Is the iPad mini good for medical students? (solved)

April 16, 2022July 15, 2022 yassin.ajanif

Many students wonder if the iPad mini could be a good option for medical students, so for this reason, we decided to write this post to show you the truth about this subject.

In this article, we’re going to cover the pros and cons of using the iPad mini as a medical student and warn you of some traps that many medical students fall into.

So keep reading if you want to know about this subject.

Is the iPad mini good for medical students?

iPad is a great option for medical students who are looking for portability and affordability. In other words, the iPad mini is one of the cheapest versions of the iPad and the most portable one. For medical students having a portable device is a great option. The IPad mini is a handheld device that you can carry easily.

in addition, it has a lot of advantages like:

allow you to take excellent notes as medical students

Save you tons of notebooks and binders
make assignments
taking lectures photos
highlight readings and documents
use some brilliant medical applications

But iPad mini still has some drawbacks that any medical student would not love. So we’re going to list in the next paragraph in detail all pros and cons of using the iPad mini as a medical student.

1 – Taking notes for medical students

The first thing about the iPad or iPad mini is it is the best device for taking a note in the world. It is not a marketing message but is an experience shared with any medical student.

Medical students or medical workers take their iPad mini to take:

patient statistics
medications of each patient
disease process

While students use their iPad mini to take note beautifully than any notebook could provide. In other words:

They can take notes with multiples color
edit notes where they want and when they want
Adding images to their notes is very interesting for medical students, like editing anatomy photos by adding to their notes like in this video below.

Save their notes in a cloud and access them from any Apple device, iPhone or MacBook. Apple has the best sync system that allows users to access instantly any data between phone, tablet, laptop, or desktop computer.

So you will not worry anymore about making a mistake. If you make a mistake, you can erase it and then retake a note with different color or whatever you want.

So the iPad mini doesn’t differ from the iPad Pro version. If we talk about taking notes ability it provides a great and good experience for students.

2 – save tons of books and binders in one device

The great thing that a lot of medical school students love about the iPad mini is its portability.

Instead of bringing a heavy notebook to a school, an iPad mini could replace all these notebooks and even textbooks if the professor would accept. Because medical school major students take a lot of notes, which requires a lot of paper.

So there is no notebook or a binder anymore. You just have to bring a small electronic device to do all this stuff.

The bad thing about notebooks or binders is they are heavy and not flexible. For instance:

it takes time to organize a paper in a binder. Moreover, it is hard to access information, but you just have to click on the search bar and enter what you are looking for on an iPad mini.

Even if you forget about a lecture, you just have to put a keyword related on the search bar, and then you are.

Medical students suffer from notebooks, so you will need to buy new ones. The problem is not in the price. For instance, when you need to revise for an exam, you should put 2 or 3 notebooks on a desk to study for exams, so it is not efficient.

The notebook takes up space on shelves, and you can easily forget about where is your anatomy notebook and waste priceless time looking for it. While with one click on your iPad mini you can get all access to what you want.

In other words, you can hugely limit paper use and be more efficient in your study. Using an iPad mini does this job, and you don’t need to look for a more expensive version.

3 – allow students to make beautiful assignments

There is no better experience than making beautiful assignments with an iPad. Even with a 3.8-inch iPad mini screen, you can do your medical assignments.

But to be honest, we don’t recommend splitting a screen because it becomes hard to read or write when you do that. So, in this case, using a split option for medical students in iPad mini is better to avoid.

In other models that have bigger screens, like iPad 11 inch or iPad 12.9, the split-screen option is more comfortable than the iPad mini

4 – an iPad mini is a great tool for highlighting and reading

iPad mini is a great tool to use for medical students for reading or highlighting is lightweight. You can read from wherever you want:

sitting on your desktop
layin gon the couch
or even on the bed

In other words, you can read any document’s pdf, infographic image, or anything else and highlight it without having any issues. For instance, you can:

put a yellow line under a specific statement you like, or you did not understand
add an image to a paragraph to facilitate understanding when you revise.
Correct something or remove a paragraph

So there is a lot of useful editing text and highlighting options medical students would benefit from iPad mini.

