Initial Impression: A Mixed Bag of Excitement and Concerns

I recently had the opportunity to get my hands on the brand new iPad Mini, and I must say, it's an exciting device that promises a lot. As I took it out of its packaging, I was immediately struck by how small and sleek it is, making it perfect for those who want a portable and lightweight companion for work or play.

One thing that does concern me, however, is the amount of wasted space around the screen. Unlike laptops, where you have a lot of freedom to place your cursor wherever you want, on an iPad, you're kind of fixed to one spot. I'm not sure if this is something specific to the iPad OS 15, but it does feel like there's a bit of waste here. The bezel of the iPad also seems to be quite prominent, which further accentuates the wasted space.

I did try increasing the brightness, but it didn't seem to make much of a difference in terms of filling out the screen real estate. I'm not sure if this is something that will get updated in future software releases, but for now, it's a bit of an eyesore. The icons on the home screen also seem quite small, which makes me wonder if there's some scaling issue at play.

Despite these concerns, I was pleased to find that the iPad Mini moves incredibly smoothly, even when zooming out to take in the super ultra-wide view. This is one of my favorite features of the device, as it opens up a whole new world of possibilities for content creators and web conferencers. The ability to easily move around the screen with the device makes it perfect for those who want to have their meeting or video conference on-the-go.

Speaking of which, I'm really excited about the potential of this device as a portable web conferencing solution. The ability to sit at a table, use the iPad Mini, and still be able to see and hear everyone around you is incredibly promising. I think this could become my go-to device for web conferencing in the future.

Of course, one of the things that really matters is how well the rear camera holds up. As it turns out, it's not as bad as I thought it would be, but I'm still a bit skeptical about its performance. The front camera, on the other hand, seems like it could become the star of the show when it comes to work use cases.

Overall, my initial impressions are mixed. While I'm excited about the potential of this device, there are some things that need to be improved upon. But with a sleek design, smooth performance, and plenty of features that make it perfect for content creators and web conferencers, I'm confident that the iPad Mini will become a fan favorite.

Update and Comparison to Previous Models

As someone who has used both the iPad Generation 7 and the iPad Air, I have to say that this new device is like an old friend. The design is familiar, but with a sleeker and more modern twist that makes it feel fresh and exciting. One thing that stands out immediately is how instantly unlocked it was when I clicked on the button – something that's become a staple of Apple devices.

One thing that does strike me as odd, however, is that the iPad Mini feels like an "Air" in name only. Despite its smaller size, it has some of the same features and performance that made the original Air so great. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, but it's something to consider for those who are looking for a more budget-friendly option.

What Do You Want to See from the New iPad Mini?

As I continue to explore this device, I'm left wondering what other updates or features Apple might have in store for us. What do you want to see from the new iPad Mini? Are there any specific features or improvements that you think would make it even better? Let me know in the comments below, and we'll try to get to the bottom of what everybody wants to see from this exciting new release.

Conclusion

In conclusion, my initial impressions of the brand new iPad Mini are mixed. While I'm excited about its potential as a portable web conferencing solution and its smooth performance, there are some things that need to be improved upon. The wasted space around the screen is something that could be addressed with future software updates, while the rear camera's performance remains to be seen.

As always, I'll be keeping a close eye on this device and will continue to update you as new information becomes available. Whether it's feature reviews, comparison tests, or even more in-depth analysis, I'm here to bring you all the latest news and insights from Apple's latest release.

