None of this has any bearing on how well the iPad mini performs, but it explains why picking up the mini again after three years was a little strange at first. It manages to feel as classic as it does modern. (Maybe Apple should've called it the iPad mini SE instead.)

To be fair, this older design has its perks. The home button beneath the screen still packs one of Apple's trusty Touch ID sensors, and it's just as fast as you'd hope. There's a headphone jack here, too, right at the top of the mini's frame. (That this is now a rarity worth celebrating would have made 2012 me groan.) Apple's use of a standard Lightning port means you won't need to start from scratch with accessories. And, as always, the mini's slim body makes it the most easily portable of Apple's tablets. These are mostly good things, but it's the mini's modern upgrades that could make or break it.

Thankfully, there are a lot of them. Consider the screen: It isn't any bigger or more pixel-dense than before, but it's much nicer to look at than the one we saw on the iPad mini 4. This year, Apple laminated the display panel itself to the glass that covers it, meaning there's no extra layer of air between your eyes and what they're looking at. That might not be the most dramatic improvement, but it does give the mini a slightly more premium look.

Support for a wider color gamut and Apple's TrueTone color tuning are here, too, all to make sure the display looks as punchy and accurate as possible no matter the lighting conditions. While I'd appreciate if this screen were a little brighter — the iPhone XS series has the clear edge here — this is still the best the mini's display has ever looked.