I suspect that anyone who likes the iPad as a platform is tempted by the new mini 6, but wonders if it’s just too small.
As a fan of the mini from day one (2012), I found the new mini 6 too tempting to pass up.
But using it for over a month, I’ve begun to wonder whether it was a mistake; whether it may be too small, entailing too many compromises for cuteness and portability.
I can’t decide. It’s more complicated than I expected.
The initial lure
Since buying it in 2018, I used the 11” iPad Pro but was never entirely happy with it as a pro device. I liked the Magic Keyboard on the 11, but found it small and cramped. I bought the 12.9 this summer and thought I’d keep the 11” as my reading and surfing iPad.
All was well until the new mini 6 appeared at the end of September. Suddenly the 11” began to feel too heavy in my hands. Owning two larger iPads now seemed redundant. Wouldn’t it be great to have the mini for casual consumption and the jumbo iPad for work?
But the major draw to the mini wasn’t just portability. It was the romance around the idea of it being a ‘digital Moleskine,’ which would catalyze a quantum leap in my digital note-taking.
Lost in this fantasy, I happily traded in my 2018 11” for the mini, making it a $200 purchase. What could go wrong?
The Honeymoon
Initially, I loved the idea of having so much power in such a small and portable device. I had earlier versions of the mini, but all of them had some major flaw. The mini 6 didn’t. It brought so many of Apple’s latest advancements and its tiny size and power seemed more liberating than limiting.
At first, I dug the notebook-like feel of it and kept the Apple Pencil attached to it most of the time. I brought it with me everywhere. I made a point of weaving it into my workflow wherever possible.
Post Honeymoon
Then, after two or three weeks, a different pattern set in. I stopped taking notes with it and kept the Pencil on my 12.9. When I did make notes, the bigger Pro, with its wider canvas and higher refresh rate, seemed like a better fit.
Pretty soon, I began to prefer my 12.9 even for reading on the couch. It was too heavy, but I found the larger screen to be a relief and worth the added strain.
Before long, I had relegated the mini to my bedside, using it mostly for watching the odd YouTube video before falling asleep. For anything more involved, it seemed too small for comfort.
Rediscovering the mini
I’m now beginning to rediscover it. The feature that stands out to me most now is its ultra light weight. My brief spell with the 12.9 as a tablet has given me a new appreciation of this. At just over half a pound, the mini feels almost feather light compared to even the 9th gen or the Air.
I’m also reassessing whether I think the screen is too small. In portrait mode, it doesn’t seem so; in landscape it often does. I now understand why at least a few reviewers had suggested that it wants to be used in portrait. This makes it look and feel like holding a paperback book, and it’s when the mini really shines as a consumption device for text.
It may be that what some of us really want is an iPad that is missing from the current line up: a medium-sized tablet that is as light as the mini. But I’m not even sure about this. I appreciate the mini’s smallness as well as its weight.
A bigger but lighter iPad might do the trick, but it might also lose some of the mini’s magic: the feeling that you could slip it in your pocket and take it anywhere.
Bottom line: am I happier with the mini than I was with the 11 (given that I also have the 12.9)? I think so. But it may be too soon to tell.