Andrew Cunningham

Andrew Cunningham

Andrew Cunningham

Andrew Cunningham

Andrew Cunningham

Andrew Cunningham

Andrew Cunningham

Andrew Cunningham

If you didn’t catch the introduction of the iPad Mini 4 at Apple’s product event earlier this month, don’t feel bad. The company announced the new tablet so quickly and with so little detail (and had so few of them available for press to play with afterward) that you could have sneezed and missed it.

Not that it isn’t understandable; the iPad Mini 4 is just one member of Apple’s third-highest-grossing product family, and there was a bigger iPad introduction to pay attention to. Even so, the newest version of the Mini makes enough improvements over the underwhelming iPad Mini 3 that it’s actually worth a closer look.

Look, feel, and screen

At first glance the iPad Mini 4 looks and feels pretty much like the three that came before it, but it has a few design tweaks that differentiate it from its predecessors. It’s ever so slightly taller, thinner, and lighter, just different enough that many cases and covers designed for the first three Minis won’t fit this one.

Specs at a glance: Apple iPad Mini 4 Screen 2048×1536 7.9-inch (324 PPI) touchscreen OS iOS 9.0 CPU 1.5GHz Apple A8 RAM 2GB DDR3 GPU "Apple A8 GPU" (likely an Imagination Technologies 6-series variant) Storage 16, 64, or 128GB NAND flash Networking 866Mbps 802.11a/b/g/ac, Bluetooth 4.2 Camera 8MP rear camera, 1.2MP front camera Ports Lightning connector, headphone jack Size 8.0" × 5.3" × 0.24" (203.2 × 134.8 × 6.1 mm) Weight 0.65 pound (298.8 g) Wi-Fi, 0.67 pounds (304 g) with cellular Battery 5124 mAh Starting price $399 Other perks Charger, Lightning cable

Apple sent us a new Smart Cover specifically for the Mini 4—it fits on the old Mini and the old cover fits on the new one, but the magnets don’t feel anchored as firmly and the cover itself feels sort of floppy and loose. Apple doesn’t offer a full-body “smart case” for the Mini 4, but it does sell an iPhone-like Silicone Case with a cutout in the left side. Combine that case with the Smart Cover to approximate the protection and functionality of the Smart Case.

Apple has also removed the hardware mute/orientation lock switch on the Mini 4, replacing both with software buttons you can find in the Control Center. The iPad Mini 4’s design is to the iPad Mini as the iPad Air 2’s design was to the original iPad Air.

That goes for the screen, too. Apple has eliminated the air gap between the LCD panel and the front glass, which as always makes the screen look better and have more contrast at the expense of making it more expensive to repair (break the LCD or the glass, you need to replace both).

Even more exciting is the fact that the Mini 4 has a noticeably improved color gamut. As Raymond Soniera from DisplayMate has explained in detail, previous Mini screens have all had 62 percent color gamuts, compared to 100 percent for the full-sized iPad. Put an Air or Air 2 next to a Mini or Mini 3 and you won’t need a colorimeter to see the difference—colors were noticeably more muted on the old Mini screen even though it was the same resolution as the larger Air’s screen. Color accuracy and saturation on the Mini 4 look much more like they do on the Air 2.

Our measuring equipment isn’t as thorough as DisplayMate’s, but we used our Spyder4Elite colorimeter to quantify the display improvement. We used the Duet Display app to extend the OS X desktop to the iPad Air 2, iPad Mini 2, and iPad Mini 4, and then we used the Spyder calibration app to measure the color gamut of each display.

Andrew Cunningham

Andrew Cunningham

Andrew Cunningham

In this test, the iPad Mini 2’s color gamut was reported as 76 percent of sRGB. The iPad Air 2 and the iPad Mini 4 were reported at 98 percent and 99 percent respectively—within the margin of error, we’d say—and their chromaticity charts look essentially the same.

This change isn’t going to matter to everyone. There are still other key differences between the Mini 4 and the Air 2, as we’ll discuss momentarily. But after three years of soldiering on with an inferior display, it’s nice to see a Mini that can match the standard iPad in both resolution and quality.

Software

The iPad Mini 4 ships from Apple with iOS 9, the update that came out on Wednesday. Our full review covers the main talking points, so we won't repeat most of it here. The one thing that does bear mentioning is that the Mini 4 is the second iPad (after the Air 2) to support the full array of iOS 9 multitasking features: Slide Over, Picture-In-Picture, and Split View. Previous Minis lack Split View but support the other two.

The Mini's screen is physically smaller but it has the same resolution as the Air 2 and Split View works the same way. When used in landscape mode, your two apps can either use a 75/25 split where one looks like a compressed iPad app and the other looks like a tall iPhone app, or a 50/50 split where both look like slightly stretched iPhone apps. Performance in Split View mode is occasionally a little jerky when you're resizing apps, since the Mini's A8 isn't as fast as the Air 2's A8X, but otherwise the feature works as well as it does on the larger tablet.

The Air 2 is still probably the iPad you want if you're looking for a laptop replacement that happens to run iOS. I used the Mini 4 with Split View with an external keyboard at a table and even putting that much distance between me and it put a little strain on my eyes. It's not a problem if you're holding the tablet a little closer to your face, it just doesn't blur the line between iPad and MacBook as well as the iPad Air 2 can.

Listing image by Andrew Cunningham