Not stupid, but not ideal either. Here in the UK Apple will replace the battery for £99, which is cheaper than a second-hand Mini 2. Furthermore with a new iPad you may find that e.g. your iTunes library won't download for ninety days.
Judging by iFixIt a home repair is a lot of trouble. I would not trust myself to glue an iPad back together correctly. Could I trust a battery I bought off eBay?
I have a Mini 2 - I bought it second-hand and still use it as my main tablet. It's running iOS 12.4.4. I took it on my trip to Hong Kong back in October and watched both of the Deadpool movies (the first one on the way there; the second on the way back). It has aged amazingly well for something that's now seven years old and only has 1gb of memory. Still feels like a solid chunk of metal and glass.
It doesn't run iPadOS / iOS 13, but it still has extremely wide app support. My understanding is that iOS 10 slowed things down, but iOS 11 sped things up again, and I don't have a problem with iOS 12. The single slowest thing is Safari's predictive URL bar search*, but otherwise Safari is a lot better than I expected. I have to say that I don't play games with it, so my experience may be atypical.
* E.g. I type "prague weather february" and there's a pause followed by pragueweatherfeburary in one burst, but we're talking a second, less than a second here.
I'm platform-independent - my first tablet was an Asus Transformer, and until the Mini 2 I was using a Linx Windows 10 tablet - but used Android tablets are a minefield and the Mini 2 still has a great screen.
Judging by iFixIt a home repair is a lot of trouble. I would not trust myself to glue an iPad back together correctly. Could I trust a battery I bought off eBay?
I have a Mini 2 - I bought it second-hand and still use it as my main tablet. It's running iOS 12.4.4. I took it on my trip to Hong Kong back in October and watched both of the Deadpool movies (the first one on the way there; the second on the way back). It has aged amazingly well for something that's now seven years old and only has 1gb of memory. Still feels like a solid chunk of metal and glass.
It doesn't run iPadOS / iOS 13, but it still has extremely wide app support. My understanding is that iOS 10 slowed things down, but iOS 11 sped things up again, and I don't have a problem with iOS 12. The single slowest thing is Safari's predictive URL bar search*, but otherwise Safari is a lot better than I expected. I have to say that I don't play games with it, so my experience may be atypical.
* E.g. I type "prague weather february" and there's a pause followed by pragueweatherfeburary in one burst, but we're talking a second, less than a second here.
I'm platform-independent - my first tablet was an Asus Transformer, and until the Mini 2 I was using a Linx Windows 10 tablet - but used Android tablets are a minefield and the Mini 2 still has a great screen.
