Macworld (2019-06)

JUNE 2019 MACWORLD 83

minuscule bezels and support for Face ID

(which I find better suited for iPads than

iPhones). Unsurprisingly, Apple opted to

maintain support with Lightning cables

rather than USB-C. I realize this is asking for

a lot, but I also wish it supported the sec-

ond-generation Apple Pencil, which wire-

lessly charges when attached to the mag-

nets lining the latest iPad Pro. Instead, the

new iPad mini only supports the Logitech

Crayon (go.macworld.com/cra) and the

first-generation Apple Pencil with its

famously losable cap. The iPad mini is far

from ugly, but nothing about it excites me.

rary device. It’s awesome on
the inside, which goes a long
way toward justifying the $399
starting price tag for the 64GB
model when the larger 9.7-inch
iPad (go.macworld.com/97i)
sells for just $329.
The rear camera remains
the same at 8 megapixels and
with a f/2.4 lens, but the
front-facing camera got a boost
to 7 megapixels and f/2.2.
There’s an A12 Bionic proces-
sor inside now—the same one
you’ll find in the iPhone XS and
XR—and in benchmarks it runs
almost neck-and-neck with the
new iPad Air (go.macworld.
com/ipai). For that matter, it
clobbers the 2018 9.7-inch iPad
across the board. It also now supports
gigabit LTE, dual sim cards (if you get the
cellular model), and wider DCI-P3 color
support. A recent iFixit teardown (go.
macworld.com/ifi) revealed that its memory
got a boost to 3GB (up from 2GB in the
iPad mini 4).
It’s certainly the most impressive tiny
tablet out there, as nothing running
Android or Windows at this size offers
anywhere near this type of performance.
I just wish it looked more modern. More
specifically, I wish it took cues from the
latest iPad Pros, with their sleek edges and

It’s small, but it’s not weak.

0 10,000 20,000 30,000 40,000 50,000

iPad Air (2019)

iPad mini (2019)

iPad Pro 12.9 (2018)

iPad 9.7 (2018)

iPad Pro 10.5 (2017)

GEEKBENCH 4

30,580

12,877

42,982

20,560

21,692

9,585

18,281

11,468

11,554

4,814

4,827

5,050

6,071

3,475

3,991

Compute - Metal Performance CPU - Multi-Core CPU - Single-Core

PHOTOGRAPHY BY DAN MASAOKA