The new iPad mini is the most desirable tablet I've ever handled – but I can't ignore the catch
Apple's making the best small tablet out there
I've tested quite a few tablets in my more than seven years as a tech journalist, but there's one that's kept me jealous the whole time, not least because I've never actually owned one myself: the iPad mini.
Apple's smallest iPad has long been the one that I think I'd most readily use in my personal day-to-day, with its diminutive size being the key to its convenience. Now, it's finally been given an OLED screen to make it even more attractive, but in the same year that its price has unfortunately surged past where I thought it would ever go.
At a recent hands-on event, I spent some time with the new mini, and it basically confirmed all my suspicions: it's the most desirable tablet on the market, but it's now priced at a point where very few people can surely sensibly approach it.
The new mini looks a lot like previous generations, but it's actually been given a fairly substantial update. That makes it thinner and lighter than ever before, which is crucial, as well as offering up a new (gorgeous) display.
It makes the iPad mini feel like something you could slip into a coat pocket and pretty much forget about, so tiny is its footprint, and the same goes for putting it in a handbag or backpack.
The new display is super vibrant, and if you're happy to pay almost silly money, you'll also get a brilliant experience if you opt for the nanotexture display that Apple now offers on higher-end models. It massively mitigates reflections, making it amazing for outdoor use (on your commute, for instance).
With the A20 Pro chipset now powering everything, this is also the most powerful the iPad mini has ever been, to the point where it's got the potential to be quite a little productivity machine. Whether that really makes sense, given its size might be up to your workflow, but even if it's just for streaming and web browsing, it'll be brilliant.
Where things get more complicated is when you actually start to consider buying this handsome little device. I'd love nothing more than to do so myself, and make it my travel viewing device of choice – but that price can't be ignored. The iPad mini now starts from £700, with a version featuring nanotexture coming in at £900, which is a fairly mad price for a tablet this size.
The other big hesitation is that even in a relatively short hands-on session, I found the tablet's 60Hz screen noticeable. It's not laggy, but as other reviewers have noticed, it's also not as responsive as the majority of the competition, and at this price that feels fairly surprising.
Still, half an hour with the tablet in my hands underlined that I'd really love to have one – I just wonder if the memory crisis has pushed its price to the point where its natural audience is going to be put off.
Perhaps this makes for an opportunity for the standard iPad to surge back up as the default choice for those people, but I can't be sure that's the case.
Regardless, we should get the iPad mini in for more detailed testing very soon, so keep an eye out for the full T3 review, which should be able to really give a sense of how these tweaks and upgrades change the picture.
