Apple iPad mini with Retina Display: Reviewed
by Anand Lal Shimpi on November 16, 2013 8:00 AM ESTCamera
The iPad mini with Retina Display features the same 5MP iSight rear facing camera and 1.2MP FaceTime HD camera as the iPad Air. Both are quite good for a tablet, aided by iOS’ excellent camera UI and the A7’s high performance ISP. The cameras also benefit from the same dual-mic setup of the iPad Air. I won’t talk too much about quality here as it’s no different than the Air, which I've already gone over in greater depth.
| Rear Facing Camera Comparison | |||||||
| Sensor | Resolution | Aperture | Focal Length | ||||
| Apple iPad Air | 5MP | 2592 x 1936 | f/2.4 | 3.3mm | |||
| Apple iPad 4 | 5MP | 2592 x 1936 | f/2.4 | 4.3mm | |||
| Apple iPad 3 | 5MP | 2592 x 1936 | f/2.4 | 4.3mm | |||
| Apple iPad 2,4 | 0.7MP | 960 x 720 | f/2.4 | 2.0mm | |||
| Apple iPad mini | 5MP | 2592 x 1936 | f/2.4 | 3.3mm | |||
| Apple iPad mini (Retina) | 5MP | 2592 x 1936 | f/2.4 | 3.3mm | |||
| Front Facing Camera Comparison | |||||||
| Sensor | Resolution | Aperture | Focal Length | ||||
| Apple iPad Air | 1.2MP | 1280 x 960 | f/2.4 | 2.15mm | |||
| Apple iPad 4 | 1.2MP | 1280 x 960 | f/2.4 | 2.18mm | |||
| Apple iPad 3 | 0.3MP | 640 x 480 | f/2.4 | 1.8mm | |||
| Apple iPad 2,4 | 0.3MP | 640 x 480 | f/2.4 | 1.8mm | |||
| Apple iPad mini | 1.2MP | 1280 x 960 | f/2.4 | 2.2mm | |||
| Apple iPad mini (Retina) | 1.2MP | 1280 x 960 | f/2.4 | 2.15mm | |||
WiFi & Cellular
The iPad mini with Retina Display inherits the same Qualcomm MDM9615 modem and 2-stream dual-band 802.11n from the iPad Air. The move to 2-stream 802.11n more or less doubles peak WiFi performance compared to last year’s mini. The mini's peak WiFi performance is pretty close to that of the iPad Air as well.
Lately I’ve really begun to appreciate the flexibility offered by tablets equipped with cellular modems. Especially now that it’s not terribly expensive to add a tablet to a shared data plan (or even free), the $130 LTE adder for the iPads is something worth seriously considering. The convenience of being able to pull out your tablet, wake it up, and immediately hop on the web/check email/tweet/etc… is awesome. Qualcomm's MDM9615 is a well known quantity at this point. I didn't run into any issues with its performance on the iPad mini.
| iPad Cellular Speeds | ||||||
| Property | iPhone 3G/3GS/iPad 1 3G | iPhone 4 / iPad 2 (GSM/UMTS) | iPhone 4 / iPad 2 (CDMA) | iPad 3 | iPad 4/iPad Mini | iPad Air/iPad Mini w/Retina |
| Baseband | Infineon X-Gold 608 | Infineon X-Gold 618 | Qualcomm MDM6600 | Qualcomm MDM9600 | Qualcomm MDM9615 w/RTR8600 |
Qualcomm MDM9615 w/WTR1605L |
| Max 3GPP Release Feature | Release 5 | Release 6 | Release 7 | Release 9 | Release 9 | Release 9 |
| HSDPA Category | Cat.8 - 7.2 Mbps | Cat.8 - 7.2 Mbps | N/A | Cat. 24 - 42 Mbps | Cat. 24 - 42 Mbps | Cat. 24 - 42 Mbps |
| HSUPA Category | None - 384 Kbps WCDMA only | Cat.6 - 5.76 Mbps | N/A | Cat.6 - 5.76 Mbps | Cat.6 - 5.76 Mbps | Cat.6 - 5.76 Mbps |
| EVDO | N/A | N/A | 1x/EVDO Rev.A | 1x/EVDO Rev.A | 1x/EVDO Rev.A | 1x/EVDO Rev.A |
| LTE | N/A | N/A | N/A | 100/50 UE Cat. 3 | 100/50 UE Cat. 3 | 100/50 UE Cat. 3 |
The new iPad mini, like the iPad Air, is extremely flexible from a mobile operator standpoint. Regardless of what operator you choose at the time of purchase, you can switch to others as long as you have an activated nano SIM (there’s apparently an exception for Sprint, but AT&T/T-Mobile/Verizon should all be easily switchable). The unlocked nature of the device makes it ripe for global use, especially with support for a total of 14 LTE bands (1,2,3,4,5,7,8,13,17,18,19,20,25 and 26).
