Apple iPad mini 3: old wine in new bottles
The iPad mini 3 is a crazy product; it hardly differs from its predecessor, the iPad mini Retina. It shares the same sleek chassis, screen, and hardware, and runs the latest version of iOS, version 8.1. Only the fingerprint scanner in the home button is new. Although it can be very useful, in our view it does not justify the significant price difference. For 299 euros you can buy last year’s model, while no less than 399 euros must be deposited for the mini 3. This makes the iPad mini 3 a good tablet, but – with the current price – a bad buy.
Pros
- Works smoothly
- Fine housing
- Good battery life
- Sharp screen
Cons
- Hardly any innovation
- Moderate colors and contrast for Retina display
- Very expensive compared to predecessor
- Standard 16GB is tight and additional storage is expensive
When large manufacturers release new models of their flagship products, we often pay a lot of attention to it on Tweakers. As a rule, these are models that consumers look forward to and they are also the products in which the most innovations are made on a technical level. For the iPad mini 3 we will stick to a short review, because the differences with its predecessor, the iPad mini Retina, are minimal. So if you want to read a more detailed explanation, check out our review of the iPad mini Retina.
Casing and image quality
It is still a 7.9″ tablet with a resolution of 2048×1536 pixels. The combination of screen diagonal and resolution produces a very sharp image. The image quality can also be called okay, but lags behind that of the iPad Air and Air 2, as well as the image quality of some Android tablets, where brightness and contrast ratios are not a problem, but color reproduction isn’t entirely accurate, which was also the case with the iPad mini Retina, and according to our measurements, the screens are identical.
The housing is not identical. It does in terms of thickness and weight, but the iPad mini 3 has Apple’s Touch ID fingerprint scanner as a novelty, which we previously saw on the iPhone 5s and recently on the iPhone 6, iPhone 6 Plus and iPad Air 2. That scanner can be used for useful things. We don’t think unlocking the tablet is the most important of these; many people will only use a tablet at home and then a password or pin code is less necessary.
It is more convenient, for example, that you can use it to approve purchases in the App Store or iTunes and that more and more apps are using the scanner to log in. In addition, Apple will roll out its Apple Pay payment service next year, after which you can use the fingerprint scanner to, for example, approve purchases in a webshop.
As mentioned, the housing has not been tampered with. That’s not a disaster; the tablet has always had a nice size and the thickness and weight are also fine, so that you can effortlessly hold it in one hand for a longer period of time. In addition to the silver and gray versions, Apple also puts a gold variant on the shelves.
Hardware, battery life and software
Apple has also left everything as it was under the hood. The iPad mini 3 is therefore powered by Apple’s own A7-soc, which consists of two processor cores at 1.4GHz, coupled with 1GB of RAM. That is fine for daily use. However, the hardware is now a year old and many developers will focus on the faster hardware in the new iPhones and the iPad Air 2. That makes us doubt the future-proofness of the hardware in the iPad mini 3. Fortunately, that hardware is economical with the available battery capacity, so you can work for a long time on the iPad mini 3.
Also in this area it is good to know that the iPad mini 3 and iPad mini Retina do not differ from each other. You certainly don’t have to upgrade for the speed or battery life. If you want to know exactly how well it scores on all components, check the test report in the right bar.
On the software side, we see iOS 8.1 pre-installed. That is the latest version of Apple’s mobile operating system, which is also available for older iPads. Version 8.1 is only a modest update over 8.0, so for a good idea of the changes to the operating system, we refer to our review of iOS 8.
In a nutshell, iOS 8 is a bit more ‘open’ than its predecessors and developers are given more freedom. This allows apps to communicate better with each other. For example, you can share content from one app or forward it to another app. As a result, the operating system and apps feel more like a whole of cooperating parts, rather than separate islands.
One of the biggest innovations in version 8.1 is support for Continuity, Apple’s name for the feature that lets the iPhone, iPad, and Mac work closely together by syncing data and documents. This allows you, for example, to start an email on your iPhone and then finish it on a Mac.
Conclusion
The question isn’t whether the iPad mini 3 is a good tablet; after all, its predecessor received four and a half stars from us and thanks to the Touch ID scanner, the iPad mini 3 is slightly better. However, the old model costs 299 euros for the 16GB version, while the new model costs 399 euros. By the way, that is two decades more than the previous generation cost when it came out last year, which is rather bizarre given the lack of changes. So the question is whether that scanner is worth a hundred euros. Our answer is no; you get a lot more bang for your buck if you buy last year’s iPad mini Retina.
We believe that the scores we hand out should reflect to some extent whether something is a good buy, whether you get enough bang for your buck. So while the iPad mini 3 is a fraction better than the iPad mini Retina, we can’t possibly give it the same four and a half stars as its predecessor got last year. How nice it is in the hand, how smoothly it works and how good the battery life is; you’re a thief of your own wallet if you choose iPad mini 3 over the iPad mini Retina. Therefore, he gets a point deduction and ends up with three and a half stars.