iPad mini 5: An Unapologetically Big iPhone and a Surprisingly Powerful Tablet
Let me get the obligatory disclaimer out of the way: I am writing this review on the iPad mini using an external keyboard. There was a time when it was an interesting fact because people thought it impossible to use an iPad for anything other than a toy. It should be pretty well established by now that one can type on just about anything. I could have done this article while thumb-typing.
I will also disclaim that I have used an iPad for years doing professional writing. It is no big deal to me. Also, writing is not the most compute-demanding profession. That said, many people use the iPad mini for 4K video production. YouTube has many such examples. Now, on to the review...
I do not use the iPad mini for writing very often. I prefer the much larger iPad Pro 11” for that. But I am using the mini to see how viable it is as a primary mobile platform. At this moment, I am using the base-model iPad mini + cellular, and a Keys-to-Go keyboard. This is a compact, but not ideal setup.
This keyboard is mostly full-size. It certainly gives you more room to type than keyboards made for the mini. However, it is a two-piece system which means you have to have a way to carry it. When I head out the door, I just grab the iPad like a clutch and away I go. This works great for an iPad Pro plus Smart Keyboard. When you have two pieces, you need a bag. Also, if you need two separate pieces and a bag, why not just use a laptop or full-size iPad with a keyboard case? Still, if this is all you can afford, it works. You can get things done.
A giant iPhone
My favorite use for the iPad mini is as an iPhone replacement. This is partially why I chose the cellular model. You might have heard that cellular iPads cannot take the place of a phone. That is mostly true. You still need a phone as a mechanism for housing your phone number. All cellular iPads have phone numbers and sims. But they cannot be provisioned to be a stand-alone cell phone.
There might be a technical reason for this. But it feels more like a business model reason to me. Phone carriers want to sell smartphones. They do not want to sell tablets that will eat into their smartphone revenues. If someone knows of a technical reason, let me know in the comments. Bottom line, you have to have an iPhone to use the iPad as a phone carrying your phone number natively. I am aware of apps that allow you to do something like this. But those apps are imperfect solutions.
The secret to using your cellular iPad as a phone is WiFi Calling. I won’t pretend to understand how or why any of this works. I can only tell you that it works for me. Turn on WiFi Calling and leave your iPhone at home. I have tested this in a lot of different ways. I turned my iPhone off by completely powering it down. I was still able to make and receive calls from my iPad. I also completely turned off WiFi on my iPad so it was only using cellular. When I am out and about, my iPad is my phone. I haven’t used my phone since I had the mini.
As you might imagine, there are one or two caveats. The big one is the Apple Watch. Right now, you cannot set up an Apple Watch without an iPhone. You have no choice but to interact with a phone if you want to use an Apple Watch. This is not technically necessary or customer friendly. It isn’t evil. That word is tossed around way too much. But it also isn’t nice.
You also need to be on the lookout for third-party apps that only work on one device at a time. My NJ Transit app I use to buy and store bus and train tickets can only be used on one device at a time. It was easy enough to set up on my iPad. But if I bring my phone and leave my iPad, I will have to set it up again on my phone before I can pay my fare.
There is also the matter of Apple Pay. The iPad does not have NFC. So it cannot be used for external Apple Pay. Lucky I have a watch. I also have loyalty cards in the Wallet app. There is no Wallet app on the iPad. Again, that is not particularly user friendly. Fortunately, the only loyalty cards I use on a regular basis exist as physical cards on my keychain. If Apple offers a system of keeping things like state ID on your phone, I suspect it wouldn’t be accessible on the iPad. I think the cellular iPad will always be a second-class citizen to the phone because Apple would rather sell you a phone. There is no technical reason for these limitations of which I am aware.
When I was buying my Apple Watch Series 6, I was also trading in my old watch. There was a moment when the rep needed some information about my trade-in. I couldn’t look it up because that information only lived in the Watch app on the iPhone. We eventually managed a workaround that took a very long time. But that is the kind of inconvenience you run into when you don’t carry a phone. All such situations are created and contrived for business rather than technical reasons. Just be aware that those times will come up if you roll with an iPad sans phone.
That said, I still carry my iPad without also carrying a phone. I find it liberating. Everything I did with my phone is something I do better on my iPad mini. All the apps I ran on the phone are better on the iPad. I use the iPad versions instead of the phone version. That works out just fine for me. Apple might not want you to use an iPad as a smartphone replacement. But you most certainly can do it.
Small tablet
Like the Tardis, the iPad mini is bigger on the inside. It punches above its weight. The diminutive size is deceptive. You don’t expect much from things in small packages. The iPad mini subverts expectations and conventional wisdom. By now, no one is surprised that a big iPad can do computer things. But it is hard to believe that people are using the mini for their full 4K video workflow. A quick tour of YouTube reviews reveals one happy user after another. Few have anything negative to say, and all praise the performance. Some even do direct comparisons to the iPad Pro because the distance between those two devices is a lot less than you think.
I don’t care about benchmarks. I care about the subjective experience. Benchmarks tell us what is faster at doing a task. But we don’t go through our day doing side by side comparisons of similar things. Objectively, the iPad is faster than most PCs. However, subjectively, PC users are quite happy with their setups. Unless something is slow enough to annoy, a person will never consider whether their computing device is objectively slower than another. Of course the iPad mini is not the fastest computer in the world. That has no bearing on whether or not it is fast enough to be very satisfying at many high-end tasks. And for the record, it most certainly is.
