John Green

The newly redesigned iPad Mini isn’t an iPad Pro Mini. It’s an iPad Air Mini. It’s like a foldable phone that doesn’t fold but can still fit in the back pocket or the palm of many larger sized hands.

Wider edge-to-edge display, candy-coloured shells, touch ID in the power button, USB-C in the base, stereo landscape speakers, Apple Pencil 2 if no magic keyboard mini, sub-6 5G if no T millimetre wave, the A15 Bionic chipset and Center Stage-capable front camera.

The iPad did not only lose the Home button, but also the headphone jack. While it is the most feature-packed iPad Mini ever, it’s also the most expensive iPad Mini ever, starting at the same 64GB but newly priced at $499 (Sh54,925). So, is Apple’s biggest Mini ever worth it?

The new design language of the iPad Mini is both incredibly familiar, similar to last year’s iPad Air, but also in a way that’s unique to the Mini.

It has slimmer bezels this time but with rounded corners, stretched from the original 7.9-inches to 8.3-inches, bigger than the Galaxy Z Fold3 unfolded.

It is an LCD panel that is fine for indoor use, with a 60Hz refresh rate, 500 nits max brightness as the last generation.

It also has the highest density of any iPad display, making texts and graphics super sharp and crisp.

Since there’s no home button, you navigate with gestures like swiping up to go home.

There’s a new multitasking multi-window button and app library owing to iPadOS 15.

Powered by the A15 Bionic, Apple’s latest-generation chipset, the same one powering the iPhone 13 Pro, the Mini gets extra graphics firepower, new video encode and decode blocks, and the rest of generational improvements will help you with everything from heavy hardcore gaming to multistream video editing with effects.

The back wide-angle camera is now 12MP and f/1.8 with a true tone flash if you need it. The front wide-angle is now the ultra-wide-angle.

The Apple Pencil 2, the only accessory for the Mini as there’s no Magic keyboard, attaches magnetically to the Mini and charges inductively.

It has a capacitive button on the side that you can use for switching tools.

One of the bottlenecks of the Mini is the battery life. You may have to recharge the cell at the end of the day, which is not ideal. It is a good pickup for students and artists with a good experience.