5 – Using iPad medical apps

a lot of medical students use the 6 following apps with their iPad mini to help them in their studies which are:

Notion: this app helps students to organize their notes and any work in a scheduled time
Notability: This app is one of the famous apps that medical students use for taking notes
Forest app: this app help students focus on their studies and not get distracted
Teach me anatomy: this app, teach a medical student about human anatomy with a lot of colored and explained images
complete anatomy: this app teaches medical students the human anatomy in 3d dimension, it is so useful for medical students
Anki: is an app that a lot of medical students use to memorize information with a flashcard technic.

So there are many useful apps that a medical student will benefit from using an iPad.

6 – portable

The other thing that makes an iPad mini a great choice for medical students is its portability.

The iPad mini is lightweight is, weight only 300 grams, so you can carry it comfortably
the screen is 8.3 inches which means it can fit in your pan pocket, it is not suitable or feasible, but at least it can behold

These 2 points are the essential thing that differentiates the iPad mini from other versions w which a lot of medical students can benefit from.

7 – iPad mind can be used as a phone

The great thing about the iPad mini is that you can use it as a phone to make calls, which could be a good replacement for a smartphone.

But the most exciting and valuable thing is he supports a 5G technology when it is useful:

When you have slow wifi and need a high-speed connection
When you are away outdoor, where is no wifi around

5 cons that medical students should consider before buying an iPad mini

1 – storage

iPad mini comes in two versions:

one version has 64 GB
the second version has 256GB

The bad thing is there are no other versions in the middle like the 128GB version, so you don’t have any freedom as a student to choose other options.

In addition, all iPads aren’t memory extendable which means you can’t add an external SD card or something else. The only thing you have is to buy an external drive.

you could read this article: 10 facts about having external hard drives in college

2 – Price

All Apple products are expensive, including iPads so for instance iPad comes in two versions:

64 GB version which cost $459
256 GB version which cost $599

So it won’t be affordable to spend $600 for many students because most students won’t be using 64GB because it is useless. In addition, there are other options in the markets that have competitive prices.

3 – iPad has expensive accessories

the bad news that medical students should know about iPad mini or an iPad version is it doesn’t come with any accessories. So you should buy the all-important accessories like:

the pencil which cost $120
keyboard $70 if you want to use your mini as a computer
$50 for a case
$20 for a screen protector

So if you have an iPad mini is costly, so you can easily reach to $900 budget, which is the equivalent price of a MacBook Air laptop.

So for medical students who haven’t yet a laptop or have a bad one, this choice will not be more primal than having a good laptop before. We will talk about that in detail in the next paragraph.

4 – Can’t replace a laptop

iPad mini or an iPad will never be a tool to replace a computer or a laptop, so if you are a medical student and think that iPad will be your main comptuer, you’re wrong.

In addition, Ipad doesn’t support many windows applications like:

Word
excel(not full capabilities)
PowerPoint
one-note
outlook
onedrive

You can use these applications by cloud service, but It will demand you always to be connected. In addition, they don’t bring the same quality as the original apps installed on a device.

5- have some compatibility problems

Students face some compatibility problems, especially if they are medical students and you have to give an assignment to their professors who are using a windows computer.

In this case, it is not recommended to use an iPad because you might be surprised by some problems like:

the image or infographic can get loaded
the document can’t be readable on your professor’s computer
the classification of the paper or the stylist might be changing
iPad programs support some fonts.

So for students who have an essential and sensitive assignment is recommended to be careful and prevent using their iPads, before falling into some issues that can cost you time and effort.

Conclusion

The iPad mini is a great tool for nursing students, but you should consider the cons we talked about before making any wrong buying decision.