OLED iPad mini vs. M4 iPad Air: Better Display or Bigger Screen?

The new iPad mini gives you OLED in a tablet light enough to hold in one hand. The M4 iPad Air gives you more room to write, draw, and work with two apps at once.

Both are available now. Amazon currently lists the 128GB iPad mini at $699 and the 128GB 11-inch Air at $649.99, so the larger tablet can actually cost less.

OLED or More Screen Space?

The A20 Pro iPad mini has an 8.5-inch OLED display, while the 11-inch M4 Air uses LCD. The mini's deeper blacks and brighter HDR highlights make it especially appealing for films and photos.

The Air gives you more room for a document beside your notes, a drawing surrounded by tool palettes, or a web page with larger text. Its 10.86-inch display is noticeably larger than the mini's 8.5-inch screen.

The mini reaches 600 nits across the full screen and 1,200 nits for peak HDR highlights. The 11-inch Air is rated at 500 nits. If you move up to the 13-inch Air, full-screen brightness rises to 600 nits, but it remains an LCD rather than OLED.

The mini's refresh rate is still 60Hz. Neither it nor the Air offers the smoother scrolling of the iPad Pro's up-to-120Hz ProMotion display.

The mini also offers glare-reducing nano-texture glass on its 256GB and 512GB models for an extra $100. The Air doesn't offer that option. Both have laminated displays with antireflective coatings and support Apple Pencil Pro, Apple Pencil (USB-C), and hover.

A Handheld Tablet or a Keyboard Setup?

The Wi-Fi mini weighs 255 grams (0.56 pound), compared with 464 grams (1.02 pounds) for the 11-inch Air. That's 209 grams less to hold before adding a case. The mini is also shorter, narrower, and thinner, making it our pick for reading on a train or carrying as a small sketchbook.

For long stretches of typing, we'd take the Air. Apple's Magic Keyboard for iPad Air attaches through the Smart Connector and adds a keyboard and trackpad. The mini works with Bluetooth keyboards, but Apple doesn't make a Magic Keyboard case for it.

Both put their 12MP Center Stage camera on the landscape edge, a useful position for video calls with the iPad propped horizontally. The mini also has an IP67 water- and dust-resistance rating; the Air has no published IP rating. Resistance can diminish with wear, and Apple's warranty does not cover liquid damage.

Editing, Storage, and External Displays

The M4 iPad Air has an eight-core CPU, nine-core GPU, and 12GB of memory. Its dedicated media engine handles ProRes encoding and decoding for video work, and storage goes up to 1TB if you keep large projects on the iPad.

The A20 Pro mini has a seven-core GPU at every capacity. The 128GB and 256GB models have a five-core CPU and one 16-core Neural Engine; the 512GB model adds an extra CPU core and a second Neural Engine. Apple does not list the mini's memory capacity.

Both tablets can extend their workspace onto an external monitor. The mini supports up to 4K at 60Hz, while the Air goes up to 6K at 60Hz. Both have USB-C transfer speeds up to 10Gbps for moving files to and from external drives.

Battery Life and Charging

Apple rates both tablets for up to 10 hours of Wi-Fi browsing or video playback, or nine hours of cellular browsing.

The mini supports charging to about 50 percent in 30 minutes with a 35W or higher USB-C adapter. Both tablets include a 20W adapter in the U.S., so you'll need a more powerful one to get the mini's advertised fast charging.

The Air Can Cost Less Than the Mini

At Apple's current U.S. prices, the 128GB Wi-Fi mini is $699 and the 11-inch Air is $749. As of November 11, Amazon has the space gray 128GB Air for $649.99, about $49 less than the 128GB midnight mini at $699.

The 13-inch Air starts at $949 at Apple. Amazon currently has the space gray 128GB Wi-Fi model for $849.99. Its 12.9-inch display gives drawings and documents more room, but the Wi-Fi model weighs 616 grams (1.36 pounds), more than twice as much as the mini.

Those prices are for the tablets alone. The Air's Magic Keyboard, an Apple Pencil for either model, and the mini's optional nano-texture glass all cost extra.

iPad mini vs. 11-inch iPad Air Specifications

Which Would We Buy?

If this is the iPad you'll reach for after closing your laptop, we'd buy the mini. It's much lighter to hold for reading, and we'd pay the roughly $49 extra over the Air's current sale price for the smaller size and OLED screen.

We'd choose the 11-inch Air for longer writing sessions, a larger drawing canvas, or working in several apps at once. Its screen and Magic Keyboard support make it easier to use as a small laptop, and the current discount makes it the better value if compact size is not a priority.

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