My next upgrade if my 12 mini gives up will be an 13 mini. And from there I will probably just stick to refurbed 13 minis until a good alternative comes out.
Where are you finding refurb’ed 13 Minis? Apple only goes back to 14s now on store.apple.com in the U. S.
I highly recommend hunting down a 13 mini now (with a lot of battery left) so you can switch when you have to. I did last summer and was glad I didn´t have to organize one on short notice. And if you avoid ios26 - make sure the ios18 on the device is updated because now you no longer get updated within ios18