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Jamezrp - Sunday, November 17, 2013 - link
I jumped to the iPad Air from the iPad 4, and have the iPad mini. After reading this, I'm pretty sure that I'll return the Air and not upgrade the mini either. Both have completely different use cases, and frankly, if I have the iPhone 5s (which I do), there's no reason to have all 3.That said, iPhone 5 owners are probably going to love the mini w/Retina. It's a perfect fit: no need to upgrade to the 5s, a significant power upgrade, and no loss of performance. I'd opt for the fullsize Air/4 because I use my iPad as a laptop replacement, though the mini is superior for holding one-handed. As Anand pointed out in this and the Air review, the larger tablet is still a tad too heavy to read on comfortably. The mini is not.
But if you've got the last-gen mini and use it mostly for reading and light web-browsing, no reason to upgrade. But the choice between the two is a no-brainer.
postitnowfool - Monday, November 18, 2013 - link
For the love of god post the nexus 5 review. Its been weeks and your posting this instead? Its the same dang thing as ipad air with smaller batter and screen. Doesnt take days and page and pages of stuff to figure that out. Who's working on it? Anand? Brian? Did you decide to skip it totally?psyside1 - Monday, November 18, 2013 - link
Yep, i said the same, this is the reason why N5 review is so late.Samuel Lord - Monday, November 18, 2013 - link
You said: "Small text is always easier to read when it’s on a larger display, but if you’re looking at content that’s properly formatted for a tablet you’ll be in good shape on the mini. I was asked to look into the comic reading experience on the mini and also came away pretty pleased. Text bubbles were definitely not as easy to read as on the iPad Air..."What a ridiculous standard! Are you such a slave to Apple products that you can't criticise their pitiable UI? Good Phones, tablets, notebooks, and PCs have this thing called WORD WRAP, where you adjust font size for your eyes, not for some twentysomething's idea of style. Need proof? FACT: Todays Macbook Air and all iPADs have a MAXIMUM text size (and only available on some Apple software!) that is smaller than the STANDARD text size on a 30-year-old, 9-inch screen macintosh computer. This is the result of Apple putting nitwits in charge of user interfaces. UIs used to be the crown jewels of Apple products, but now the commonsense approach taken by competitors has cost Apple billions in sales. Elegance will never trump functionality in the long run.
deasys - Monday, November 18, 2013 - link
FACT: Today's MacBook Air and all iPads have no limit on text size. WTH are you talking about?Samuel Lord - Tuesday, November 19, 2013 - link
Do a search for "Zoom Text Only." In a Win 7 machine (hey they suck, but for this feature) you just have ""zoom text only" in the Zoom button of the View menu. Then whenever you push Ctrl+ the text gets bigger, Ctrl- for smaller, as much as you want *without* changing the column widths. No unneeded scrolling! This is how computers should allow you to work: customize for *your* needs, not somebody's idea of *their* needs. Neither iOS Macs nor iPads nor iPad Minis have this feature. Zoom alone, without text re-wrap, is useless for browsing and countless other tasks. Some Apple software allows increasing default text size to 56 pixels...which sounds like a lot but is still much smaller than normal text.deasys - Tuesday, November 19, 2013 - link
Why comment on something you clearly have no knowledge of?Safari has long supported the exact functionality you note. Pull down its View menu and have a ball! And iOS devices have always supported double-tap zooming.
emoemeka - Wednesday, November 20, 2013 - link
You have obviously never used an iOS device because your comment is just ignorant.Samuel Lord - Thursday, November 21, 2013 - link
deasys, thank you. I have been trying for weeks in the Accessibility section of Sys Prefs trying different zoom settings, including maximum and using the Command+- tools, but never got intra-column zoom until now. Total zoom of a window happened, but the columns weren't static. Very strange. I was about to install win 7 with Bootcamp on my MBA just to allow my eyes to rest and to retire my Lenovo. This stuff happens a lot to me, I'll follow every step getting the unexplainable result, then it starts working. But yes, I know all of the text size settings not only in iOS but in 3rd party software. So yes, it works on 10.9, but iOS 7 still does not support text-only zoom.emoemeka, I expect I have put more time on various computers than you've ever seen. Apple did not make their zoom functions clear or simple to use. You might recall that default max and min zooms on the MBA (early 2013, now OS 10.9) are zero and zero. Really helpful, that. And as stated above, text-only zoom does not exist on the iPad for any app I've used with it. Presumably the iPhone and books on iPads are presented better, even Kindle got that right.
kwrzesien - Monday, November 18, 2013 - link
(+$100 for each increase in storage level, ugh)...there, fixed that for you.