Hi I have a iPad mini w that I have had since 2013.most use it for web browsing and some apps. Is still working good using iOS 10.3.2. Is only a 16gb. Is it worth it in 2017 to upgrade to a iPad mini 4? When u r only going from a7 to a a8? Plus ad 1gb of ram. I was debating if it is worth the $275 for Christmas. I know I have to upgrade my iPad 4th generation, but that is another discussion. Please let me know what u think, and what I should do? Thanks. Have a great day.
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is it worth it to upgrade to iPad mini 4 from iPad mini 2
- Thread starter Jcmwwe
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I just did the upgrade last month. I bought a 128GB at Target when they were on sale last month or so. The only upside I have really found with my new Mini 4 is:
1) Better battery life (because newer model)
2) Screen is ok, largely the same but a little better.
3) Better processor - less waiting on iOS11. This is perhaps the biggest improvement. The time I spent waiting for apps to load on iOS11 on the iPad Mini 2 was just too much sometimes. Apps or items that take 20-30 seconds to load on the Mini 2 take 10-15 on the Mini 4. Over time, this can add up to tens of minutes a day of time waiting.
4) Form factor - largely the same, but you will need new cases because Mini 2 and Mini 4 are different sizes.
5) Multi-tasking - One of the reasons I upgraded. It's largely an improvement, but I have found so few apps take advantage of multi-tasking anyway, that it its not worth upgrading JUST for that.
6) Storage - biggest benefit is 128GB vs 16GB in my Current iPad Mini 2. Music, videos, Amazon Prime downloads, Pocket reading, etc.. I will be able to use space in this Mini 4 for a LONG time.
TL;DR: Just upgraded a month ago, clearly not sure if it was worth an upgrade. If I could go back, I might have bought the iPad Pro 10.5 on discount/refurb for $500-550 and kept iPad Mini 2 for travel.
Future plans: Sell Mini 2 and buy iPad pro 10.5 in the future.
1) Better battery life (because newer model)
2) Screen is ok, largely the same but a little better.
3) Better processor - less waiting on iOS11. This is perhaps the biggest improvement. The time I spent waiting for apps to load on iOS11 on the iPad Mini 2 was just too much sometimes. Apps or items that take 20-30 seconds to load on the Mini 2 take 10-15 on the Mini 4. Over time, this can add up to tens of minutes a day of time waiting.
4) Form factor - largely the same, but you will need new cases because Mini 2 and Mini 4 are different sizes.
5) Multi-tasking - One of the reasons I upgraded. It's largely an improvement, but I have found so few apps take advantage of multi-tasking anyway, that it its not worth upgrading JUST for that.
6) Storage - biggest benefit is 128GB vs 16GB in my Current iPad Mini 2. Music, videos, Amazon Prime downloads, Pocket reading, etc.. I will be able to use space in this Mini 4 for a LONG time.
TL;DR: Just upgraded a month ago, clearly not sure if it was worth an upgrade. If I could go back, I might have bought the iPad Pro 10.5 on discount/refurb for $500-550 and kept iPad Mini 2 for travel.
Future plans: Sell Mini 2 and buy iPad pro 10.5 in the future.
That is what I am debating on if it is worth buying, or should I just put the money toward a bigger one and keep my mini 2.
Depends on what you do with your Mini 2 and what version of iOS it's running (and whether you want to update).
If it's running 10 or lower and you're happy, keep it.
If it feels slow, or you would like better color accuracy, the Mini 4 might be worthwhile. I would not personally upgrade a Mini 4 to iOS 11 at this time. Unless Apple really improves iOS 11 performance, I will probably never upgrade.
I upgraded a year or two ago and feel it was a good upgrade. YMMV, though.
If it's running 10 or lower and you're happy, keep it.
If it feels slow, or you would like better color accuracy, the Mini 4 might be worthwhile. I would not personally upgrade a Mini 4 to iOS 11 at this time. Unless Apple really improves iOS 11 performance, I will probably never upgrade.
I upgraded a year or two ago and feel it was a good upgrade. YMMV, though.
I can probably get about $175 for my Mini 2 16BG Wifi and Cellular. So I figured it was worth the $125 cost by buying the Mini 4 at 300 and selling Mini 2 for $175.
If I could go back, I probably would have just kept my Mini 2 on iOS10 and waited and bought the iPad Pro 10.5 when I could spend the $550 or finance over 6 months. iOS10 was fine for the mini 2, and iOS11 on the Pro 10.5 would have been the best money spent.
That would be my suggestion going forward, unless the 10.5 form factor is too big for you.
If I could go back, I probably would have just kept my Mini 2 on iOS10 and waited and bought the iPad Pro 10.5 when I could spend the $550 or finance over 6 months. iOS10 was fine for the mini 2, and iOS11 on the Pro 10.5 would have been the best money spent.
That would be my suggestion going forward, unless the 10.5 form factor is too big for you.
Do u feel it would still be a good upgrade today? I am running iOS 10.3.2 on it. Thanks.
It was worth it to me. I finally gave up waiting for a Mini pro last May and pulled the trigger on an upgrade so I could at least have the latest version before it was discontinued. I wasn't expecting it to be a big deal, but the quality of the screen improvement really blew me away and the decreased weight made it much nicer to use.
I'd recommend it for the increased ram at least. I'm the type of user who keeps a million tabs open on my web browser, the Mini 2 limited me pretty quickly on how many tabs I could have open, I've not yet reached a limit on the mini 4. I also had a lot of problems with tab refreshing on the Mini 2, I've not had any problems since upgrading.
I'd recommend it for the increased ram at least. I'm the type of user who keeps a million tabs open on my web browser, the Mini 2 limited me pretty quickly on how many tabs I could have open, I've not yet reached a limit on the mini 4. I also had a lot of problems with tab refreshing on the Mini 2, I've not had any problems since upgrading.
How do you feel it runs - is it fast enough?
To me, that question has two parts. (You may see it differently...)
The first part is: is it a good upgrade technologically, is it worth the cost of the Mini 4 minus whatever you can sell the Mini 2 for? To me, yes, no question. The speed and display improvements were very noticeable, but other people don't see any difference in the display - although DisplayMate did an objective, quantitative comparison that showed the Mini 4 way ahead of the Mini 2. Still, depending on your vision and your uses, you might not see it or you might not care.
The second question is harder: is it a good upgrade today, given what we don't know about Apple's plans for the Mini line? I don't know. If you sink a few hundred dollars into a Mini 4, which is getting kind of stale technologically (though still a lot fresher than the 2...), and they introduce a Mini 5 next spring, are you going to be kicking yourself? I don't think I would, personally, but I did get burned that way when I bought an iPad 3 and Apple introduced the iPad 4 five weeks after I bought it. Still, five weeks is different from five or six months. The other side of that is that the 4 may be the last Mini - but in that case, it will still be available in the refurb section for quite a while. Which is another way of saying that unless you REALLY need an upgrade NOW, you don't risk much by waiting until March or May of 2018.*
*The one thing that you would lose is the chance of getting a Mini 4 that was running some version of iOS 10 rather than iOS 11. Right now, odds are probably pretty good that a new Mini 4 comes out of the box with 10.x. Next spring, it's almost guaranteed to come out of the box running 11.x. I had 11.0 and 11.0.1 on my Mini 4 and was not thrilled by the performance hit. Other people don't feel that way, though, so we're back to personal judgments...