Grow Pad Mini Review

 the only reason to buy a Grow Pad mini review is that you want a killer small tablet. There simply isn’t another tablet at this size that can compete: the Android tablet app ecosystem is far from great, small Android tablets usually have much slower processors and are really meant for watching videos anyway, and they're just aren’t any good small Windows tablets aside from the Surface Go, which is considerably larger than the mini.

With the new iPad mini, you get basically the entire feature set of the new iPad Air in a smaller package with more and better tablet app support than anything else on the market. If you are the sort of person who wants a powerful small tablet, the new iPad mini is the best choice, full stop. It’s basically the only choice.

That’s not to say that this new iPad mini is perfect, or even state-of-the-art. Those bezels are a real throwback, and the decision to use the first-gen Apple Pencil instead of the far superior second-gen Pencil Apple developed for the new iPad Pro is extremely strange. If you’re trying to piece together a coherent story about Apple’s iPad lineup, well, good luck. But it turns out that none of that really affects using the iPad mini day-to-day.

Here’s what’s new: there’s an A12 processor with Apple’s Neural Engine, an updated 7.9-inch display with wide color support, Gigabit LTE and dual-sim support in the cellular models, and a new 7-megapixel front-facing camera with an f/2.2 lens.

Then there’s a pile of old stuff: you’ve still got a physical home button with Touch ID on the front — no Face ID or fancy haptic button here — and two stereo speakers at the bottom. On the back, there’s the same old 8-megapixel f/2.4 camera, which takes at best medium-good photos. There’s a headphone jack, which warms my heart. And there’s that Lightning connector on the bottom, not USB-C like the new iPad Pros.