So what do you think? Are you excited about the new iPad Mini? Do you have any specific questions or concerns about this device that you'd like me to address in future articles? Let me know, and I'll be happy to help.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enof all the products released by apple in the last couple of weeks the ipad mini is the thing that i am most excited about so what comes in the box and is it any good let's find out what's up everyone i'm the everday dead and if i can figure it out you can figure it out so quick note before we open this box nothing nobody provided this to me i bought this myself i am so excited to share this with all of you of all the things that came out this is the one i mean ups just dropped this off like 10 seconds ago and you all are the first people that i wanted to share this with so i did pre-order this and i got the 64 gigabyte version and the ipad mini with the wi-fi i did not get cellular i did not get the 256 gigabyte model so let's crack this baby open all right now this does have plastic unlike the iphone so here's hoping it's satisfying ready three two one ah boo i like when there's a little bit of friction there because in that rip it's what makes it really satisfying and dramatic you know for you the audience right okay let's see what we get in there and i am going to tell you something embarrassing you may not realize this but it took me three whole days to realize that this said mini i thought it was just like a cool wavy uh design no mini it's embarrassing so let's crack this baby here we go there we go wow that is that is very small okay what do we get in this box so we get the charger okay we get the 20 watt fast charger from apple we get the usbc to usbc cable and that is it i like they do continue to include the charger though i mean if we're talking about cost though this was what 499 and i get a charger and a usb-c to usb-c cable when even the cheapest iphone 13 is the mini at 6.99 i'm not i'm not complaining i'm just asking questions right okay so we got those cables out of the way what kind of documentation do we get ipad mini welcome to ipad apps which you know i might actually because ipad os 15 has some new stuff we might need to keep that with us i am kind of disappointed though oh no i am not disappointed you you pulled the old switcheroo on me apple you put the stickers at the bottom i was almost very upset that i only got this paper here of documentation that i'm literally never going to read and i'm making a mess already oh yeah the stickers but here's what i don't like the stickers with the iphone are made of paper this is plastic i can't tear this so it's not as biodegradable as i think i would have liked so it looks like some of the packaging has some catching up to do with what their iphones get okay let's check this puppy out ready here this one i think will be satisfying that was better it's not great but better man look at look at how small this thing is so basically it seems like what they've done is they turned the ipad mini into what they did with the ipad air so it's basically an ipad air with a newer processor but all kind of the same stuff but look at how much smaller that is here for size comparison here is my iphone 12 pro max it's really like two and a half iphone 12 pro max is put together but i love that i love how small it is it feels great there's the touch id built into the top we have the volume buttons here on the side i like this this is what i want my phones to be made of i don't i know that we need the glass backs for wireless charging but i just like metal that does not scuff as soon as i touch it see we're touching this i don't see any scuff marks do you no you don't well okay you see it on the app don't look at the apple there we'll we'll cover up the apple look at everything other than the apple and there are no scuf there are no fingerprint marks all right well let's turn this thing on and see what we get apple i've just decided to go with it uh folks i know we there was a will he won't he kind of thing going on but he will hmm all right let's see this down and see what we got hello i guess we could do it this way we did the iphones one way so let's do the ipad the other way english united states okay so see this is what i was talking about on the iphone 13. the iphone mini and the iphone 12 pro max all were like region specific where it already had the united states set up but the iphone 13 was not and i don't know i'll have to go check the comments again i don't remember seeing anybody telling me so if you're in canada or you're in france or you're in australia something like that like is it region locked for you or do you always have to scroll through that big list to find your country okay let's log into our wireless network it's like i've done this four times in the past couple of days we're just becoming old hats at these uh this unboxing stuff might take a few minutes to activate your ipad now i think this looks really good now this is not the brightest screen this is not as advanced as the iphone screens definitely not as advanced as the iphone pro screens from this year but okay let's set up touch id now one of the things with the ipad air if you remember i didn't really like touch id up here it took a little bit longer than i would have liked so hopefully um with the new uh add another so do we really wanna yeah i guess we'll do that so hopefully with this new ipad os 15 with the new a15 processor that's inside of here maybe it'll be a little quicker a little more accurate and it'll be something that i can then more reliably use if i like the thought because i do like touch id more than i like face id but i like both of them together we'll have to see don't transfer apps and data i set all this stuff up from scratch no matter what even my own tech devices oh i'm sorry my apple id does not have an emoji in it maybe we need we need to figure out oh no we keep hitting the emoji button hold on why are we doing that there we go this is easier why make things harder on yourself gary because it's for youtube if you make things harder for yourself it makes for a better video i don't know if you all knew that but that's the case we will verify we made sure to have this all ready to go to verify allow