iPad mini Review
by Anand Lal Shimpi & Vivek Gowri on November 20, 2012 6:10 PM ESTBattery Life and Charging
The iPad mini features an integrated 16.3Wh battery, easily smaller than the 43Wh unit in the iPad 3/4 but even smaller than the 25Wh used in the iPad 2. Given that the mini has roughly the same internals as the iPad 2,4, but with a substantially smaller battery, you can expect a corresponding decrease in battery life. The display is also smaller, which should reduce some of the power requirements a bit.
We've started running our new smartphone web browsing battery life test on tablets as well. If you missed its introduction in our iPhone 5 review, here's a bit about the new test:
We regularly load web pages at a fixed interval until the battery dies (all displays are calibrated to 200 nits as always). The differences between this test and our previous one boil down to the amount of network activity and CPU load.
On the network side, we've done a lot more to prevent aggressive browser caching of our web pages. Some caching is important otherwise you end up with a baseband/WiFi test, but it's clear what we had previously wasn't working. Brian made sure that despite the increased network load, the baseband/WiFi still have the opportunity to enter their idle states during the course of the benchmark.
We also increased CPU workload along two vectors: we decreased pause time between web page loads and we shifted to full desktop web pages, some of which are very js heavy. The end result is a CPU usage profile that mimics constant, heavy usage beyond just web browsing. Everything you do on your device ends up causing CPU usage peaks - opening applications, navigating around the OS and of course using apps themselves. Our 5th generation web browsing battery life test should map well to more types of mobile usage, not just idle content consumption of data from web pages.
The mini actually outlasts the 3rd gen iPad in our heaviest WiFi web browsing battery life test, but the 4th gen iPad's move to a 32nm SoC solves that problem. Under load however both the new iPad and the mini are fairly close in terms of battery life.
We haven't yet rerun our new test on all of the tablets, so we turn to our older 4th gen test to provide some additional reference points:
If we look back at our older test we get good perspective on everything. The iPad 2,4 still remains the king of single battery tablets, and the mini just barely makes it over 9 hours of use on a single charge. The mini still lasts long enough for it to be more of an all-day device than a notebook.
Our video playback test remains unchanged from previous tablet reviews. Here I'm playing a 4Mbps H.264 High Profile 720p rip I made of the Harry Potter 8 Blu-ray. The full movie plays through and is looped until the battery dies. Once again, the displays are calibrated to 200 nits:
Apple's video decode hardware implementation has always been stellar, as a result the mini manages to do very well here. At over 11 hours of video playback on a single charge, the mini is only bested by some of its larger iPad brethren. The iPad 2,4 remains insanely awesome here.
Our final cross-platform battery life test is the new GLBenchmark 2.5.1 Egypt HD test. Here we have a loop of the Egypt HD benchmark, capped to 30 fps, running on all of the devices with their screens calibrated to 200 nits.
I no longer have a 45nm iPad 2 so I don't have results for it here, but the combination of the small 1024 x 768 display and 32nm A5r2 silicon gives the mini better battery life than the iPads equipped with a Retina display. The iPad 2,4 continues to offer amazing battery life here.
The GLBench battery life test gives us a reasonable minimum for the iPad mini's battery life, with the video playback test giving us a good maximum. You can expect to see 6.4 - 11.2 hours out of a single charge from the mini.
The mini comes bundled with a 1A charger identical to what you get with an iPhone 5 or a 5th gen iPod Touch. Using the new Lightning connector it'll take about 4 hours to complete a charge on the iPad mini.
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Magwitch - Wednesday, November 21, 2012 - link
Am I the only person who thinks Anand is just another Apple shill who just falls over himself supporting any and every Apple product out there? Please. What ever happened to the objectivity that once was the hallmark of Anandtech? I've watched the same thing happen to Tom's Hardware over the years. I guess it must be the koolaid they drink.uhuznaa - Wednesday, November 21, 2012 - link
Well, maybe this *is* objective and what you want to read is something subjective that starts and ends with "everything Apple is crap"?This review points out all the weak points of the device, comes with a lot of objective numbers and benchmarks -- what do you miss exactly?
andrewaggb - Wednesday, November 21, 2012 - link
I really don't think it's necessary to make personal insults against the staff. Yes anand clearly likes apple. But look around. So does half the continent.edsib1 - Wednesday, November 21, 2012 - link
You state that the mini display is great but, in your own tests...Pixel density - 5th of 7
brightness -13th of 17
contrast - 17th of 17
calibration - 6th of 7
grayscrale - 3rd of 7
saturation - 4th of 7
GMB - 6th of 7
I dont understand your conclusion. Doesnt add up to a great display to me.
admiralpumpkin - Wednesday, November 21, 2012 - link
The answer is two-fold.FIrst, the tests were against other rather good screens. So coming in "average" is actually quite good. Here's the key statement, near the end of the review, "It pains me to say it, but compared to most similarly priced notebooks, the iPad mini's display is amazing."
Second, often times the margin of difference must not have seemed significant to Anand. For example, if two screens are 1% apart on a particular metric (pulling a number from nowhere) then which came in 1st vs 2nd is a relatively meaningless.
jonjonjonj - Wednesday, November 21, 2012 - link
i personally dont get it. i have an ipod touch, iphone and ipad and pretty much never use the ipod or ipad. the ipad is only good for checking an email quickly or looking at a youtube video. anything beyond that and its frustrating to use. personally i would rather have a laptop/ultrabook. not sure i understand making the mini other than just to have a cheaper "i" product to complete with kindles and androids. i didnt think apple was about going cheap.Jumangi - Wednesday, November 21, 2012 - link
I can't see how any tech enthusiast site could look at the Mini and be impressed at the overall product. A 1 1/2 year old SoC. A screen resolution that goes back even farther and skimping out at 512MB or RAM. Any other manufacturer tried to pull that off would get slammed on all points but because the Mini has a nice case well all is good I guess...drx11 - Sunday, November 25, 2012 - link
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------How does this thing get positive reviews?....Oh wait its Apple. by Jumangi on Wednesday, November 21, 2012
I can't see how any tech enthusiast site could look at the Mini and be impressed at the overall product. A 1 1/2 year old SoC.
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You can not see it, because it is in the software... the SoC the apps, etc... you miss the forest for the trees. You miss the computer (system or tablet) for the specifications of the various parts...
jb14 - Wednesday, November 21, 2012 - link
Hi Anand thanks for the article.I was wondering if you had any plans to review the new B&N Nook HD 7" tablet? It would be interesting to read your findings on it's higher resolution screen. Also any plans for a tablet round up pre-xmas, as they are a nice size/price for potential presents? It seems the choice comes down to Nexus 7 vs N&B Nook/Kindle fire HD or the mini Ipad for iOS.
Shadowmaster625 - Wednesday, November 21, 2012 - link
"I don’t consider the iPad mini a competitor to the Nexus 7"What the heck? I jsut do not understand the continuous worshipping of this company's garbage products. It is almost like people dont even actually use these things. In reality, ther eis no difference between this and something like a nexus 7. They're both going to be extremely limited, extremely frustrating devices. iPoopa are anything but buttery smooth flawlessly running devices these biased reviewers make them out to be. I can make my iPoop crash just by opening webpages. Every time I'm scrolling thru the app store it lage like hell. The thing is really unbearably slow in jsut about everything. I only have about 100 apps installed. (58 of which want to update right now, but hell if I'm gonna bother.) I hate this thing. I only use it as a remote control nowadays. Even that crashes. It's really terrible. I refuse to believe that it is something unique to my device. What's more liekly to me is that the people who never have any problems with these things are the people who never actually use them.