iPad mini Review
by Anand Lal Shimpi & Vivek Gowri on November 20, 2012 6:10 PM ESTCPU Performance
As I mentioned before, the bulk of the innovation in the iPad mini is around form factor - the hardware platform itself is mostly a reuse of previous designs to keep costs low. The mini retains the 32nm A5r2 SoC as the iPad 2,4 and 5th gen iPod Touch. Despite the smaller size, it also uses the same 1GHz CPU clocks as its bigger brother. Performance is thus identical to the iPad 2,4, and a bit faster than the iPhone 4S. I found that the increase in clock speed does help to mask the fact that this isn't a Swift based platform, although going between the iPad mini and 4 does reveal an appreciable performance difference.
We're still very limited in good, cross-platform CPU benchmarks. We, once again, turn to JavaScript tests run in the browser. For all of the tablets tested here we're using Chrome for Android and Mobile Safari for iOS.
SunSpider has been a part of all of our mobile performance testing for quite a while now. It's not the perfect benchmark, but the test ends up being a good measure of browser performance as well as cache latency and CPU performance.
The iPad mini's two Cortex A9 cores running at 1GHz give it performance that is pretty much identical to the iPad 2 and 3, which also feature the same CPU. In the grand scheme of things however, the mini's performance is decidedly last generation. That's not to say that it's bad, it's just that the Swift based architecture in the A6/A6X is significantly better.
Google's Octane benchmark is a much larger test than SunSpider, but we're still looking at JavaScript performance. Octane includes all 8 of the tests from Google's older V8 benchmark but adds 5 new ones including a PDF reader, 3D bullet physics engine and portable 3D game console emulator all built in javascript.
Here the mini shows its age a bit, but mostly because of its conservative CPU clock speeds. Google's Nexus 10 is finally able to flex its muscle here and show just what the Cortex A15 is made of, even outperforming Intel's Atom in the RAZR i. Also note the performance increase compared to the iPhone 4S/iPod Touch, that's purely due to the clock speed advantage (1GHz vs 800MHz). I don't believe Apple picked the wrong clocks for the A5 in the mini as battery life remains a primary concern for this device.
Finally we have Kraken, a seriously heavy javascript benchmark built by Mozilla. Kraken focuses on forward looking applications that are potentially too slow to run in modern browsers today. The result is much longer run times than anything we've seen thus far, and a very CPU heavy benchmark:
Once again the mini equals the performance of the iPad 2 and 3, but remains appreciably slower than the iPad 4/iPhone 5. Google's Nexus 10 absolutely dominates in this test, continuing to outperform Intel's Atom based RAZR i.
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Anand Lal Shimpi - Tuesday, November 20, 2012 - link
That's not exactly true, the iPad mini was launched nearly a month ago, our review of it is very late. In the interim I have published articles on Intel's SSD DC S3700, Microsoft's Surface, the Titan Supercomputer at ORNL and Samsung's Cortex A15 based Chromebook.Take care,
Anand
Alucard291 - Wednesday, November 21, 2012 - link
No offence but you could have just said - "same soc as ipad 2. Same display as ipad 2 except smaller so pixels are slightly denser Its lighter than ipad 2 and has the same form factor but smaller."There I wrote the review for you.
Instead you guys put out this monster - showing tests? Of the same soc? Again?
Well one more review site feels the need to get some apple advertisement revenue.
And I approve how you compared it to mini cooper. Yeah great comparison especially since mini cooper is a car for people who can't afford a decent one but really want to seem cool...
So yeah. What makes this product great is the apple logo on the back. As usual.
Jakers Ugly Brother - Thursday, November 22, 2012 - link
It would be so nice to read one single tech thread without running into a paranoid "Oh noes another site has sold out to Apple" screed like yours.But no, you haters have to spread your sick, sad bile across everything you see.
Thanks for lowering the signal to noise ratio of yet another comment section.
ltcommanderdata - Tuesday, November 20, 2012 - link
Anandtech's Microsoft Surface review was up 3 days before the device was on sale and their Windows RT review was up the day before it shipped. The iPad Mini review comes 18 days after the tablet went on sale and they aren't or haven't yet done an iPad 4 (18+ days) or 5th gen iPod Touch (36+ days) review. From this you conclude that Apple reviews get done right away and Microsoft reviews take forever?Ryan already explained why they aren't doing a massive review for Windows 8 and are doing more focused articles instead, which doesn't seem unreasonable.
blacksamurai30 - Wednesday, November 21, 2012 - link
I don't see the reasoning behind your dissapointment. I've been reading for years (despite my only just making an account haha); they are easily the most informative on the internet. The crew here does stellar indepth reviews for pretty much everything. Don't use your own personal misgivings against Apple in an attempt to discredit the hard work that goes into reviewing these products, or the invaluable service it does for the internet and consumer knowledge.Keep up the good work Anandtech!
Anand Lal Shimpi - Tuesday, November 20, 2012 - link
Wow, honest mistake, let me reshoot that real quick. I shot that before I left for SC12 and didn't catch it in my final assembly of the article today.If anything, the photo I posted is contrary to the point I make in the text above. Things are bigger on the iPad compared to the Nexus 7.
Give me a few and I'll get a better photo up.
Take care,
Anand
Kepe - Tuesday, November 20, 2012 - link
The same thing happened in two pictures. On pages 4 and 11, although that's the same image file.http://images.anandtech.com/reviews/tablets/apple/...
Anand Lal Shimpi - Tuesday, November 20, 2012 - link
Fixed in both places. Thank you!seanleeforever - Tuesday, November 20, 2012 - link
and now you have to update the tags..for example. the last page, ipad mini is actually on the right. i am sure no one would mistaken those two, but still.
Anand Lal Shimpi - Tuesday, November 20, 2012 - link
Fixed. The black mini wasn't mine so I no longer had that for comparison, had to use the white model for this shot - but I hope this better shows the difference. I also exported the full size shots at 2800px wide if you want to get a better, up-close look between the N7 and iPad mini.I included two shots on the display page, but here's a link to all 4 I just took:
http://images.anandtech.com/reviews/tablets/apple/...
http://images.anandtech.com/reviews/tablets/apple/...
http://images.anandtech.com/reviews/tablets/apple/...
http://images.anandtech.com/reviews/tablets/apple/...
Take care,
Anand