14 
So, the iPad mini is here at last! Smaller tablets have already carved out a real niche for themselves, and if you’ve always wanted an iPad but were scared off by its size, then maybe this is the day you’ve been waiting for.
Or maybe Apple waited too long. There are already a bunch of very good smaller tablets out there. Let’s see how the new iThing compares to the others on specs.
Let’s start with our familiar disclaimer: specs don’t mean everything. Your user experience is what matters most. That said, specs are a part of that user experience, and they can play a critical role in helping you make an informed decision on the product you want to spend your hard-earned cash on.
One small note: the table below lists US prices, and Toshiba’s Excite 7.7, which we don’t have here in the UK. What you need to know is the iPad Mini costs £269; the Kindle Fire HD, Nexus 7 and Nook HD from Barnes & Noble will set you back £159 each, and Samsung’s Galaxy Tab 2 is a sliver under £200.
Click on the table above to embiggen…
Let’s start out with… wow, it’s thin! Coming in at 0.28 inches, its certainly beats the rest of the category. It’s also the lightest on our chart at 0.68 pounds, but just barely (the Nook HD is only 0.01 pound heavier). At the same time, we don’t know what the other dimensions of it (length and width), so we’ll have to wait and see just how pocketable it really is.
Resolution may be a bit on the disappointing side. Coming in at 162 ppi, the iPad mini comes in way behind the Nexus 7 and Kindle Fire HD (216 ppi) and is miles behind the Nook HD (243 ppi). Also Apple is using older dual-core A5 chip that was in the iPad 2. Does that measure up to the quad-core Tegra 3 you find on some of the others? It depends on how you benchmark it. It some ways it’s as good or better, and in others it lags behind.
There are other things to consider, of course, like ecosystems. There are 275,000 apps optimised specifically for the iPad. For Android, it’s in the low thousands. Ditto for the Kindle and Nook. Yes, a lot of those apps are redundant, but the pattern has remained mostly consistent in that developers generally make apps for iOS first, and then follow up with Android, then put them in the in the Amazon or Nook stores, whenever they get to it.
Lastly, but not least importantly, there’s the price. Starting at £269, it’s a lot more than the other tablets which are really good and start at only £159. Considering the lower specs, that may be a tough pill to swallow. It will likely come down to how invested you are (and how invested you want to be) in the iOS ecosystem.
iPad Mini Display Shoot Out: How Does It Stack Up?
How the iPhone 5 Stacks Up to the Competition
How the Nexus 10 Stacks Up to the Competition
“It will likely come down to how invested you are (and how invested you want to be) in the iOS ecosystem.”
That’s exactly what it’s going to come down to. And for most people who are invested in iOS, there will be no actual ‘need’ for this product. In a need/want ratio, this one is leaning heavily towards ‘want’. Especially as the ‘holiday season’ is almost upon us.
Exactly. This is definitely going to be a great stocking-filler, possibly something people will buy for their relatives (if they like them) around Christmas time.
A £269 “stocking filler”…consumerism, thy name be tsjmcgrath!
Haha, I know, I should be ashamed of myself. But then, I think I’ve heard iPhones being referred to as stocking fillers by some…
Nice table. We now know the most important statistic for a tablet is it’s weight and thickness
Apple where’s iTUNES 11 !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
GPS?
Only on the cellular one
I can’t wait to see what they do with the next generation mini. My guesses are:
Retina display
More colours
Lower price (with iPod touch also being lower)
A6/A5X
Please don’t curse me for speculating.
I’ve already speculated all of this!! I think it’ll have the A6 as A5X really will be getting old, comparatively speaking.
I think in reality people will want it to be ‘beautifully made’, have a great screen and reasonable battery life.
Perceived quality and trusted user experience sum this product up entirely.
Ah, have you? Good. I didn’t want to be the one to start it off again.
Well it depends. A5 is just over a year and a half old right now. Next year, that’ll be the same for A5X, assuming they’re launched at the same time.
Yeah, that’s it. I think it looks superb, personally, but I really wish the screen had a higher PPI. So hopefully, that’ll come next time round.
But now I’m wondering – what’s happened to the March event for the iPad? Has that been cast away in favour of a hectic Autumn for Apple? Or will we see a fifth-generation launched in March? On the one hand, I hope not, for the benefit of all the people who bought this new one, but then again, I also hope that they do, because the large iPads are now the only iOS devices without metal, body coloured buttons, complete with chamfered edges and anodised aluminium.
I love how Apple never release clock speed information of the processors in their portable devices.
The thing is that it’s unnecessary as clock speeds are only useful in comparing apples with apples (haha), and that a 1.5 ghz in an apple device will be radically different than in an android or WP device. All Apple users need to know is that an A5 has an equal performance on A5 devices, twice as slow as A6 etc.
Windows Phone? Really?
They oh so strive to be relevant. On a related note though, WP is the darndest most optimised platform in the world (bar multitasking). The core UI needs no “specs” whatsoever to be more fluid than project buttered JB or iOS combined.
+1 for the apples to apples reference.
It just feels like they’re hiding something from us.
But they’re always hiding things from us. This is big companies we are talking about.
Clock speeds doesn’t say much if the CPU architectures and/or OS’s are different. But some god old benchmarks on relevant tasks always say a lot.
I might get swayed to get an Ipad mini when it’s jailbroken and found a good discount on it.
Wow the Galaxy Note has put on a bit of weight recently…
For my inlaws, the only spec that matters is capacity “how much stuff can I put on this device” Regardless of specs though, the Mini will still sell well because of the perceived quality of Apple products, in much the same way that people prefer to buy certain brands of car over others (BMW vs Ford, for example) despite them being able to do pretty much the same thing but at different price points.