In order to balance the power requirements of a MIMO receiver with the gains that may be achieved through its use, an apparatus determines whether a current configuration of the UE supports iterative MIMO reception. When it is determined that the current configuration of the UE supports iterative MIMO reception, the apparatus determines whether at least one parameter of the received signal is within a corresponding target condition, respectively, for each of the at least one parameters, e.g., including determining whether a scheduling percentage meets a scheduling threshold and whether an error rate is within an error rate range. When both the configuration supports iterative MIMO reception and the signal parameter(s) meet the corresponding target condition(s), the apparatus uses the iterative MIMO receiver. If not, the apparatus uses a serial receiver.