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14-day lock
Offer holds when description matches.
48-hr processing
Two business days from arrival to confirmed offer.
Free shipping
Prepaid USPS label in your inbox.
BBB 4.69
Ten years. Same Phoenix team.
SELL YOUR IPAD MINI 4
A used iPad mini 4 is worth between $3 and $36. The iPad mini 4 came out in 2015, it is one of the cheapest things we buy, and we are not going to dress those numbers up. Storage and wear are the two things that separate one from another.
A Buyback on a tablet this old depends on the glass far more than on the storage. Going from the smallest iPad mini 4 to the largest is worth about twelve dollars at the top of the table below. Going from the top of any one column to the bottom of the same column is worth twenty to thirty. So the two minutes that pay for themselves are the ones you spend looking at the screen, and on this model that means more than hunting for cracks.
A replaced screen grades an iPad mini 4 Faulty. On this model a swapped screen costs more sellers a grade than scratches do.
The iPad mini 4 was the first iPad mini with the glass bonded straight onto the picture. There is no air gap and no separate pane floating above the image. Apple did that to make a thin tablet feel thinner. It is why the display looks like the picture is printed on the surface of the glass.
Replacement panels do not work that way. So here is a 10 second test. Tilt the iPad mini 4 under a lamp or a window until the light catches the screen at an angle. Look along the edge of the picture. If the image seems to float a millimeter below the glass, the screen has been swapped. A faint shadowed gap around the border means the same thing. A replaced or aftermarket display grades Faulty, however tidy it looks and however well it works.
Check the screen before you quote rather than after. Plenty of iPad mini 4s were repaired at some point, often by an owner two owners ago, and nobody mentions it when the tablet gets handed on.
The iPad mini 4 is also easy to mix up with the iPad mini 5, which is identical in every way that shows. Capacity separates them, and Settings, General, About shows you the capacity:
The table below shows WiFi prices. A WiFi + Cellular iPad mini 4 is never worth less than the WiFi one, and the gap is small: six dollars at the very most, and nothing at all in places. The pattern is exact rather than approximate. A Cellular iPad mini 4 pays what the WiFi model one size up pays, at every grade and every size where there is a size above. At the Faulty end the two are level or a dollar apart. The highest figure on the whole page is a sealed 128GB Cellular, which is not a cell in the table, so read that one off the quote box.
Most places stopped buying the iPad mini 4 years ago, so where to sell an iPad mini 4 mostly comes down to who still buys one at all. We still quote all six grades, cracked ones included. If yours is past the point of carrying a price, we recycle it free and wipe it to DoD standards on the way through.
LIVE PRICES
The used resale value of an iPad mini 4 runs from $3 for a cracked 16GB up to $36 for a sealed 128GB. A sealed 128GB with cellular pays $38.
Small money, stated honestly. Four storage sizes, six grades, pulled live from our own price feed as this page loads.
| Comparison row | 16GB | 32GB | 64GB | 128GB |
|---|---|---|---|---|
Brand New | $24 | $29 | $30 | $36 |
Flawless | $18 | $22 | $23 | $27 |
Good | $16 | $18 | $22 | $23 |
Average | $13 | $14 | $18 | $18 |
Fair | $10 | $11 | $13 | $14 |
Faulty | $3 | $4 | $4 | $5 |
HOW IT WORKS
Pick 16GB, 32GB, 64GB or 128GB, WiFi or WiFi + Cellular, and your grade. Do the tilt test on the screen first. A replaced display sets the grade to Faulty by itself. We hold the iPad mini 4 Buyback price you accept for 14 days.
We email you a prepaid USPS label, so shipping costs you nothing. Erase the iPad mini 4 and sign out of iCloud before it goes, which switches Activation Lock off. Send the tablet on its own: no charger, no case, no old box. Pull the SIM card out of a Cellular model.
We inspect your iPad mini 4 within 48 hours of arrival. If it matches your description, we pay you the same day by gift card, PayPal, bank transfer or check. Every iPad mini 4 gets a DoD-grade wipe, whether we buy it or recycle it.
SPEC SHEET
These A-numbers come from Apple's own identify page. On an iPad mini 4 the number is etched into the aluminum back near the bottom. That etching is often rubbed thin by now, so try Settings, General, About, Model Number if you cannot make it out.
| Apple's name for it | iPad mini 4 |
|---|---|
| Year | Late 2015 |
| Model number, WiFi | A1538 |
| Model number, WiFi + Cellular | A1550 |
| Display | 7.9-inch Retina, 2048 by 1536 at 326 ppi, fully laminated with an antireflective coating |
| Chip | A8 |
| Storage we buy | 16GB, 32GB, 64GB and 128GB |
| Biometrics | Touch ID in the round Home button below the screen |
| Charging port | Lightning |
| Headphone jack | 3.5 mm on the top edge |
| SIM | Nano-SIM tray on WiFi + Cellular models. WiFi models have no tray. |
| IMEI | WiFi + Cellular models have one and it has to be clean. WiFi models do not have an IMEI at all. |
| Apple Pencil | Not supported. No Apple Pencil of any generation pairs with this model. |
| Front camera | 1.2MP FaceTime HD |
| Rear camera | 8MP iSight |
| Colors | Silver, Space Gray and Gold all pay the same |
| Easily confused with | iPad mini 5, model numbers A2133, A2124, A2125 and A2126, which looks the same and pays far more |
| Conditions we buy | Brand New, Flawless, Good, Average, Fair, Faulty |
IPAD MINI 4 BUYBACK QUESTIONS
An iPad mini 4 is worth between $3 and $38. Size, wear and cellular set the number, and color does not come into it: Silver, Space Gray and Gold pay the same. A 128GB iPad mini 4 graded Good is $23. The same tablet at Fair is $14. Nobody is retiring on this. The iPad mini 4 came out in 2015 and the price reflects that. The postage is free and the quote takes a minute, so it costs you nothing to find out.
