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I confess: I’ve had an exclusive summer fling with the 11” iPad Pro. It went so far that when I left for the countryside in June, I didn’t even bring any other iPads, just the 11” running the iPadOS 16 beta. It’s been wonderful, it’s a fantastic device, but the fling just might be over. Let me tell you why.
Picking the right iPad is a never-ending story. It’s impossible to win in all scenarios, it seems. Lately, I’ve been on the 11” side because most of my work has involved writing. My 12.9” iPad Pro has basically been tied to my workstation at the office, finding its place there for now.
Using the 11” iPad Pro as my main device isn’t without its problems, though. While at a desk, with an external keyboard and pointing device, it’s just fine. The problem starts when I sit down in the shade outdoors to bang out a few hundred words on the Magic Keyboard, its size, or lack thereof, becomes apparent. It’s cramped, and my big hands start to feel it after a while. My typing speed is decent, not as fast as on my preferred keyboard of choice, obviously, but it’s an acceptable trade-off. It all comes together when I’m at a less than ideal working space, which could be a lawn chair or something. The size makes it work, physically, in a way that, say, my MacBook Pro wouldn’t, but it also means that I strain my hands. It went so far that I had to stop writing outdoors for a few days during the summer. As I’m typing this, between scheduled tasks, sitting on the bed waiting to leave, I get reminded of this.
Keyboard aside, the 11” size is often a decent compromise. The screen is rarely too small, unless I’m working on a complicated design where screen real-estate is key (which I haven’t done this summer). The only time I felt that 11” might not cut it was when I read the Lucifer graphic novel. Single pages work well enough, but the spreads involves panning and zooming. With a 12.9” screen, you don’t get this problem. Still, it works, and it didn’t bother me a lot.
What does bother me, though, is reading long-form articles, generally saved things in GoodLinks (read the review), but sometimes in various news and magazine apps. It’s not that 11” is bad for this, it’s more a matter of how good the iPad mini is. For pure text, if you want it easy to read, 11” is unnecessarily big for me. If your eyesight is bad, then blowing up the type so that each line won’t have too many words might work, but for me, I need to add margins on the side. That means I end up with a tight column in the middle which, when it’s an option, obviously works fine, but looks a bit silly. The problem is apps that don’t have that option, that only lets you tweak the text size, for example, then the screen width is an issue.
My final complaint is the size and weight in tandem. I have something of a Slay the Spire addiction, and often play it in the dark, when my better half is sleeping. There’s a lot of dragging and selecting things in Slay the Spire, which means that, for longer periods of time, the 11” iPad Pro is a bit heavy. The size (albeit not the weight) is a good thing in some games, so I won’t complain too much about this, but it’s been an issue.
So many complaints, right? Well, they didn’t bother me particularly much during the summer, hand strain not withstanding, but when Helena brought her iPad mini to read on, I started to miss mine. Especially when I looked at the big and bulky thing in my hand.
I picked up the iPad mini 6 again when we returned to the city. Well, I plugged it in for charging, and updated it to iPadOS 16 first, but then I got to pick it up. It’s such a great little device for so many things, especially reading, which is something I do a lot. The iPad mini is great for picking up and reading an article, or catch up on news, in a way that the larger iPads just aren’t. Well, they are, obviously – just pick one up, and you’re good to go – but not as accessible. There’s something magical with that small piece of glass, despite it being the only thing it really has on the 11” iPad Pro.
I’ll tell you one thing, though: I don’t miss Stage Manager when I’m using my iPad mini. It’s strained on an 11” iPad Pro (more on that in a future post), but it’d be ridiculous on the iPad mini. I don’t miss the M1 chip either, the A15 Bionic performs just fine for whatever I throw at it, which, to be fair, is mostly reading apps of various kinds, and Slay the Spire. It’s a great device, I stand by it, and didn’t know I’d miss it as much as I did. I wouldn’t want to edit a book on an iPad mini (that’s on my plate these coming months, Swedish readers might want to pop over to TDH.se for more), but I don’t mind reading one on that screen.
It’s the old which iPad is the right one for you thing all over again. I still think that the 11” iPad Pro (and thus the iPad Air 5) hits the sweet-spot for most, but not all. Sometimes smaller is better, and for some, that means the iPad mini 6. Such a lovely device.
But, you know, as long as the iPad runs Slay the Spire, it’s a winner in my book. Now, if the game would just support cloud saves too…