it may take a few minutes to set up your apple id so i just from really quickly holding this and looking at it this is about the size of one of my old e-readers like i used to have the kindle e-reader or the what was the barnes no the nook e-reader and this seems to be like a perfect size for that except it also has one of the most powerful processors that you're going to find in a mobile device i think this will be really great for watching content or taking notes um because i do a lot of note taking and i was using my ipad air 4 for that so if we can get this to be my note-taking device i think that would be incredible the one thing that i don't like though um and you probably already saw that is what are we missing here on the back there's no smart connector right there's no smart connector there there's no smart connector here on the side there's no smart connector here on the bottom do i think that a tiny little magic keyboard would make sense for the ipad mini i don't know i haven't seen it maybe it would be too cramped but i don't like the thought that it's not here because i think that smart connector and the magic keyboard or any kind of keyboard is really the thing that takes the ipad air and the ipad pro from good little tablets to like amazing work devices so i am very very just if there was one thing that i had to say right off the bat that i am unhappy with it's that it is missing the smart connector but everything else looks real good let's clean this off again i do like that background okay touch id that was pretty fast i'm pretty happy about that oh oh can you see that look at how they have this set up like i don't mean to complain but i like the layout of the widgets but it feels like this is scaled too small can i increase the scale of the uh this is with the large app icons no even that doesn't look i hope they fix this um in an update i don't like here's what i don't like i don't like how much wasted space is around here like if in a laptop it doesn't matter i can put whatever i want wherever i want to put it but on an ipad you're kind of fixed to like one spot and i've never seen it like so rough maybe it's something with ipad os 15 where it's not as bad when you do it landscape you do still have all of this space right here hold on let's increase the brightness but i think that looks a little rough i do feel like there's a lot of wasted space on this screen here so hopefully i don't think functionally it will mess up the tablet but if you're somebody that likes the aesthetic of using all of your real estate for your screen there's some wasted stuff it feels like it's almost more because of the bezel of the ipad with that so hopefully we'll see some updates on that right now because maybe again it's my eyes but these icons seem really small so i feel like we could probably spread out the display just a little bit hopefully like i said hopefully there'll be some updates but yeah initial impressions are it moves incredibly smoothly i'm never one for like super fast refresh rates on these kind of devices even on my m1 ipads um yeah it looks cool but functionally i'd rather save the money or save the battery life i mean i know that is not a popular opinion but i would personally rather have more functionality than a faster refresh rate so that doesn't bother me as much um i'm very excited to give this a shot actually one of the cool things that i think about for this are now we have look at how old on let's do video zoom out check this out we are now in the super ultra wide video on the ipad mini now the thing that i think most about the ipad mini and one another one of the reasons why i got this is i think this i need a case or something i think this is going to turn into like the ultimate just portable web conferencing solution like at this table right here we could sit it right here people are around the table and we're able to have our meeting um and there it doesn't have to be as high quality or like cinematic mode for your meeting you just need to be able to hear everybody and see everybody and because you can move this thing around so easily i think this is going to turn into a phenomenal web conferencing device maybe even the best one that's what i used to use my ipad generation 7 for and i've used the ipad generation 842 but i think the mini in the future could become that so we'll have to see you already know how this looks i'm looking at the screen right now from the screen right now looks pretty good maybe it'll look bad when we get it into the video editor okay so that's the front camera how does the rear camera came will hold up okay all right let's do it like this there we go okay so we gotta record i think we're recording yep we are recording okay so this is the rear key hold on there we go yep yep right okay so this is the rear camera for the ipad mini um and we'll have to see how this looks i do think this will not be used nearly as much i think the front camera is really the the superstar here because of how you can use it for work and not necessarily just taking pictures nobody likes the person that brings the ipad around to take pictures but you never know at least this one will be mini and will be much smaller so you'll have to let me know which camera you liked better um in the comments so let's stop that so yeah initial impressions are it's an ipad air but smaller we have a little bit of issues with um scaling for the ui i think we'll get that updated here in a little bit hopefully power looks good speed looks good construction looks incredible unlocking look it was instantly unlocked when i clicked on the button that's way better than it was on my air you just touch it and it's already unlocked which i am 100 on board for so initial impressions are i'm very excited this is the thing again this is the thing that i really wanted to see out of all of the new releases so i'm going to be using the crap out of this in the next couple of days but what about you what are some things that you would like to see out of the brand new ipad mini let me know in those comments below and we'll try to get to what everybody wants to see out of all of the videos because i love making videos that you all want to see and if you like this video and you would like to see some of my coverage of