An iPad mini 4 and an iPad mini 5 look the same, which is the whole problem. Same 7.9-inch screen, same Home button, same Lightning port, same headphone jack, same three colors. Check Capacity in Settings, General, About:
There is one other shortcut. An iPad mini 5 works with an Apple Pencil (1st generation) and an iPad mini 4 works with no Apple Pencil at all. If a Pencil has ever paired with this tablet, it is not an iPad mini 4.
A1538 is the WiFi only iPad mini 4. A1550 is the WiFi + Cellular one. There are no regional variants to worry about, which makes this the easiest iPad in the range to identify once you can read the back. Both quote on this page, and the Cellular one is worth slightly more.
Tilt the iPad mini 4 under a light and look along the edge of the picture. An original iPad mini 4 screen has the glass bonded onto the image, so the picture reads as if it is printed on the surface. A replacement panel usually shows a visible gap, and the image looks like it is sitting a millimeter down inside the tablet.
Two more giveaways:
A replaced or aftermarket display grades Faulty. It is not a judgment call, and it has nothing to do with how well the screen works.
Yes. Any crack or chip moves an iPad mini 4 into Faulty, on the glass, the aluminum back or the camera lens cover. Faulty is a price, not a rejection. On this model it is a very small price: $5 at 128GB and $3 at 16GB. Select Faulty when you quote and the number does not change when we open the parcel. If the iPad mini 4 is broken past the point of switching on, see the power question below.
Fair means heavy wear you can feel with a fingernail, with no cracks or chips anywhere. Average means lighter marking you can see but not feel. Good means wear you cannot spot at arm's length. Most iPad mini 4s that reach us land in Fair or Faulty.
Faulty is a list, not an opinion. Any one of these is enough on its own:
A Home button or Touch ID that has stopped working grades an iPad mini 4 Faulty. The button has to click and register, and Touch ID has to read your finger. On an iPad mini 4 the Home button is the part with the most miles on it. Press it a few times, then check Touch ID opens the tablet with your fingerprint rather than your passcode, before you choose a grade.
Battery capacity under 80% grades an iPad mini 4 Faulty. A service battery warning does the same. An iPad mini 4 has no battery health screen at all, because it cannot run the software that added one. So judge the battery by what it does:
Being honest about it, plenty of iPad mini 4s are Faulty on the battery alone by now. Choosing Faulty upfront means the quote you see is the quote you get.
A WiFi + Cellular iPad mini 4 is never worth less than a WiFi one, and the rule is tidier than it looks: it pays exactly what the WiFi model one size up pays, at every grade. So a Cellular 32GB matches a WiFi 64GB, and a Cellular 64GB matches a WiFi 128GB. In dollars that is anything from nothing to six. At Faulty the two are level or a dollar apart. The top figure on this page is a Cellular tablet at $38. An iPad is not carrier locked, so the network it ran on makes no difference.
The IMEI does have to be clean, and that check only applies to the A1550 Cellular model, because the WiFi A1538 has no IMEI at all. Reported lost, reported stolen or carrier blocked all fail that check, and we cannot take those. Settings, General, About has the number.
No. We cannot buy an iPad mini 4 that will not power on. Without power there is no way to test the tablet and no way to erase what is on it. We recycle it for you free instead, or we post it back to you at no charge. A recycled iPad mini 4 is still wiped to DoD standards once we can get at the storage.
No, not until it is paid for outright. A tablet with a lease or an installment plan still running against it is under a financial obligation, and we do not purchase devices under financial obligations. It is rare on an iPad mini 4 by now. Carrier plans on the Cellular model do still turn up occasionally.
No on both counts, and they are two different checks.
The first check is Activation Lock, which applies to every iPad mini 4, WiFi or Cellular. Activation Lock comes off when you sign out of iCloud and erase the tablet. This is the one that trips people up on an old iPad mini 4, because the Apple Account it is signed into may be one you set up in 2015 and have not thought about since. Sort the password out before you post it, not after.
The second check is the IMEI, and it only applies to the Cellular A1550, since the WiFi A1538 has no IMEI. Reported lost, reported stolen or blocked by a network all fail there.
No, keep them. We pay for the tablet and nothing else. A case, a Lightning cable, a Bluetooth keyboard or the original box adds nothing to your payout, and it only risks getting lost. No Apple Pencil works with an iPad mini 4 anyway, so a Pencil you own belongs with a different iPad.
They will take it, but on a 2015 tablet a trade-in usually comes back as recycling with no money attached. Where a trade-in does pay, it pays in store credit against something new, so the money only spends in one shop.
A Buyback is the other option. The number is small, and the table above shows you exactly how small before you commit to anything, but it is money you can spend anywhere, and we still price a cracked one. Read both offers and take the better one.
Open Settings, tap General, then Transfer or Reset iPad, then Erase All Content and Settings. On older software that menu reads Reset, then Erase All Content and Settings. Either menu asks for your Apple Account password, and entering it is what switches Activation Lock off. Our erase your device page has the full walkthrough.
For payment you pick one of four options at checkout:
We send your payment the same day your iPad mini 4 clears inspection. A Brand New sealed iPad mini 4 is paid by PayPal only.
Choose your storage, WiFi or Cellular, and your grade. It takes about a minute. The number is small but real, and we hold it for 14 days.
FREE SHIPPING / 14-DAY PRICE LOCK / PAID SAME DAY