‘Tis the season of holiday gift guides. And as you flip through the tech-heavy lists, you’re likely to see many glitzy new Apple devices, like the new iPhone 7 or the new MacBook Pro (with Touch Bar) or the new(ish) Apple Watch Series 2. (No thanks.)
But you’re unlikely to see anyone talking about the iPad Mini, even though it is arguably the best mobile device that Apple makes.
Apple dropped its iPad prices across the board in September. It still has the leading tablet on the market, but iPad sales fell 6% in its fourth quarter, which ended in October, to a five-year low. Year-over-year iPad revenue remained flat, which Apple Insider attributes to “customers gravitating toward more expensive models in the iPad Pro lineup.” Basically, sales of the higher-end iPads have offset declining sales of iPads overall.
But you need not spring for the iPad Pro. There’s good reason why iPad Air and iPad Mini are Apple’s best-selling tablets.
Take it from someone who was a longtime iPad denier, until I was given an iPad Mini for the holidays two years ago. I adore mine. The iPad Mini line is up to its fourth generation at this point, but mine is the second generation, iPad Mini 2, and suits me just fine—and its price has dropped to $269.
Some experts have theorized that the decline in tablet sales is being driven by the rise of the do-everything smartphone; people no longer need a tablet when they can use their phone for everything.
But the key to my enjoyment of my iPad Mini is that I don’t use it like a phone.
In fact, many of the social apps I use most frequently on my phone, like Instagram and Snapchat, do not have iPad-specific versions of their apps—so when you try to use them on your iPad, you’re using the iPhone version, and the screen is tiny. You have the option to enlarge the size 2x, but that makes it pixelated. So I just don’t use them on my iPad at all.
My iPad Mini is basically for two things: reading and watching.
The newspaper and magazine I most regularly read have both perfected their iPad experience: the New York Times and the New Yorker. Their apps look fantastic on iPad and, more important than the visuals, the reading experience is intuitive and gratifying.
I had always said I’d never read full books on the iPad, and it’s still true that I prefer the feel of a paperback in my hands. (It turns out that paper was a pretty good technology!) If I’m reading a book for pleasure, I like to write in the margins, dog-ear the pages, and beat the copy up a little from folding it or stuffing it in my bag.
But I also read a lot of brand new fiction, and my iPad is perfect for books that just came out and are only available in big, bulky hardcover. When a new novel is on every list and I want to read it right now, I can get it on my iPad in ten seconds. It’s how I read some of my favorite books of this year: “The Underground Railroad” by Colson Whitehead, “The Sport of Kings” by C.E. Morgan, “The Sympathizer” by Viet Thanh Nguyen, and “The Mandibles” by Lionel Shriver. I won’t be able to see those books physically sitting on my shelf in the future, but I’ve gotten over that.
And then there’s television watching. The HBO Now, Showtime Anytime, Hulu and Netflix apps have all adapted to iPad quite nicely. There was a time when they made you re-authenticate (log-in with your cable provider) with aggravating frequency, but not anymore. That’s not to mention the sports network apps, which are mostly great at this point, including WatchESPN and the Fox Sports 1 app, which was crucial during the World Series this year. (Meanwhile, the options for watching live television without a cable subscription are quickly increasing, but that’s a separate discussion.)
Music apps also work nicely on iPad—both subscription services like Spotify or Tidal, and simple iTunes for any songs you’ve purchased. I also keep a number of quirky apps on my iPad that I enjoy, like the game Heads Up (you hold your iPad up to your head and friends act out the clues for you), Pocket (saves articles online to your iPad for later), and the Chess.com app, which does offer a distinct iPad version that gives you a nice full-screen board.
Many of my Apple devices have let me down repeatedly. I constantly rail on Twitter about the battery life of my iPhone 6, which is atrociously short and seems to me a perfect and enraging example of planned obsolescence. My two Mac laptops (an old MacBook Pro and a still practically new MacBook Air) have inexcusable issues with freezing. But my iPad Mini has never failed me.
Of course, there are other tablets out there. Amazon Kindle Fire has been successful enough to bump Amazon to third in the tablet market, but on a Kindle you are, naturally, limited to Kindle e-books; I like that on my iPad I can buy Kindle or Apple iBooks e-books (prices can vary). Microsoft Surface revenue was up 38% in the fourth quarter, Microsoft reported, though New England Patriots head coach Bill Belichick doesn’t love his. In most of its Surface advertising, Microsoft pushes the attachable keyboard and the stylus pen, which may be great tools if you want a tablet for work purposes. I specifically enjoy my tablet for pleasure, and not work, so I’m not using it for word processing and don’t need or want a keyboard.
At a time when there is more noise from news alerts, banner ads, and status updates coming at you than ever before, my iPad Mini is my way of disconnecting by connecting to other things. I’m not texting, checking Twitter and Facebook (though you can if you wish), or e-mailing. If my iPad is in my hands, I’m reading or kicking back enjoying a show, and I’m tuning out the noise.
It’s the perfect size, and the perfect holiday gift for a big reader. I received mine as a holiday gift, and in terms of how much use I’ve gotten out of it, it’s one of the best gifts I’ve ever unwrapped.
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Daniel Roberts is a writer at Yahoo Finance, covering sports business and technology. Follow him on Twitter at @readDanwrite.
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