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Tablets · Apple iPad mini

Apple iPad mini 5th gen

9owners with an opinion
75%of verdicts positive
1/0positive/negative since 2024
0happy after 3+ years

Praised for ease of use and sound; criticized for display and battery.

What people wrote

Likes it
I recently dug up my old iPod Nano 5th gen (small square one) from 2010 and charged it up, and still works fine. What I forgot, and it totally surprised me, is that it has FM radio! I selected some stations and it worked great. And that Nano was tiny, would be cool to have this feature back in current iPhones / Apple Watches. I know it’s not the same as having full tx/rx on the 2m/70cm bands, but still, even just just listening to normal radio on iPhone would be cool.
Likes it
I did a lot of personal travel with an iPad Mini (plus BT mouse and keyboard) and do just fine with RDP connections to my office and home as needed. In fact, I’m typing this on the second iteration (the 5th Gen one) and hope to get a new one as soon as it’s launched. There is certainly a lot you can do with an iPad if you have the right apps (I run full-fledged vim, with plugins, inside a-Shell and code Python, Lua, Janet and Guile inside a-Shell or iSH as required). I also dabble in music (plenty of amazingly cheap synth apps), but most people don’t have the patience to try these things out (and Jason Snell’s audio woes are something that runs deeper).
Doesn’t like it
iOS 12 is way too new. I have a Retina iPad stuck on iOS 9, which is now essentially an ebook reader and movie player. I had two of them stuck on iOS 5. Perfectly working, cosmetically perfect, lots of battery life, but bricks. Whereas I have a 1st gen Pro and a 5th gen (when the stock iPad got the Air form-factor) which both run the latest iPadOS, but their battery life is now a couple of hours if that. They're nearly useless. I had a new battery fitted to the 5th gen. It is no better but now the screen is damaged with multiple artifacts visible. There is no battery replacement for the Pro: it's too big and too fragile. In other words, in important terms, the old ones were BETTER but they are now useless because of an outdated OS.
Likes it
I bought a Magic Keyboard today for my 5th gen iPad Air and I have been playing around with it and Blink terminal and I’m really impressed with it and can see the iPad being a full MacBook replacement in a few years, presumably when Logic and Final Cut Pro make their way on to the iPad (they’ve got to do it now DaVinci is on iPad surely). Anyhow, I decided to have a look to see how much it would cost to upgrade to the 12.9 iPad Pro and a Magic Keyboard. To my astonishment, a 512Gb iPad Pro is now £1599 and an accompanying Magic Keyboard is £379. That means a full setup is going to set you back £1978. In comparison, a 13” 512Gb MacBook Pro with 8GB RAM is £1549. I understand that the iPad has a better screen and camera but I was still a bit taken aback that it was both £50 more expensive outright or £429 more expensive when you add a Magic Keyboard. Does anyone else think this is a little crazy?
Neutral
My personal experience with iPod 5th gen (the one used in the article): - indeed produces the best audio with the wolfson chip, but this difference to a 7th/latest gen is hardly noticable (while 6th gen and others are not as good) - does not support EarPod or similar headphone remotes, while the 7th gen does - with one limitation: fast forward and backward does not work - supports a 2200mah battery (40h of listening) when used with iFlash Quad and a THIN back cover (i built one, google for "ipod 2200mah") but not the 3000mah one (only supported with the thick cover) - this is also the case for 7th gen - has a far less good haptic expierience (the wheel does not feel as well) - when using the wrong microSD cards behaves strange or does not event work - when using original firmware, depending on the version (there is 5th and 5.5th gen), it does not support as many audio files (20000 instead of 50000) - when using original firmware, I would not invest in more than 512GB flash storage because max 50000 Tracks/Files are supported - unless you want to listen to audiobooks My advice: - Get and iPod 7th Gen 160GB from 2009 - Get an iSesamo opening tool (only one - this tool is better quality than anything else for the first hull breach) - Get an iFlash Quad and 3 similar to iSesamo opening tools from the same shop (lower quality, but cheap and good for second and third stroke) - Get 2 to 4 NEW Transcend 256GB cards (TS256GUSD300S-A) - Get a 2200mah iPod Battery from ebay (not the 300…
Doesn’t like it
On my iPad mini 5th gen, the message and background appear identical at about 95% brightness. I think it's pretty weird trying to get more than maximum brightness from an Apple device. I think it would be far more useful to get a spectrum of usable levels of lower than minimum brightness. Apple's maximum brightnesses have always been close or the brightest devices available, but Apple devices minimum brightnesses have always been way too bright with no reason for it.
Likes it
I never looked at an iPod until at least the 4th gen, although fairly expensive compared to the competition, it had 60Gb space on the photo model. I didn't care about that much space for music, but it also doubled up as an external hard disk! I bought a 5th gen in the end, which I still own. Most of my music plays off my phone so it was not worth upgrading but I still keep it synced and the battery lasts longer than phone!
Likes itDoesn’t say they own it
This seems likely. Early iPhones and iPod Touches were much more attractive targets for jailbreaking, given their more generalized nature, better hardware, and more capable native OS — the range of possibilities was far more great. It's also not practical to upgrade the storage in flash-based iPods, which reduces the utility of something like Rockbox. The stock OS is perfectly serviceable for the size of library one would be carrying around on a Nano.