Display and audio
The display looks great and is plenty bright. You can read the screen just fine outdoors in direct sunlight. Full brightness is too much indoors in most settings. Save some battery and turn it down a bit. We can talk about specs. But again, that really doesn’t speak to the subjective experience of looking at the display. There are plenty of high-resolution displays that look awful, and many lower-res displays that look great. This display looks great. As with all LCDs, I wish the blacks got a little blacker. But I don’t believe any normal person would look at the display and think it was somehow lacking. They would be pleased by what they saw.
If there is a real negative with this unit, it is with the audio. I have become spoiled by the audio coming from iPhones, iPads, and Mac laptops. The audio from my 16” MacBook Pro is so good, I don’t bother to run the sound through an external speaker. The audio coming from the mini sounds like it is coming from a device that was made 10 years ago. Apple has updated almost everything inside the iPad mini except the audio. It is bad, very bad. Use headphones.
Somewhere between a phone and a tablet
I think the iPad is the best tablet in the world. I also think the iPhone is the best smartphone in the world. Here’s where I get a little nuts: I think the iPad mini is more useful than the iPhone or the full-size iPad. Here’s why:
There are always individual examples of where the iPad mini is not as good. But on balance, if I could have only one iOS device, it would be the iPad mini. That is because I can do all the things with it that I normally do on my phone. There are even workarounds to the Apple Watch problem.
While your milage may vary, I don’t have any iPhone apps that don’t show up on my iPad as iPad apps. I can live without NFC. The lack of NFC in the iPad mini is annoying, but not a deal-breaker. What might be a deal-breaker for a lot of people is the camera. The mini has a camera worthy of 2010. But I take so few pictures that it really isn’t a big deal to me.
While the iPhone has access to all the productivity apps anyone could want, no one actually wants to do productivity work on an iPhone. The screen simply isn’t big enough for writing, spreadsheets, PowerPoint, and the like. No one wants to thumb-type through any of that. And an external keyboard and monitor attached to an iPhone is ridiculous. The iPad can handle all of that pretty well. Though I would not enjoy spreadsheets on this screen. Then again, I think spreadsheets should only be done on a monitor that is 21” or larger.
I don’t want to give up my larger iPad. But there is literally nothing I do on my 11” iPad that I can’t do on this iPad mini. There is even a healthy accessory ecosystem including keyboards that are surprisingly workable. I will be talking about one of those keyboards in another post. What I can do with this iPad is carry it in my pants pocket in a pinch. I can use it on a train, on a plain in the cheap seats, standing in a line, or perching on one of those standing tables at Starbucks.
To put pay to my claims, I have been using this iPad mini as my only iOS device for about a week with few exceptions. I don’t miss my phone. It stays on the charger next to my bed. And my wife has been using my iPad Pro. Only once or twice have I missed it. At the moment, this mini is the only iPad with cellular. That really is a killer feature for me. That, alone, makes it more valuable than my Pro.
Caveats
I’m just going to come out and say it: The iPad mini is ugly. I can’t stop seeing those giant top and bottom bezels. I know that Apple will eventually eliminate them and that was frankly the hardest thing for me to get over. I didn’t want to invest in another device with unnecessary bezels. If apple comes out with the iPad I know they have on deck within the next few weeks, I will find a way to buy it despite the money I have sank into this one. I will bite the bullet and sell this one at a loss.
It might be reason enough to recommend people to hold off on an iPad mini purchase. The best of all possible worlds for me is that Apple waits till Spring 2021 to roll out the new model. By then, I will have gotten my money’s worth from this one and I will feel good about the upgrade. That is what I think will happen. Apple just had an iPad event where the consumer line was updated. It makes no sense for them to update the mini in a separate event where the focus is the iPhone.
I have already mentioned the abysmal audio. But it bears repeating. Even the Apple Watch has more pleasing audio. This might be important to people who watch a lot of videos and play a lot of games. If you don’t want to wear earphones whenever you engage in those activities, you will need to purchase a separate speaker. This could be a deal-breaker for some.
Did I mention how ugly it is? Oh, my god!
The onscreen keyboard is practically unusable for touch typing. I am doing it right now. Trust me, it is a pain to do. This is one of the few times I will say, “thank god for autocorrect!” And with that, I will return to my external keyboard.
Final thoughts and buying advice
No single device is the best at everything. There are plenty of things that the iPad mini can’t do well. At best, it is only serviceable in those areas. However, it really is great at most things. If you like iOS gaming, there is no better game machine on the market. It can run anything in the App Store just fine. And it is the perfect size for just about every game. It is worth it for that, alone. If you love to read with the Kindle or Books app, again, it is worth it for that, alone.
If you commute on a train or bus, or perhaps you are a frequent flyer, notebook-sized devices can be tricky. The iPad mini is the ultimate travel companion and is worth it for that, alone. If you mostly use your devices to communicate via email, text, discussion boards, and social media, nothing beats the iPad mini. It is worth it for that, alone.
If you want a house computer that you can take with you from room to room - a kitchen computer, a couch computer, a bed computer, a bathroom computer, nothing in Apple’s lineup beats the iPad mini. It is absolutely worth it for that, alone.
I could go on in this manner for a long time. But I think you get my point.
The iPad mini isn’t for everyone. But it is for a lot of people who don’t know it. You might well be one of them. It is certainly worth looking into. I will be the first to admit that the iPad mini club can be a bit of a cult. Still, there is a reason so many people fall in love with it. Personally, I’m all in. The more, the merrier.
David Johnson