Apple iPad Mini A17 Pro Review: Not enough tablet (for too much money)

You’d have to really, truly love the Apple iPad Mini A17 Pro’s tiny form factor for it to make a great deal of sense to you for the kinds of prices Apple wants for it.

Score: 2.5/5

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In this review

Apple iPad Mini Specifications
Apple iPad Mini Design
Apple iPad Mini Performance
Apple iPad Mini Battery
Apple iPad Mini Conclusion

The whole point of the iPad Mini is that it’s small. Minute. Teensy-tiny in the iPad world, but packing in a big ol’ silicon brain that’s meant to put it a step ahead of the baseline iPad.

The 2024 iteration of the iPad Mini – Apple always only calls every generation the “iPad Mini” which is infuriating when you’re trying to write about them comparatively, so I’m calling it the iPad Mini A17 Pro for clarity – certainly hits those goals and then some.

It’s just that it does so at a price point where I’m left wondering why you would opt for this particular generation of iPad unless extreme portability was your core reason for picking up an iPad at all and you were willing to put up with a lot of compromises along the way,  .

It’s not that the iPad Mini is a bad tablet.

It’s that I can’t help but feeling that Apple could have – and arguably, at this price, should have – done a bit more to make it a little bit more special compared against both the much cheaper regular Apple iPad or the larger and slightly nicer iPad Air or iPad Pro lines.

iPad Mini A17 Pro: Design

Like I said, the iPad Mini is the small iPad, and it’s inherent in the name, but I’m not entirely sure that being small means that it’s entirely justified for Apple to put so little effort into the design for a tablet that they haven’t updated since 2021.

You’re still staring at the same 8.3 inch Liquid Retina IPS display with a resolution of 2266x1488 and a 60Hz refresh rate as the 2021 model for a start. Why 60Hz when the iPad Pro lines can run with 120Hz (or “Pro Motion” in Apple-marketing-speak)?

Because Apple wants it that way, that’s why. Given so many devices sell for way, way less than the asking price of the iPad Mini A17 Pro with 90hz or 120Hz capable displays, it’s essentially just because Apple can. You can view that either as a way for it to eke out more money from iPad Mini sales, because 60Hz tech would be cheaper for it, or as a non-subtle upsell to the iPad Pro as you wish.

It matters though, because at 60Hz on a tablet the screen scrolls with just a touch more judder than it should do, especially for a premium-priced tablet. While it’s true that the iPad Air is also stuck in 60Hz land, you’re at least getting a larger display there, while the entry level iPad is considerably cheaper.

That leaves the iPad Mini as the unfortunate piggy in the middle in this respect – which again draws me back to the point that you’ve got to love having a smaller device over other considerations for it to make sense. However, even if you do, because the design is essentially unchanged from the 2021 model, there’s not much of an upgrade argument in design terms here.

Apple does have a few new colours in play for the iPad Mini A17 Pro; joining the near-standard Space Grey and Starlight are Blue and Purple options, which certainly look nice on store shelves. Apple loaned me the Space Grey version and it… looks like just about every other Space Grey Apple product you’ve seen for more than a decade now.

The iPad Mini A17 Pro is also Apple Pencil compatible, but here if you're a longer-term Apple Pencil on iPad Mini user, you're going to have to reach into your wallet one more time. The iPad Mini A17 Pro supports the Apple Pencil Pro and its squeezy/tilty gestures if that's your kind of thing, but the tradeoff there is that it doesn't support the second-generation Apple Pencil at all. Apple did not send an Apple Pencil Pro my way to test with the iPad Mini A17 Pro, so I can't comment on how well it performs.

iPad Mini A17 Pro: Performance

The 2021 model of the iPad Mini ran on an Apple A15 Bionic, which meant that in one sense it was a slightly oversized iPhone 14.

With Apple’s big push into “Apple Intelligence”, and the fact that the iPad Air 2024 refresh runs on an Apple M2 chip, you might think that you’d be in store for some Apple M-series goodness with your iPad Mini A17 Pro.

You might think that, but you’d be wrong.

