Bombardment Life, Air vs. Mini?

Despite the powerful internals laying within the iPad mini's aluminium shell, I plant battery life to be impressive. In my time with the tablet, the 23.8 watt-hour (Wh) only needed charging twice with a decent corporeality of apply each day over a week or and so: a fantastic outcome for a mid-sized tablet with a battery 28% smaller than the iPad Air.

Apple rates the second-generation iPad mini's bombardment as being capable of 10 hours of Wi-Fi web browsing, and in my experience this seems to be accurate. If yous're reading books on this device, not accessing the net, you'll likely achieve even better results, especially if you use a moderate brightness level. In gaming this tablet could probably accomplish 6-7 hours, going on extrapolated information, although I didn't actually examination this definitively.

I did run our standard video playback test, where a 720p video is looped at 75% brightness in airplane mode until the bombardment dies. We haven't tested a great deal of tablets using this test at TechSpot merely yet, but we can compare the iPad mini to the iPad Air and Nexus 7 (2013) tablets.

iPad Air vs. Mini? It'southward a tie

It's clear after using the device that the iPad mini with Retina display is the best small-scale-sized tablet that money tin can buy. Its build quality is 2nd to none, combining a portable class factor with premium materials, and functioning that is on-par with the iPad Air, which is exactly what you desire to encounter despite its smaller size.

Apart from the operation, the key improvement over the first-generation iPad mini is the brandish, which packs 3.1 million pixels into a 7.9-inch 4:three console. The crispness is certainly eye-catching and fabled for reading text, and while the brandish is not without its flaws (gamut-wise), it'south reasonably like shooting fish in a barrel to simply gloss over them. Of course it'due south entirely upwards to whether y'all prefer the size of the iPad mini or iPad Air, just the erstwhile excels in the small-tablet arena.

Much of its success is too down to iOS and its sizable, noticeably superior tablet app collection. Android and Windows 8.1 are yet far backside Apple tree in this respect, with the App Store including and so many high-quality apps that it really lives upwards to the maxim "at that place's an app for that".

The only major upshot I take with the iPad mini relates to its price: $399 for the xvi GB Wi-Fi model, right up to $829 for the 128 GB Wi-Fi + Cellular model. Considering the quality of the Retina iPad mini, $399 for the cheapest model is a reasonable cost to pay, however let'south not forget Google does manage to undercut Apple tree by offering the withal-very-good Nexus vii for $170 less. What isn't a reasonable price to pay is $100 for each doubling of device storage, or $130 to add in 4G radios; these price hikes are extortion because the actual cost of parts, and are quite frankly unacceptable.

Price aside, Apple has in one case again produced a fantastic product with the iPad mini, and information technology's sure to please anyone in the market for a pocket-sized tablet this vacation season.

Pros: Very portable, with a well built, well designed body. Retina display is very crisp, powered by fast, significantly upgraded hardware. iOS has by far the all-time selection of tablet apps going around.

Cons: Pricey, especially for storage upgrades and the cellular model. Brandish color gamut is lacking.