apple’s largest iPad.
The mini is an iPad in every way minus everything extra that makes the iPad Pro unwieldy for casual “lounging” like when Steve first demoed the iPad in 2010 from a red leather chair reading the New York Times and watching YouTube. I’m actually blown away by how much I love using iPad mini and since I am not typing out things on my phone or iPad mini, it is essentially a home phone replacement.
I’ve been using iPad mini at the docks, down by the fire pit, sitting on the water, in the back yard with the dog, while grilling, on the couch while watching television and before I go to bed. It’s replaced my iPhone completely if I’m home.
I plan on using it when traveling and seriously using it as the “family web device” when we’re in a hotel and I’m passing it around to put in an Uber Eats order or showing something I want to buy.
It’s sort of awkward actually because my iPhone will always be in my pocket when I leave the house but the iPad mini will be there any time I plan on ‘casual consumption’ time sort of like a Kindle. Then the iPad Pro will be with me when I need to get some work, research or writing done and the faithful MacBook Pro at home waiting for the heavy lifting (like the family truck).
Why did I actually buy a mini? What changed to warrant another Apple device?
I actually bought the mini for a business use. I like Microsoft Word’s Immersive Reader function with a black background and I use it when I present to glance at and ensure I hit the key points. Yes I could use speaker notes but they’re too small when I’m presenting and I often don’t present with PowerPoint. Alternatively, I would print off on 8.5×11 notes and then I’m loudly shuffling through paper and losing my place. Also, my handwriting is awful so flash card size paper won’t work. I have been known to hold an iPhone but, like speaker notes on a PowerPoint that’s being displayed on a projector, I usually struggle to read them. And my iPad Pro 13 is fine to hold (it’s larger than letter size) but for this use case, I actually will be using my iPad and Apple’s Sidecar Feature to write and draw on slides when teaching concepts to a class.
How often do I do this? Well, soon it’ll be about 8 days a month or about 70 hours of time standing in front of a room with a MacBook Pro presenting, an iPad Pro for drawing and an iPad mini in my hand with a 70 page notes file (10,800 words) in table format that I can read the 2-3 lines per slide to ensure I didn’t forget something before advancing to the next slide.
For this situation, an iPad mini is perfect. It’s this flash-card size tablet that will display a Word document in high-contrast mode and I’ll be holding it for 7 hours straight while I advance slides with a clicker device.
I also considered a second use case which is my daughter sometimes wants to play on my iPhone. Our iPhone 16 and 15 Pro Maxes are covered by AppleCare but replacement costs without a warranty is $1300 and $1500 so this is a pretty high cost toy for her to look at photos of Disney characters we have loaded in a photos album that she draws on with her fingers. An iPad mini in a protective case and screen protector would be fine to throw around and casually play with in certain situations like boat rides or sitting around the fire pit or on an airplane (she’s already visited 7 countries and she’s not two years old yet). So the mini at $399 is more kid friendly in price and she actually holds it better than an iPhone since it’s thicker and wider and while she does enjoy painting on my iPad Pro 13 with Apple Pencil Pro, that replacement cost is around $2300 USD so again, just not what I want to leave a kid unattended with. It’ll be her first Apple device and we’ll be monitoring her use of it but a mini is a perfect size for a kid.
The foldable elephant in the room:
It’s true that a foldable iPhone coming in the next 2 years will make an iPad mini’s use case obsolete and the 2024 mini refresh might be its last but I don’t think so. I just bought what is essentially an iPhone Fold for $399. The lowest you’ll see one in 2027 will be priced at $1999 as a starting price. I don’t need an iPad mini screen in my pocket enough to pay $1600 more. That’s absurd and I already am in a use case where I don’t type on phones and don’t type on the mini (I used a Bluetooth keyboard to set it up). So while an iPad mini replacement device is coming by way of a very large screen iPhone, this is an incredible deal today and you can safely forgo spending $1199 for an iPhone Pro Max and instead spend $999 on an iPhone Pro and $399 on a mini for less than the future iPhone fold might cost. That’s huge.
My screen sizes:
Just for fun, what is my Apple device screen matrix today in 2025 for devices I use regularly?
- Apple Watch Ultra 2: 1.8”
- iPod Classic: 2.5″
- iPhone 16 Pro Max: 6.9″
- iPad mini: 8.3″
- iPad Pro M4: 13″
- MacBook Pro M3 Pro: 16″
- MacBook Pro M1 Max: 16″
The M3 Pro is my work computer and the M1 Max is my personal computer. I’m considering replacing my 16” M1 with a 14” M5 Max before 2026 because I have a sizable display for creative work.
