iPad Mini (2021)

Apple’s littlest iPad finally gets the update it deserves

- Rob Mead-Green

From £479 FROM Apple, apple.com/uk FEATURES 8.3-inch Liquid Retina display (2266x1488 pixels), A15 Bionic chip, 64/256GB of storage, Wi-Fi 6, Bluetooth 5.0, USB-C

The iPad mini has long felt like the Cinderella product in Apple’s iPad line-up, introduced in 2012 and updated intermittently since, this year’s upgrade is its first since 2019. But, boy, has Apple made up for lost time.

Like last year’s iPad Air, the iPad mini looks like an iPad Pro that’s been hit with a shrink ray – it’s squared-off edges and narrower bezels giving it the family feel of its bigger siblings, leaving the iPad 10.2in (p81) as the only model now boasting the old, and increasingly dated, original iPad design.

The changes are certainly welcome. The new iPad mini now sports an 8.3-inch Liquid Retina display (up from 7.9-inches) without radically increasing the 203.2x134.8x6.1mm size of the previous design (the new model measures 195.4x134.8x6.3mm), and that’s because Apple has moved the Touch ID sensor from the front of the device to the Power button and made the bezels narrower, giving your apps more room to breathe.