Ahead of tomorrow's launch, the first reviews of the new iPad mini (A17 Pro) have been released. These reviews give us a more detailed look at the new device, including details on the display, performance, colors, and more.
Below, you'll find our roundup of early iPad mini (A17 Pro) reviews…
iPad mini (A17 Pro) Reviews
The new iPad mini (A17 Pro) is available to order now, with first orders due tomorrow, October 23. It will also be available in Apple Stores starting tomorrow. Pricing remains unchanged, with the base model retailing for $499. However, this generation's base model offers twice the storage as before, starting at 128GB instead of 64GB.
Jelly Scrolling
One issue the iPad mini 6 display has is jelly scrolling. Jelly scrolling is when half of a device’s display updates noticeably slower than the other half. This results in a sort of wobbling effect, hence the name “jelly scrolling.”
Apple’s press release for the iPad mini (A17 Pro) makes no mention of display updates or jelly scrolling fixes. Today’s reviews paint a mixed picture.
Writing for The Verge, David Pearce says jelly scrolling is “still very noticeable” on the new iPad mini.
However, Jason Snell of Six Colors says he hasn’t noticed any jelly scrolling on the new iPad mini:
I guess there's some good news: Many users of the previous iPad mini complained about a “jelly scrolling” effect, where scrolling content in portrait orientation could result in a visual artifact where one side of the screen would refresh before the other. From what I understand, the new model's display layout is different from the old model, and I couldn't detect any “jelly scrolling” in use. That's not to say it's gone away, and I'm eager for eagle-eyed “jelly scrolling” experts to report their findings, but I certainly couldn't see it, even when I recorded myself scrolling at a high frame rate and played back the footage frame by frame.
Wired's Brenda Stoliar also says the new iPad mini appears to fix the “jelly scrolling” issue:
But I can’t talk about the iPad Mini’s display without mentioning the 2021 model’s infamous “jelly scrolling” fiasco. iPad Mini owners have complained that one side of the screen refreshes more slowly than the other when scrolling up and down the display. I haven’t encountered this with my Mini, but Apple has really tried to optimize the LCD in the latest model to alleviate this issue. Apple has been mum on what exactly it changed, but either way, I again saw no issues on my test unit.
And MacStories’ Federico Viticci also agrees:
I'm happy to report that the new iPad mini has fixed the jelly scrolling issue without having to change the device's underlying display technology. The new iPad mini has an optimized display controller that ensures that the entire panel refreshes at the same rate and speed. For this reason, despite being the same display across two generations with the same refresh rate, color gamut, pixel density, and brightness, the new iPad mini does not have one side of the screen refresh faster than the other.
Here's a demo from Raphael Zeier on YouTube showing the fix in detail:
My advice: go to an Apple Store and try it for yourself, because everyone's eyes seem to be different.
Performance
The new iPad mini features the A17 Pro chip, which powers Apple Intelligence. The chip also delivers improved performance across the board, as Engadget's Nathan Ingram writes:
Geekbench 6 benchmarks back this up. The A17 Pro in the iPad mini is slightly slower than the one in the iPhone 15 Pro, but not enough to make any real difference in using the tablet. It’s still behind the M-series chips and the all-new A18 series, but it provides more than enough power for the iPad mini.
MacStories’ Federico Viticci also notes the benefit of the new iPad mini’s Wi-Fi 6E support:
Where I really noticed an improvement was in the Wi-Fi department. Thanks to the inclusion of Wi-Fi 6E (instead of Wi-Fi 6), the new mini scored higher than the old model in speed tests, and, surprisingly, even slightly higher than my M4 iPad Pro. In the same living room location, right next to my Wi-Fi 6E router, three iPads performed speed tests with the following scores across multiple tests:
- Old iPad mini (Wi-Fi 6): 600 Mbps download, 200 Mbps upload
- M4 iPad Pro (Wi-Fi 6E): 643 Mbps download, 212 Mbps upload
- New iPad mini (Wi-Fi 6E): 762 Mbps download, 274 Mbps upload
More reviews
- Mashable
- Wired
- Forbes
- Tom’s Guide
- Stuff