the brand new iphone 13s you can find my playlist by clicking right here click click click click click click click thanks for watchingof all the products released by apple in the last couple of weeks the ipad mini is the thing that i am most excited about so what comes in the box and is it any good let's find out what's up everyone i'm the everday dead and if i can figure it out you can figure it out so quick note before we open this box nothing nobody provided this to me i bought this myself i am so excited to share this with all of you of all the things that came out this is the one i mean ups just dropped this off like 10 seconds ago and you all are the first people that i wanted to share this with so i did pre-order this and i got the 64 gigabyte version and the ipad mini with the wi-fi i did not get cellular i did not get the 256 gigabyte model so let's crack this baby open all right now this does have plastic unlike the iphone so here's hoping it's satisfying ready three two one ah boo i like when there's a little bit of friction there because in that rip it's what makes it really satisfying and dramatic you know for you the audience right okay let's see what we get in there and i am going to tell you something embarrassing you may not realize this but it took me three whole days to realize that this said mini i thought it was just like a cool wavy uh design no mini it's embarrassing so let's crack this baby here we go there we go wow that is that is very small okay what do we get in this box so we get the charger okay we get the 20 watt fast charger from apple we get the usbc to usbc cable and that is it i like they do continue to include the charger though i mean if we're talking about cost though this was what 499 and i get a charger and a usb-c to usb-c cable when even the cheapest iphone 13 is the mini at 6.99 i'm not i'm not complaining i'm just asking questions right okay so we got those cables out of the way what kind of documentation do we get ipad mini welcome to ipad apps which you know i might actually because ipad os 15 has some new stuff we might need to keep that with us i am kind of disappointed though oh no i am not disappointed you you pulled the old switcheroo on me apple you put the stickers at the bottom i was almost very upset that i only got this paper here of documentation that i'm literally never going to read and i'm making a mess already oh yeah the stickers but here's what i don't like the stickers with the iphone are made of paper this is plastic i can't tear this so it's not as biodegradable as i think i would have liked so it looks like some of the packaging has some catching up to do with what their iphones get okay let's check this puppy out ready here this one i think will be satisfying that was better it's not great but better man look at look at how small this thing is so basically it seems like what they've done is they turned the ipad mini into what they did with the ipad air so it's basically an ipad air with a newer processor but all kind of the same stuff but look at how much smaller that is here for size comparison here is my iphone 12 pro max it's really like two and a half iphone 12 pro max is put together but i love that i love how small it is it feels great there's the touch id built into the top we have the volume buttons here on the side i like this this is what i want my phones to be made of i don't i know that we need the glass backs for wireless charging but i just like metal that does not scuff as soon as i touch it see we're touching this i don't see any scuff marks do you no you don't well okay you see it on the app don't look at the apple there we'll we'll cover up the apple look at everything other than the apple and there are no scuf there are no fingerprint marks all right well let's turn this thing on and see what we get apple i've just decided to go with it uh folks i know we there was a will he won't he kind of thing going on but he will hmm all right let's see this down and see what we got hello i guess we could do it this way we did the iphones one way so let's do the ipad the other way english united states okay so see this is what i was talking about on the iphone 13. the iphone mini and the iphone 12 pro max all were like region specific where it already had the united states set up but the iphone 13 was not and i don't know i'll have to go check the comments again i don't remember seeing anybody telling me so if you're in canada or you're in france or you're in australia something like that like is it region locked for you or do you always have to scroll through that big list to find your country okay let's log into our wireless network it's like i've done this four times in the past couple of days we're just becoming old hats at these uh this unboxing stuff might take a few minutes to activate your ipad now i think this looks really good now this is not the brightest screen this is not as advanced as the iphone screens definitely not as advanced as the iphone pro screens from this year but okay let's set up touch id now one of the things with the ipad air if you remember i didn't really like touch id up here it took a little bit longer than i would have liked so hopefully um with the new uh add another so do we really wanna yeah i guess we'll do that so hopefully with this new ipad os 15 with the new a15 processor that's inside of here maybe it'll be a little quicker a little more accurate and it'll be something that i can then more reliably use if i like the thought because i do like touch id more than i like face id but i like both of them together we'll have to see don't transfer apps and data i set all this stuff up from scratch no matter what even my own tech devices oh i'm sorry my apple id does not have an emoji in it maybe we need we need to figure out oh no we keep hitting the emoji button hold on why are we doing that there we go this is easier why make things harder on yourself gary because it's for youtube if you make things harder for yourself it makes for a better video i don't know if you all knew that but that's the case we will verify we made sure to have this all ready to go to verify allow it may take a few minutes to set up your apple id so i just from really quickly holding this and looking at it this is about the size