You wait years for a high-quality small phone, and then two come along together. Apple now has two iPhones to appeal to smaller hands and lower budgets: the more premium iPhone 12 mini, and the less expensive iPhone SE. Both are excellent devices that have earned our Editors’ Choice award, so it’s understandable if you’re wondering whether the iPhone 12 mini is worth the extra $300.
It turns out that, yes, you can pack very different power into two similarly petite frames. I’ve reviewed both phones myself, and have recommended each one highly. So which one should you choose? Here’s how the two stack up on price, features, and performance.
Price
The iPhone SE comes in three models: 64GB for $399, 128GB for $449, and 256GB for $549.
The iPhone 12 mini costs $699 for 64GB, $749 for 128GB and $849 for 256GB.
That $300 difference challenges the iPhone 12 mini to deliver significantly more power and features. On price alone, the iPhone SE is the clear choice.
Winner: iPhone SE
Design
Here, it’s a tradeoff between bezel and buttons. The iPhone SE has a sizable bezel around the screen, but that allows for a physical home button with Touch ID. The iPhone 12 mini has no fingerprint sensor and uses Face ID or a passcode to unlock the phone.
The bezel reduction lets the 12 mini fit a lot more screen into a smaller, lighter device. The iPhone 12 mini measures 5.18 by 2.53 by .29 inches and weighs only 4.76 ounces, while the iPhone SE is a taller 5.45 by 2.65 by .29 inches and weighs 5.22 ounces.
The 12 mini has a better design if your priority is more power in less body. But the lack of a fingerprint sensor is frustrating, especially in this COVID year when we should all be wearing masks and Face ID basically doesn’t work outside your house. Other devices have solved the no-bezel problem by putting a fingerprint sensor on the back or edge of the device. The iPhone 12 mini has a nice flat edge that would be perfect for an iPad Air–style fingerprint sensor—a missed opportunity.
Given how often you have to unlock your phone, we can’t call the 12 mini a clear winner here. The SE’s lower screen real estate is balanced by convenience.
Winner: Tie
Display
There’s no contest here. The 12 mini has an ultra-saturated, 2,340-by-1,080, 5.4-inch OLED screen with 477ppi density. It’s absolutely gorgeous, and amazingly sharp. The iPhone SE’s 326ppi, 1,334-by-7,50 LCD looks weak and washed out in comparison.
When I opened a Microsoft Word document in Portrait mode, with very small type, nine more lines of text displayed on the 12 mini than on the iPhone SE. The NYTimes.com webpage, which has freer line spacing, showed three more lines of text on the 12 mini. And with that display quality, both were easy to read.
Winner: iPhone 12 mini
Power and Connectivity
The iPhone 12 mini uses the new Apple A14 processor; the SE has 2019’s A13. The A14 is about 10% faster on Web browsing tests than the SE, but that honestly won’t make a big difference in your life. The 12 mini will probably get one more year of software support than the SE, but four to five years from now when that starts to matter, you’ll already be thinking about replacing your phone.
I think the modem differences are a bigger deal. The iPhone 12 mini is a 5G phone, and the SE isn’t. 5G doesn’t really matter to most people right now. But the iPhone 12 mini is also 4×4 MIMO for 4G—and that does matter. I tested the mini alongside the SE on two Canadian networks that have similar layouts to US networks. On Bell’s 4G network, the mini saw speeds of 296Mbps down where the SE saw 147Mbps. On Rogers’ 4G network, the mini’s 111Mbps down eclipsed the SE’s 77.8Mbps. You can expect significantly better 4G performance on the mini than on the SE.
The 12 mini also supports future 5G systems. Most notably, the 12 mini has C-Band, which will begin to sweep the US and Canada in late 2021 and early 2022 and likely bring much faster speeds to existing networks. The SE has nothing to compare.
Winner: iPhone 12 mini
Battery
The iPhone 12 mini has a significantly bigger battery than the iPhone SE, at 2227mAh to the SE’s 1821mAh. Paired with the noticeably more efficient processor, that leads to longer battery life. In our tests, the mini streamed video over Wi-Fi for 10 hours, 37 minutes before running out of juice. The SE only lasted 5 hours, 57 minutes.
Left idle overnight, the SE’s battery dropped by 14% and the mini’s dropped by 12%. Running some speed tests for two hours killed 13% of the mini’s battery, but 18% of the SE’s.
Winner: iPhone 12 mini
Camera
The iPhone SE has a single 12-megapixel camera on the back and a 7-megapixel camera on the front. The iPhone 12 mini has 12-megapixel regular and wide-angle cameras on the back, and another 12-megapixel camera on the front.
The biggest difference between the two phones isn’t in the lenses, but in the computational Night mode. Both phones take great shots in the daytime, but the new Night mode makes photos from the iPhone 12 mini really stand out. The SE just can’t compete in low light.
Winner: iPhone 12 mini
Verdict: If You Can Afford It, Get the iPhone 12 Mini
If you don’t want to drop all that cash on an iPhone 12 mini for whatever reason, the iPhone SE is still good. I’ve recommended it to many people for whom an extra $300 in their pockets outweighs being able to take gorgeous night photos and upload them to Instagram lickety-split. However, the iPhone 12 mini has significant upgrades that make it well worth the additional price over the iPhone SE. Most notably, the longer battery life, camera Night mode, and 4×4 MIMO LTE make a big difference in your day-to-day phone experience. That’s all part of what makes the iPhone 12 mini our overall Editors’ Choice for iPhones and the winner of this comparison.
Winner: iPhone 12 mini