Apple pretty clearly delineates both the regular iPad and iPad Mini as only being worthy of older chips originally designed for phones, which is why if you cracked the iPad Mini A17 Pro open you’d find, of course, an A17 Pro processor. Also you’d find you had totally voided your warranty, so maybe don’t do that.

The A17 Pro is the beating heart of the Apple iPhone 15 Pro/Pro Max lineup, so there should be scope at least for some performance improvements over the older iPad Mini. Indeed, that’s true, as can be seen using Geekbench 6’s CPU test:

Is it powerful enough if all you want is a content consumption style tablet? Yes, absolutely, it'll handle pretty much everything in the everyday sphere of iPadOS apps without too many issues at all.

However, given that Apple wants a minimum of $799 for it, and potentially as much as $1579 for a fully kitted out model, that brings in the spectre of the M-series iPad Air and iPad Pro lines. Here the comparison does not favour the iPad mini A17 Pro at all:

Where that is likely to impact you is if you do want to run some of the more processor intensive apps that target more of the pro crowd, or indeed the AAA game titles that Apple's put so much effort into securing for its tablet platform. Here you're more likely to see the performance limitations of Apple's decisions for the iPad Mini A17 Pro's processor.

If you're particularly keen on the workings of Apple's heavily-hyped "Apple Intelligence", that CPU power is also something of a concern. It's not that Apple Intelligence won't run right now on the iPad Mini A17 Pro -- but much more that any future features might be out of its suitable range sooner rather than later given the relative gulf in performance between it and even the current model iPad Air. Annoyingly I don't have figures for the current generation Apple iPad to give that the full picture of performance.

iPad Mini A17 Pro: Battery

The smaller size of the iPad Mini rather naturally does limit how much battery capacity it has, and maybe this is why Apple didn’t let it make the jump up to an M1 or M2 processor – but then again, those processors have shown themselves to be remarkably power efficient over time, so maybe not.

In any case, Apple never actually talks about real world battery capacity numbers for any of its products, noting just that the 19.3 watt-hour battery on the iPad Mini A17 Pro should be good for “up to 10 hours” of either wireless web surfing or watching video. Interestingly that’s the same claim that Apple makes for the regular iPad and iPad Air models, but of course “up to” can cover over a lot of cracks in real world use.

The reality of using the iPad Mini is that it’s not that strong a battery performer. Your battery life is always going to depend on the apps that you use, but given the A17 Pro’s former life as the processor behind the Apple iPhone 15 Pro, I thought it might be interesting to run my standard YouTube battery test across the iPad Mini A17 Pro.

Here’s how it compared:

That’s not a good result, especially given that while the model Apple loaned me was the Wi-Fi+Cellular variant, it didn’t have an eSIM enabled in it at the time; if you were running off a SIM you might find the battery life even more compromised than this. That doesn’t entirely jibe with Apple’s claimed 10 hour battery figure for video either; if that video playback usage remained linear you’d be looking at more like 7 hours, though Apple does note that its own testing was with the brightness set at 50%.

Still, like the iPad Mini itself, the battery life that you can expect is likely to be on the smaller side. Recharging is via USB-C – Apple doesn’t want to talk about Lightning any more – but there’s no included charger in the iPad Mini A17 Pro box.

iPad Mini A17 Pro: Alex’s Verdict

If you're a die-hard iPad Mini afficionado who has simply been hanging out for a faster device, especially if you were coming from one of the pre-2021 models, then yes, the iPad Mini A17 Pro will do what you want it to in a size that works for you.

The problem I feel is that you really have to love that smaller form factor in some very specific ways for that to be a sensible buy. The regular iPad has the same locked-to-60Hz screen issues of the iPad Mini A17 Pro, but it's got a lot more screen real estate to play with along the way. The Air is nice again, and it's more powerful -- and some versions of the Air cost the same as the iPad Mini A17 Pro does. If you're after a more professional workspace, the iPad Mini A17 Pro is Apple Pencil compatible, but you'll have to spend even more on a new Apple Pencil if you're already in that workflow.

All of this adds up to a tablet that's fine for what it is, but not at the price that Apple wants for it.

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Pricing and availability

The iPad Mini A17 Pro retails in Australia with pricing starting from $799.

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