It totally depends on your needs. If you use it mostly at home, I suggest you choose iPad or iPad Air, their screens are bigger than mini, so work with them will be more comportable. If you would like to use it outside or on your road, then you'd better select mini. It is smaller and lighter than iPad, and it will be more convenient for you to take it out. Both of them will meet your requirements such as checking emails, searching online, doing some works, watch videos, you also can play dvd on iPad with the help of some software. So you can go ahead to chooseone of them.