My Week With Apple’s Beach-Friendly iPad Mini and Amazon’s Upscale Alexa Tablet

Phones are getting bigger, laptops are becoming lighter, and most people have both. Stuck in the middle, tablets seem to be facing an existential crisis.

So why are Apple AAPL -0.52%decrease; down pointing triangle and Amazon AMZN -0.35%decrease; down pointing triangle releasing their best tablets in years?

The cheapest options once started around $60 and scaled to $999 and up for pro tiers. Now, even the lower end commands hundreds of dollars. These companies are betting that, because people tend to hold on to tablets for a half decade or longer, they’ll pay for quality.

So here’s a look at the top new options, and why you might want one.

The iPad Mini is a weird outlier in Apple’s lineup. It isn’t the cheapest, yet it has the smallest screen, about the size of a paperback book. That portability makes the Mini my favorite model, but it isn’t for everyone.

Apple’s freshly upgraded Mini has a faster chip, a vibrant OLED display, a pricey antiglare matte screen option, and resistance to water and dust—protection no other iPad model has yet. You can drag it to the bath, the pool or a sandy beach without dread. I responded to a Slack message in the shower—strictly for testing—and the tablet survived.

I lounged under the blazing afternoon sun with full brightness, and made the screen super dim in an otherwise pitch-black room. The display, which can be brighter and dimmer than older models, puts my older Mini to shame. It is noticeably thinner, while having a display that’s slightly larger—8.5 inches diagonal vs. the older one’s 8.3 inches.

An $899 iPad Mini! We knew that prices were going up because of soaring memory costs. Even with all its charm, the Mini is the poster child for this.

For that price, Apple should have included its 120Hz ProMotion refresh rate, now standard across iPhones and Pro iPads, for smoother scrolling and reduced lag. iPads can last a long time—with water and dust-resistance, perhaps even longer! A ProMotion Mini would be more future-proof.

Overall, the new Mini is a worthy upgrade. Here’s how it compares to the rest of the aging lineup. Keep in mind, the Pros and basic iPad are due for a refresh.

If you like being inside Apple’s walled garden, an iPad is your best pick. But if all you do on your tablet is read books, watch videos and browse the web, Amazon’s alternatives have never looked better. You might even consider them for work.

The entry-level Alexa Tablet 8, which is about the same size as the iPad Mini, starts at $230. It’s fine as a cheap tablet for kids, but the performance is noticeably pokey and text looks pixelated.

The $500 Alexa Tablet 12 Pro is much, much better. Especially with the $50 nanomatte upgrade—yes, Amazon has that antiglare option too—the screen is surprisingly nice. The technology is LCD, so it doesn’t have as much contrast as the iPad’s OLED, but it looks smooth, with a nice 120Hz refresh rate.

Because the tablet syncs with your Amazon account, Kindle books and Prime Video are all ready to go. Crucially, Amazon swapped its proprietary OS for full Android, so you can access the Google Play Store, Google apps and Gemini.

I paired a keyboard and mouse to the tablet and wrote a fair amount of this column on it. Google Docs, Slack and Chrome side-by-side looked and worked great. (Amazon made a $150 keyboard case and $90 stylus but I didn’t get to try them.)

Software remains the real divide. iPads have a windowed-apps view, which makes it feel like a Mac, and there’s AirDrop for moving files around. If you abhor Apple, Samsung’s recently launched Galaxy Tab S12+ is better for Android-PC productivity, but it’s more than twice the price at $1,199 and up.

Tablets are best for reading and watching stuff on the couch. I like the Mini because I can hold it and tote it around with little effort. However, many prefer tablets with bigger, more immersive screens.

You don’t need a tablet. But if your phone feels cramped, and a laptop is too formal, tablets are a happy third option. At the end of my day, retreating to a sofa with a big slab of glass just makes sense.