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I also have the Mini 4 and the Pro. The Mini 4 is my day-to-day iPad and goes everywhere with me. The Pro goes a lot of places with me, but is mostly just for drawing and taking notes. As much as I love drawing on the Pro, I do wish the Pencil was somewhat compatible with the Mini 4 - even if it only worked like a Bluetooth stylus - just so I could use it for taking notes. As it is, I carry my Adobe stylus to take notes on the Mini.
 
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My mini 4 is nice, but it's a secondary tablet that I hardly use.

My Air 2 is ideal for my needs.
So thin and light it slips into my laptop bag unnoticed. The spacious display is so much better than the small mini for movies and videos that I won't buy another mini ever.

My iPad Pro remains in my home office, it's too cumbersome for mobile use.
 
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My mini 4 is nice, but it's a secondary tablet that I hardly use.

My Air 2 is ideal for my needs.
So thin and light it slips into my laptop bag unnoticed. The spacious display is so much better than the small mini for movies and videos that I won't buy another mini ever.

My iPad Pro remains in my home office, it's too cumbersome for mobile use.
Why do you she have it if you don't have a need for it?
 
Why do you she have it if you don't have a need for it?
I buy every Apple product that I have an interest in. I have a wide variety of usage scenarios to accommodate. Therefore until I buy and spend some time evaluating, there's no way for me to know if it's great, not so great, or rather irrelevant.

Irrelevant products I carefully repackage, wipe all data and restore to their original out of box state. Then I give them to family or friends.

It's win/win, I get to enjoy the experience and the fun of giving it away.
 
Ha! This makes me laugh, I can just imagine!

I'm just in the process of trying to switch my reading from my Kindle Voyage to the Mini 4. I just don't see the point of carrying two devices. I'd be interested to know how you feel reading on the mini is? Not too tempting to surf the net or read incoming emails? To many interruptions?

Also, I've read that the Kindle devices are better to read on than iPad's?
I don't own any Kindle but one of the very early models with e-ink. I never really got into using it much. I do enjoy reading books on my IPad Retina mini. That would be the first model of mini to use the Retina screen. I even read books on the original mini without too much trouble.

I can't yet say what reading on the Mini 4 is like. I wasn't originally planning to upgrade because my current mini works well on iOS 8.4. But my husband offered to upgrade me to a Mini 4 for Christmas. I checked them out at the Apple Store, whacked my face with one and fell in love! Just kidding. But I was impressed with how light they made it and how nice the display looked with the improved color. Mine has the crippled color gamut where reds look muddy orange.

Yes, I do get distracted by incoming texts and emails. And often in a story I get reminded of something I want to look up. For example a character may mention General Patton. Next thing you know, I'm reading all these articles about Patton on the Internet. But that's fun, too. The mini is a very well rounded utilitarian device. I'm currently using it to post here.

I have an iPhone 6s plus but I prefer that for calls, camera, Facebook and texts and some short emails. Those tasks alone consume a lot of my battery capacity, so it's nice to have a fully charged mini on hand for reading and surfing and light gaming. Everything else I do, I do on the mini. I haven't used my desktop or laptop computer in a couple of years. But I do miss doing photo editing on my desktop PC.
 
My mini 4 is nice, but it's a secondary tablet that I hardly use.

My Air 2 is ideal for my needs.
So thin and light it slips into my laptop bag unnoticed. The spacious display is so much better than the small mini for movies and videos that I won't buy another mini ever.

My iPad Pro remains in my home office, it's too cumbersome for mobile use.
Impressive, you have all the sizes.
But it seems the Mini isn't for you.
I'd rather the mini over the air for the same reason (different conclusions): the mini slips into my minimal laptop bag unnoticed while the Air takes a little more space.
 
I have a mini 4 which replaced a mini 2. The screen is a bit nicer, but not night and day. Extra speed is nominally noticeable. I'm already used to Touch ID from the Air 2 and iPhone, so it doesn't have much impact. Overall the 4 feels like a fairly ho hum upgrade.
Really? Do you notice the extra ram at all?
 
Apple seems to be positioning the iPad mini as the budget option, with gimped specs to boot. Which is a shame, because I use it in the classroom and love the size. I wouldn't mind an iPad mini with iPad pro specs.
 
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I'm also interested to know what cases (if any) you guys are using on your mini's? It's such a nice device I'd love to use it (naked) but fear dropping/scratches etc...
 
I'm also interested to know what cases (if any) you guys are using on your mini's? It's such a nice device I'd love to use it (naked) but fear dropping/scratches etc...
I will be buying the Smart Cover and silicone case..costly but I take it everywhere so need more protection
 
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Really? Do you notice the extra ram at all?
I'm sure if you swapped out my 4 for a 2 overnight, I would wake up noticing things being a little slower, but it just doesn't feel as snappy as my Air 2. Nothing magical.

But one caveat; I'm not a gamer, so my experience is limited.
 
Really? Do you notice the extra ram at all?
It depends on the usage.
There is no app in the store designed for 2 Gb so far ...
Only during multitasking or multi tab browsing you can notice the difference.

