Despite its small size, the iPad mini is a mighty tablet, and that’s also what makes it a pricey purchase at its regular price. However, it’s cheaper than theiPad Air and is a better performer than the more budget-friendly baseline 2025 iPad. It straddles a good middle line, but at full price it’s best suited to those looking for a smaller tablet for travelling or working on the go.
However, now at just AU$687 on Amazon, it’s the Goldilocks of iPads – providing the best of both worlds to those who want more power than the 2025 iPad offers, but don’t quite have the budget for an Air or iPad Pro. You still get a premium tablet experience, just within a supremely compact build.
While Apple’s M-series chipsets are the masters of power, the iPad mini was upgraded with the A17 Pro chip instead – the same chip that powers the iPhone 15 Pro. This might seem elementary compared to the M3-powered iPad Air, but the A17 Pro is no slouch.
The 7th-gen iPad mini has no issue running pro-level image editing apps like Adobe Lightroom, and our tester easily edited 4K videos on it using Adobe Premiere Rush. You’ll find smooth performance here thanks to 8GB of RAM, which doubles what we saw on the previous iteration of the mini.
The upgraded RAM was added even before Apple Intelligence was a thing, but now ensures it’s an affordable way to access AI functionality – and they’re not just fun add-ons. Apple’s AI features range from the ability to create your own Genmojis to complete writing and drawing tools, built-in ChatGPT for quick answers and Visual Intelligence – perfect for creative users.
The iPad mini 8.3-inch (2024) is the best compact tablet on the market, offering everything that most users could want – just on a smaller screen.
