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3SQ Machine

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Dec 8, 2019
362
210
I really WANTED to love this. I really did. The first month, I was taking it everywhere, doing as much as possible with it. I had high hopes and dreams about our future.

But the honeymoon has ended and reality has set in. While the form factor is excellent, the relationship is just not working out. I am reaching for other options that are simply better at tasks than the mini—it has too many compromises. I will share my experience here in case anyone has a similar use case:

• not great for zoom calls: part of my use case is for work zoom calls. My prior iPad Air third generation had a smoother experience, surprisingly. Zoom unfortunately is not optimized for the new mini. It also took Zoom a month for them to fix a mini-specific bug with the self viewing camera. Now there is a crackling audio problem—yikes (just one more thing). Also, the self-facing camera is WORSE in low light (despite it being a better camera) than the iPad Air 3–defeats the purpose in lower-light work environments.

•it’s not that bright for movies/shows: I was trying to watch a show on the iPad mini in my kitchen, and I kept thinking that the brightness was all the way down. It was not. I didn’t think this would be that big of a deal with the 500 nits, but when it is a problem inside, it’s more an issue than I thought it should be.

• iPad OS is half baked—this has been discussed elsewhere, but it makes the Mini more compromised than it has to be.

•not great in portrait—while the “JS” topic has been well worn, I could probably tolerate it if other apps and screens were optimized for the portrait aspect ratio. Unfortunately, many are not. I’m constantly having to rotate the Mini to landscape. Again, while YMMV, for my workflow it’s inconvenient.

I could see people loving this and finding the great speakers, crisp screen, light weight, & USB-C very useful. For me, it’s just too expensive for too many compromises. Maybe an updated version in a few years will fit the bill.
 
I have the cellular and maybe thinking on just upgrading to 11 inch ipad pro wifi.
 
Finally returned it. Maybe there will be a mild refresh or other update in the future that makes it a smoother experience. Of course, next time I won't pre-order, but will wait for in-depth reviews before taking the plunge.
 
Finally returned it. Maybe there will be a mild refresh or other update in the future that makes it a smoother experience. Of course, next time I won't pre-order, but will wait for in-depth reviews before taking the plunge.

I would not base my decision off of reviews - I would try it for myself. Irrespective of the reviews - positive or negative - I like the device.
 
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I was in a local store to get the iPad mini 6. But this jelly scrolling effect was K.O. for me. I compared it in the store against my iPad mini 5 and on the mini 5 there was no jelly scrolling effect visible. The Pencil 2 would have been nice, but now I am holding on to my mini 5.
 
I was in a local store to get the iPad mini 6. But this jelly scrolling effect was K.O. for me. I compared it in the store against my iPad mini 5 and on the mini 5 there was no jelly scrolling effect visible. The Pencil 2 would have been nice, but now I am holding on to my mini 5.
The mini 5 has jelly scrolling in landscape. if you haven’t seen it, don’t look for it, you won’t be able to unsee it LOL.
 
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The mini 5 has jelly scrolling in landscape. if you haven’t seen it, don’t look for it, you won’t be able to unsee it LOL.
I have the Mini 5. My Mini 5 doesn't jelly scroll in landscape nor in portrait. I have seen a Mini 6 in person and I can clearly see it in portrait mode in the floor model. None of the tablets that I own display jelly scrolling.

If someone wants to deny that there is something unique about the Mini 6 that causes this behavior, that's their choice.

With all of the nitpicking that people do over their devices, if jelly scrolling was a thing universally evident in all devices and noticeable as it is on the Mini 6, then we would've heard it as loudly over the years. We didn't.

Backlight bleed, dead pixels, hot pixels, etc. Even the gap due to non-laminated screens have had plenty of complaints over the years.
 
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The mini 5 has jelly scrolling in landscape. if you haven’t seen it, don’t look for it, you won’t be able to unsee it LOL.
I tested it, you are right. There is (minimal) jelly scrolling in landscape. But not in that way it is in portait mode on the mini 6. Anyways. I'm fine with the 5 for now. My daily driver is the MacBook Air, so mini is primarily for consumption. I decided to not upgrade my iPads until they got promotion. Have it on the iPhone and for me the difference is huge.
 
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I have the Mini 5. My Mini 5 doesn't jelly scroll in landscape nor in portrait. I have seen a Mini 6 in person and I can clearly see it in portrait mode in the floor model. None of the tablets that I own display jelly scrolling.
I posted a slow motion video of iPad mini 5 landscape jelly scrolling in another thread here about a month ago.

I haven’t seen the mini 6 in person so I cannot compare the 5 scroll to the 6 scroll.
 
I have the 5 and thanks to jelly gate I have now noticed minimal jelly scroll in landscape. I can ignore it though and it is very minor.
I tried the 6 in a shop and that was more noticeable for sure.
I have been very tempted to upgrade to the 6 as I like gadgets but I only got my 5 this summer so so far head is winning!
My mini is my only iPad currently and was an upgrade from a 2016 9.7 inch pro so not one to usually upgrade so soon.
The 6 does look lovely though!
 
Can I have it? The Mini 4 we use as a floater around the house is absolutely crawling under recent iPadOS updates...
 
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Finally returned it. Maybe there will be a mild refresh or other update in the future that makes it a smoother experience. Of course, next time I won't pre-order, but will wait for in-depth reviews before taking the plunge.
Sounds like the iPad in general isn’t right for you. No updates will change that.
 
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Here’s a still image of the jelly scroll happening on my mini 5. It only happens when scrolling quickly, so it doesn’t bother me, but it does exist. Check out the post separator lines in the following mage.

3639C172-01D1-4C32-B5A4-4E74BEAA8F14.jpeg
 
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