I'm also interested to know what cases (if any) you guys are using on your mini's? It's such a nice device I'd love to use it (naked) but fear dropping/scratches etc...
Apple 's Smart Cover and silicone back cover. A pricey but high quality solution
 
Outdated how. The mini two is still a great device.

There are allready A8X, A9X. new iPad with A8 in 2015 is a little outdated imo, for gamers will a Air 2 be a better choice, because of new games starting to get really graphic heavy, and also for serius video editor and so on.

Mini is no doubt a awesome device, because of its size and price. just a shame it dont use the same processor as the Air :/ Which keep me off for getting one.
 
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Apple seems to be positioning the iPad mini as the budget option, with gimped specs to boot. Which is a shame, because I use it in the classroom and love the size. I wouldn't mind an iPad mini with iPad pro specs.

I don't think it's a matter of gimping it. It has an A8 with a faster clock speed than the iPhone 6, and the same 2GB of RAM as the Air 2. But it's also a smaller device. A more powerful processor will warm it up faster and burn through it's battery more quickly, and people who want to do processor intensive tasks that would benefit from an A8X or A9X would probably want a larger display to do them on anyway. The Mini 4 is a great small tablet, but the portability has to come with some limitations. I don't think that a Mini with the specs of a Pro is physically possible at the moment. Not if you want it to have reasonable battery life. The Mini should be compared to other 8" tablets, not the likes of the iPad Pro.

Also look at it this way, the Mini 4 is the 3rd most powerful iPad model out there, above what the vast majority of what current iPad owners are using. People talk about it being obsolete because of the A8, but you have to consider what percentage of iOS devices currently on the market have an A7 or lower and 1GB of RAM. Those devices are still supported, so I think it will be a while before the Mini 4 is really obsolete.
 
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I'm also interested to know what cases (if any) you guys are using on your mini's? It's such a nice device I'd love to use it (naked) but fear dropping/scratches etc...
If I didn't know any better I'd be convinced that iPads of any size are especially designed to be so slippery... you drop them immediately.

True!

Take a new iPad out of the box, and you'll notice immediately. If you have the courage to be honest, you'll agree.

That's_NOT_ being critical of Apple at all. It's simply sharing an observation.

I've never held anything as slippery and difficult to grip as the slab of Aluminium and Glass known as an iPad.

I make it a rule to be sure I already have a case ready to put my new iPads in upon unboxing.
 
If I didn't know any better I'd be convinced that iPads of any size are especially designed to be so slippery... you drop them immediately.

True!

Take a new iPad out of the box, and you'll notice immediately. If you have the courage to be honest, you'll agree.

That's_NOT_ being critical of Apple at all. It's simply sharing an observation.

I've never held anything as slippery and difficult to grip as the slab of Aluminium and Glass known as an iPad.

I make it a rule to be sure I already have a case ready to put my new iPads in upon unboxing.

I haven't found that to be a problem. I've just recently gotten a soft clear case for my Mini 4, but for months I used it caseless or with just the Smart Cover. I never dropped it or found it hard get a grip on.
 
I use my Mini 4 over all other tablet sizes. But, I use mine as an eReader for books when on public transportation.
 
There are allready A8X, A9X. new iPad with A8 in 2015 is a little outdated imo, for gamers will a Air 2 be a better choice, because of new games starting to get really graphic heavy, and also for serius video editor and so on.

Mini is no doubt a awesome device, because of its size and price. just a shame it dont use the same processor as the Air :/ Which keep me off for getting one.
Those are mostly just words, good for marketing. But how in real world experience is a Mini 4 outdated ?
Did you run any apps that was subpar on a mini 4. Name one please.
 
I have the Kavaj leather case at the moment. They're a German company but sell on Amazon. Quite a nice case and improved for the mini 4 as the case doesn't touch the bezel as in previous cases. Here's a couple of pics;

ImageUploadedByTapatalk1450645776.021514.jpg
ImageUploadedByTapatalk1450645796.175752.jpg
ImageUploadedByTapatalk1450645827.363137.jpg
 
Those are mostly just words, good for marketing. But how in real world experience is a Mini 4 outdated ?
Did you run any apps that was subpar on a mini 4. Name one please.

It runned better than a Mini 2. The 2GB Ram makes multitask alot better, but wouldnt say top class performance overall. navigating through photos, and springboard, + scrolling in safari and some apps, runs fine. i,did still say Air 2 and Pro is a step up in performance tbh.
 
It runned better than a Mini 2. The 2GB Ram makes multitask alot better, but wouldnt say top class performance overall. navigating through photos, and springboard, + scrolling in safari and some apps, runs fine. i,did still say Air 2 and Pro is a step up in performance tbh.
I strongly suspect you didn't really try a mini 4 ....
I don't know about the iPad pro, but I can't see ANY difference between the mini 4 and the air 2 navigating through photos or Safari, not to speak about the springboard (!!!). Zero difference.
 
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