Apple iPad mini with Retina Display: Reviewed
by Anand Lal Shimpi on November 16, 2013 8:00 AM ESTFinal Words
When I concluded our iPad Air review I assumed the iPad mini with Retina Display was a true no-compromise, smaller alternative to the iPad Air. In many senses that’s true. Wireless connectivity is identical between the models, battery life is pretty much the same as well. Peak performance is close and you no longer have to accept a lower resolution display. Last year’s iPad mini was easy to recommend, and this year’s is even easier. To my surprise however, the iPad Air continues to hold some advantages that may resonate well with some users.
The biggest in my eyes is the iPad Air’s wider gamut display with full sRGB coverage. The mini’s Retina Display is good, the Air’s is just better. There’s also more thermal headroom on the iPad Air, which can come in handy if you’re doing compute intensive work on it. If neither of those things matters to you, then the decision becomes one of usage model and portability. I believe the iPad Air does a better job of approximating a primary computing device, particularly in its ability to give you a reasonable sized virtual keyboard to work on. The iPad mini on the other hand is substantially more portable. Although the iPad Air is light enough to come along with me more than any prior iPad, the mini’s form factor makes it even more likely that’ll I’ll bring it with me (the best tablet is the one you have with you?).
As much as I prefer the iPad Air’s display and as much as I love having more performance, I’d probably lean towards the mini personally. The lower weight and smaller form factor are just tough to give up. Apple could’ve made the decision a lot easier by giving the mini true display parity with the Air though.
The mini with Retina Display sits at an interesting point in Apple's iPad lineup. Priced at $399, the higher-end mini is priced identically to the iPad 2 - which Apple continues to sell. I honestly can't see a situation outside of having poor vision where I'd recommend the iPad 2 over the iPad mini with Retina Display.
If you're on the fence about upgrading from an older iPad (or even the first gen mini), the iPad mini with Retina Display is a tempting target. Compared to virtually all previous iPads you're going to notice a substantial increase in performance thanks to Apple's A7 SoC. In fact, I'd go as far as to say that the performance improvement over the previous generation mini (featuring Apple's A5) can be just as noticeable of an uprade as the display. The new mini is a leap forward in performance compared to its predecessor.
While Apple has the 10-inch tablet market more or less locked up with the iPad Air, the mini faces stiff competition. The biggest comes from Google with the $229 2013 Nexus 7. You get an incredibly affordable device and a display with full sRGB gamut. What the mini offers is a faster SoC, a wider display (a Nexus 8 would be nice) and of course, iOS. I’ve heard varying opinions on iOS vs. Android when talking about tablet or smartphone use. Some users prefer Android on one and iOS on the other, vice versa or find themselves exclusively in one camp. This one is best left up to personal preference. At $229 the Nexus 7 is a great option. If you prefer iOS however, the iPad mini with Retina Display is quite nice. The price hike vs. the standard mini can be a tough pill to swallow, but the A7 and display are definitely worth it.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
345 Comments
View All Comments
kyuu - Saturday, November 16, 2013 - link
Bay Trail tabs seem to be charging $50 to go from 32GB to 64GB (32GB upgrade). While still more of a premium than it really should be for cheap eMMC NAND, it's a helluva lot better than the $100 for 16GB to 32GB (16GB upgrade) Apple is sticking with.Daniel Egger - Saturday, November 16, 2013 - link
And which *premium* devices are you talking about? The 2 different vendors offering different memory configurations with BayTrail are Asus and Toshiba. Both are not premium and yet Toshiba is asking 50€ to go from 32GB to 64GB and ASUS even 80€ for the same. Dell, HP and Lenovo only offer one configuration at the moment.Anywhoo, while Apple is not cheap they're by far not the most expensive (see HTC, but there're other examples as well) and they're very consistent in their pricing and go all the way up to 128GB.
kyuu - Saturday, November 16, 2013 - link
Huh? I didn't use the word "premium" in the context of a device being nice or not, so I don't know why you're bringing it up that way. The build quality of many of the Windows tabs are equal to, if not better than, the iPad anyway.I'm actually not aware of any Win8.1 tabs that don't have different memory configurations, and none of them charge $100 for 16GB of NAND, or even for 32GB of NAND. I don't understand what you're trying to get at. I couldn't care less if Apple goes up to 128GB of NAND when they're charging $300 for ~$20 worth of NAND.
Also, it's certainly not "consistent" to charge $100 for 16GB of NAND, then $100 for 32GB of NAND, then $100 for 64GB of NAND.
akdj - Sunday, November 17, 2013 - link
These aren't SanDisk Best Buy SD cards they're shipping. Look at the pricing on decent flash memory, IE, CompactFlash. All manufacturers using real NAND are paying many more dollars than 5 per doubling of capacity. Probably with Windows, the OS and it's bloat take UP all the NAND....and I'm not sure the world you're living in, but there's not a single Win8.1 tablet that comes close to the build quality....of even the earliest of iPads. The new Air and rMini....works of engineering art. Top shelf. Doesn't get ANY better. Certainly not Win 8.1 tablets. Sorry.Morawka - Sunday, November 17, 2013 - link
Nand at these capacities is dirt cheap. Think of how many 16GB chips are in a 128GB Consumer SSD? 8 of them. And the ssd's MSRP is $119 and included in that cost is a storage controller, casing, PCB, and of course, NAND.When you pay for a apple nand upgrade, your just paying for more nand, period.
kwrzesien - Monday, November 18, 2013 - link
Your right, they pay WAY more. BOM increase for 32GB over 16GB is $13! That's over double $5!/s
RadarTheKat - Monday, November 18, 2013 - link
And how much is the Surface keyboard, without which the device is not very usable? Talk about gouging your customers!Puberticus - Saturday, November 16, 2013 - link
Ever bothered to see what the speed of those chips are? I think you'll be shocked. Apple isn't shipping crap.kyuu - Monday, November 18, 2013 - link
I've looked before and haven't been able to find any reports about the speed of the NAND Apple uses, since, y'know, there's no way to benchmark it on Apple's locked-down and functionally gimped OS.Regardless of whether it's good NAND or not, it's still $5-$10 worth of NAND.
Morawka - Sunday, November 17, 2013 - link
Here in America going from a HTC One 32GB to a HTC One 64GB is only $70 more. The 64GB version was supposed to be a AT&T Exclusive from my understanding. Just view their website if you dont believe me.Whoever your buying from is gouging prices. lol