An outstanding compact tablet that's
beautifully designed and offers great battery life. It's more expensive than
its closest rivals, though
For the past few years, Apple has set the
pace in the tablet market. With Amazon's Kindle Fire and Google's Nexus 7
gaining a firm foothold in compact tablets, however, Apple has found itself
falling behind. Now it's hitting back with its own compact slate: the 7.9in
iPad mini.
It might have taken its time, but Apple has
tackled the problem with gusto. The iPad mini is unequivocally the most
physically accomplished tablet on the market. At a mere 7.2mm thin, it's
considerably slimmer than the Fire HD and Nexus 7, and at 308g it's lighter
too.
Apple
has found itself falling behind. Now it's hitting back with its own compact
slate: the 7.9in iPad mini.
The iPad mini is lovely to hold, with a
flat, matte aluminum panel at the rear that's gently rounded at the corners and
along the edges. As with other iPads, ports, switches and buttons are kept to a
minimum. The single home key sits below the screen, and there's a volume rocker
and mute switch on the top right-hand edge. The power button is just around the
corner from that, and the Lighting connector is located on the bottom between a
pair of speaker grilles.
It isn't only the physical design of the
iPad mini that's appealing, though. At 7.9in, the screen is almost an inch
larger than its rivals and, critically, this doesn't have too much of an impact
on the overall size of the tablet. Unusually narrow bezels to the left and
right of the screen ensure it isn't too wide; at 135mm, it's only 15mm broader
than the Nexus 7 and, in fact, it's narrower than the Kindle Fire HD.
The quality of the mini's IPS panel is up
to Apple's usual standards. A maximum brightness of 389cd/m2 sets it ahead of
the Nexus 7, and a contrast ratio of 720:1 means images and video look punchy
and solid.
If you were expecting a Retina display
similar to the one on the full-sized Paid, however, you'll be disappointed. The
mini's resolution is 1024 x 768; when stretched over its 4:3 ratio display, it
gives a pixel density of only 163ppi - almost half that of the latest Pad with
its Retina screen. It's also behind both the Nexus 7 and Kindle Fire HD in this
respect, which offer 1280 x 800 across 7in and a pixel density of 216ppi.
In use, the lower resolution is clearly
noticeable, and icons, text and graphics have a visibly grainy quality that isn't
apparent on its cheaper rivals. It looks precisely as you'd expect a shrunken
iPad 2 to look, in fact. We're surprised Apple didn't see fit to endow the iPad
mini with a Retina display, especially given its premium price. However, the
quality of the display is such that in everyday use we soon forgot about the
lack of pixels.
What also isn't that big a deal is the
smaller screen size. It's true that the buttons and general UI furniture don't
resize on the mini, so they're smaller and slightly more fiddly to press. The
narrow screen bezel means that if you hold the screen a certain way, your thumb
can creep onto the touchscreen and inadvertently turn pages in the Kindle app,
for instance.
Incredible
performance - Mini is mighty
These are by no means big problems,
however, and using the keyboard is a surprisingly pleasant experience. Although
you won't be touch-typing on it, it's easy to get up a reasonable head of
speed.
Speed, Battery Life And Cameras
Like the screen, the dual-core 1GHz AS
processor, dual-core PowerVR SGX543MP2 graphics, and 512MB of RAM all hark back
to the iPad 2. This initially set alarm bells ringing - this hardware is now
more than a year old, which would suggest that in the long term, it might start
to show its age sooner than the A6X chip and quad- core graphics powering the
latest full sized iPad.
In our tests, however, it held up well. In
general use browsing the web, navigating the OS, sending emails and so on the
mini feels smooth and responsive, just as you'd expect from an iOS device. The
most demanding games we threw at it played acceptably smoothly, from Real
Racing HD 2 to 3D space shooter Galaxy on Fire 2 HD. We did notice the
occasional frame drop here and there, but this wasn't sufficient to spoil our
enjoyment.
Like
the screen, the dual-core 1GHz AS processor, dual-core PowerVR SGX543MP2
graphics, and 512MB of RAM all hark back to the iPad 2.
Admittedly, it's much slower in benchmarks
than the latest iPad. It scored 1535ms in SunSpider, which is half the speed of
that tablet. In Geekbench, it was a similar story, scoring 753 - and again,
when it came to 3D performance the Pad mini's score of 25fps in GLBench is a
long way behind the fourth-generation Pad's stunning 43fps.
However, there is one major payback for
this comparative lack of grunt. Despite its slim chassis, the iPad mini has far
superior battery life. In our looping video test it lasted 11hrs 26mins -
nearly two hours longer than the fourth-generation Pad, and a clear 1hr 38mins
longer than the Nexus 7 under the same conditions.
The cameras are another high point: there's
a 720p webcam on the front and a 5-megapixel shooter on the rear, with the
latter producing crisp, sharp and colourful stills, plus excellent 1080p video.
There's no flash and it lacks the panorama feature of the Phone 5, but this
camera is better than anything we've seen on an Android tablet. Neither the
Nexus 7 nor the Kindle Fire HD has a rear-facing camera at all.
Verdict
Give the Nexus 7, the Kindle Fire HD and
Pad mini to most consumers to play with, and most people would immediately veer
towards the iPad for its wider screen and slimmer profile. Tell them it's $120
more expensive than the 16GB Nexus 7, and they may well begin to swerve back
the other way.
For this reason, we don't think the iPad
mini will achieve what Apple wants it to: it won't dominate the 7in tablet
space, and we suspect both Amazon and Google will continue to sell boat loads
of their budget tablets.
No matter what your fiscal sensitivities,
though, you have to admire Apple for what it's done with the Pad mini. It may
not have a high density display, or the latest silicon, and it might be
expensive. However, its beautiful design, light weight, broad screen, great
cameras and fantastic battery life place it in front of the compact tablet
pack.
iPad mini specifications
Display
·
Display Size: 7.9
·
Resolution: 1920 x 1200
Other
·
Processor: Apple A5
·
Memory (RAM): 1
·
Internal Storage: 16/32/64
·
Weight: 302
·
Height: 200
·
Width: 134.7
·
Depth: 7.2
·
Camera: 5
·
Front Facing Camera: 1.3
·
Mobile Broadband/3G: 3G and 4G
|
