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iPad mini Should my sister get an iPad mini first gen?

forza69

forza69

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Jan 30, 2010
790
131
Best Buy currently has them for $200 and she's been wanting to buy one for a while now. She has an iPhone 4S I believe. She needs more of a reason not to buy one other than "it's old with outdated hardware".
What else can I tell her? List some reasons please.
 
forza69 said:
Best Buy currently has them for $200 and she's been wanting to buy one for a while now. She has an iPhone 4S I believe. She needs more of a reason not to buy one other than "it's old with outdated hardware".
What else can I tell her? List some reasons please.
Click to expand...

It's not "just" that it's outdated hardware, the original iPad mini is essentially the iPad 2 hardware.....which is really outdated.

I sold my original mini a couple months ago because iOS 8 does not perform well on the device at all. Really slow and sluggish, and Safari won't respond well to having multiple tabs open.

If she's interested in an iPad mini, look around for deals on the mini 2.
 
She should be able to get the Mini 2 for about $50 more which is far more modern with a much better screen. It will have a much longer useful life.

On the other hand, if she is like many people she won't care about the screen and will never update the software in any case, so she might as well save $50. ;)
 
zhenya said:
She should be able to get the Mini 2 for about $50 more which is far more modern with a much better screen. It will have a much longer useful life.

On the other hand, if she is like many people she won't care about the screen and will never update the software in any case, so she might as well save $50. ;)
Click to expand...

This. I don't think you will find a new mini 2 for $249 though. Apple has refurbs for $249, but a lot of people have said they have a defective screen from the refurb store.
 
It's fairly unlikely that 512MB RAM devices will see an update for iOS 9. Technically the internals of the iPhone 4S are about the same as the iPad Mini. This is roughly equivalent to buying a 2008 MacBook Pro over a 2013 MacBook Pro. Like the iPad Mini 2 vs. the original Mini, both are about 5 times faster than each other, and the earlier model is probably not going to get the next release of their respective OS. But you're only saving $50-100.
 
I'm not one to complain about iOS updates and old hardware, but I think even at $200 it's a bad idea. Try this reason on her: Getting an A5 device like the original Mini means you really need to lock yourself into iOS 7.x at the most in order to maintain reasonable responsiveness, but here's the kicker: over the next few years, she'll find that more and more apps either don't update or won't install at all because the device is running an older version of iOS. Obviously it will take some time for that to become a real issue, but I can tell you from personal experience that it is likely to get very annoying eventually.
 
Old and out of date don't hold much water if the device is still functional. The fact of the matter is that the original iPad mini on OS 8.1.1 isn't a great user experience. The device is incredibly slow with many of the most common activities like web browsing, opening apps and reading books.

It's a great form factor but the first gen mini gives such a poor experience that it should be put out to pasture. Having said that, if she could get one that was still on OS 7 and she never upgraded it might be fine for her if she doesn't plan to do anything too intensive on it.
 
forza69 said:
Best Buy currently has them for $200 and she's been wanting to buy one for a while now. She has an iPhone 4S I believe. She needs more of a reason not to buy one other than "it's old with outdated hardware".
What else can I tell her? List some reasons please.
Click to expand...

$200 is borderline too expensive for the first gen mini. If I could find one on craigslist for less than $150, I might jump on it.
 
McDaddio said:
Yes, your sister should get an iPad mini first gen.

She will like it.
Click to expand...

Huh no, it's a hunk of junk the screen resolution was rubbish when it came out let alone 2 years later and it runs like a dog with the latest version of iOS.

OP the iPad mini 2 is the minimum she should get, it is a very decent tablet and a bargain at it's current price.

And hopefully because the Mini 2 has the same internals as the Mini 3 Apple will make a decent job of optimizing iOS 9 without any slow down.
 
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