With the impending release of the iPad Air 2 and the iPad Mini 3, the original iPad Mini has dropped down to just $249. This is the cheapest an iPad has ever been offered by Apple. But just because it is the cheapest iPad doesn't make it a good deal. In fact, the iPad Mini may actually be a very bad deal in the long run.

Let's take a look at the top reasons why you should skip that $249 Mini and splurge on a more expensive tablet:

7. The iPad Mini is a prettier iPad 2.

The iPad 2 was released on March 11, 2011. It doesn't seem like too long ago, but three-and-a-half years is a long time for a computer, and even longer for a mobile device. The iPad Mini may have a sleek design and decent dual-facing cameras, but on the inside, it's an iPad 2.

That means it is powered by the same A5 chip as the iPad 2. By way of comparison, the iPad Mini 2 is four times faster than the iPad Mini and the newly announced iPad Air 2 is six times faster.

6. The iPad Mini doesn't have a Retina Display.

The iPad Mini was the last iPad with a 1024x768 resolution. Now, that isn't too bad in a tablet, but it isn't nearly as good as the 2048x1536 "Retina Display" graphic that exists on later models.

One of the great things about the iPad ecosystem is just how fast developers are to support new features. Retina Display has been around on the iPad for two-and-a-half years, debuting on the iPad 3 in early 2012. Since then, thousands of apps now support the higher resolution.

5. The iPad Mini is only 32-bit.

The iPad Air and the iPad Mini 2 are powered by the A7 chip, which was the world's first 64-bit chip designed for mobile devices. At the time of the release, many weren't sure just what good a 64-bit chip would do for a mobile device, but it didn't take long for benchmarks to show the remarkable speed boost the 64-bit chip provided.

New apps are being designed with this in mind, and while they still work on the older iPads, they get a significant boost in performance from the newer processors.

4. The iPad Mini only has 512 MB of RAM.

Random Access Memory, or RAM, is the memory used to store applications while the device is running the app. Newer iPads have increased this to 1 GB, which is twice the amount of RAM as the iPad Mini. This means a newer iPad will do a better job at multitasking.

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3. The iPad Mini is slowing down.

The iPad Mini may process information as fast now as when it was first released, but these days, there is a lot more to process. Each new generation of the iOS adds new features to the operating system, and these new features take more processing power. The processor inside the iPad Mini is already starting to show its age with iOS 8, and this trend will only continue when new versions of the operating system are released.

2. The iPad Mini may not be supported for long.

There is one thing that will stop the slowdown of the iPad Mini, and that's the dreaded "unsupported" category. The iPad Mini's processor is 32-bit compared to 64-bit, it is much slower than newer models, and the Mini only has half the available RAM. At some point, Apple is going to drop support for the older technology, and that day will probably come within the next two years.

1. The iPad Mini 2 is only $50 more.

The iPad Mini has a lot of problems. And almost all of them are cleared up by spending $50 more for an iPad Mini 2. The second-generation mini is powered by the same 64-bit processor as the iPad Air, it sports a beautiful Retina Display screen, it has 1 GB of RAM available for apps and, most importantly, the iPad Mini 2 is not going to become virtually obsolete within the next couple of years.

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