of one of my old e-readers like i used to have the kindle e-reader or the what was the barnes no the nook e-reader and this seems to be like a perfect size for that except it also has one of the most powerful processors that you're going to find in a mobile device i think this will be really great for watching content or taking notes um because i do a lot of note taking and i was using my ipad air 4 for that so if we can get this to be my note-taking device i think that would be incredible the one thing that i don't like though um and you probably already saw that is what are we missing here on the back there's no smart connector right there's no smart connector there there's no smart connector here on the side there's no smart connector here on the bottom do i think that a tiny little magic keyboard would make sense for the ipad mini i don't know i haven't seen it maybe it would be too cramped but i don't like the thought that it's not here because i think that smart connector and the magic keyboard or any kind of keyboard is really the thing that takes the ipad air and the ipad pro from good little tablets to like amazing work devices so i am very very just if there was one thing that i had to say right off the bat that i am unhappy with it's that it is missing the smart connector but everything else looks real good let's clean this off again i do like that background okay touch id that was pretty fast i'm pretty happy about that oh oh can you see that look at how they have this set up like i don't mean to complain but i like the layout of the widgets but it feels like this is scaled too small can i increase the scale of the uh this is with the large app icons no even that doesn't look i hope they fix this um in an update i don't like here's what i don't like i don't like how much wasted space is around here like if in a laptop it doesn't matter i can put whatever i want wherever i want to put it but on an ipad you're kind of fixed to like one spot and i've never seen it like so rough maybe it's something with ipad os 15 where it's not as bad when you do it landscape you do still have all of this space right here hold on let's increase the brightness but i think that looks a little rough i do feel like there's a lot of wasted space on this screen here so hopefully i don't think functionally it will mess up the tablet but if you're somebody that likes the aesthetic of using all of your real estate for your screen there's some wasted stuff it feels like it's almost more because of the bezel of the ipad with that so hopefully we'll see some updates on that right now because maybe again it's my eyes but these icons seem really small so i feel like we could probably spread out the display just a little bit hopefully like i said hopefully there'll be some updates but yeah initial impressions are it moves incredibly smoothly i'm never one for like super fast refresh rates on these kind of devices even on my m1 ipads um yeah it looks cool but functionally i'd rather save the money or save the battery life i mean i know that is not a popular opinion but i would personally rather have more functionality than a faster refresh rate so that doesn't bother me as much um i'm very excited to give this a shot actually one of the cool things that i think about for this are now we have look at how old on let's do video zoom out check this out we are now in the super ultra wide video on the ipad mini now the thing that i think most about the ipad mini and one another one of the reasons why i got this is i think this i need a case or something i think this is going to turn into like the ultimate just portable web conferencing solution like at this table right here we could sit it right here people are around the table and we're able to have our meeting um and there it doesn't have to be as high quality or like cinematic mode for your meeting you just need to be able to hear everybody and see everybody and because you can move this thing around so easily i think this is going to turn into a phenomenal web conferencing device maybe even the best one that's what i used to use my ipad generation 7 for and i've used the ipad generation 842 but i think the mini in the future could become that so we'll have to see you already know how this looks i'm looking at the screen right now from the screen right now looks pretty good maybe it'll look bad when we get it into the video editor okay so that's the front camera how does the rear camera came will hold up okay all right let's do it like this there we go okay so we gotta record i think we're recording yep we are recording okay so this is the rear key hold on there we go yep yep right okay so this is the rear camera for the ipad mini um and we'll have to see how this looks i do think this will not be used nearly as much i think the front camera is really the the superstar here because of how you can use it for work and not necessarily just taking pictures nobody likes the person that brings the ipad around to take pictures but you never know at least this one will be mini and will be much smaller so you'll have to let me know which camera you liked better um in the comments so let's stop that so yeah initial impressions are it's an ipad air but smaller we have a little bit of issues with um scaling for the ui i think we'll get that updated here in a little bit hopefully power looks good speed looks good construction looks incredible unlocking look it was instantly unlocked when i clicked on the button that's way better than it was on my air you just touch it and it's already unlocked which i am 100 on board for so initial impressions are i'm very excited this is the thing again this is the thing that i really wanted to see out of all of the new releases so i'm going to be using the crap out of this in the next couple of days but what about you what are some things that you would like to see out of the brand new ipad mini let me know in those comments below and we'll try to get to what everybody wants to see out of all of the videos because i love making videos that you all want to see and if you like this video and you would like to see some of my coverage of the brand new iphone 13s you can find my playlist by clicking right here click click click click click click click thanks for watching\n"