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The iPad is too expensive. The Kindle Fire HD and Nexus 7 are too cheap. That seems to be the logic behind the iPad mini, the filling of a crucial void in our tablet lives. But after spending a week with it, I’m pretty sure the mini is less Goldilocks than it is Rapunzel: beautiful, flawed, and ultimately not worth the trouble.
Just a year ago, small tablets were an aberration, a frontier trod by the cheap and flimsy likes of the original Kindle Fire, the Galaxy Tab, and a dozen other fun-sized failures from companies who couldn’t—or just didn’t want to—go head to head with the iPad on its own turf. Why hang out with Jaws when there’s plenty of room in the kiddie pool?
But then some strange things happened. In late June, Google’s Nexus 7 managed to pack unprecedented horsepower into the first tiny tablet that was actually good. Then, in September, Amazon’s Kindle Fire HD stuffed the full force of its colossal ecosystem into a gorgeous seven-inch display. Neither is perfect, but at just £160, they’re both appealing enough that 7-inchers—famously laughed off by Steve Jobs—started to take a huge bite out of Apple’s market share. And that, in turn, forced Cupertino to respond with a tiny tyke of its own.
Forget the corporate implications of that for a minute, the fact that Google and Amazon are on a kamikaze pricing run, and that Apple’s most important product in years was born in a fog of anxiety and resentment. Forget that small tablets, thanks to a potent combination of lower prices and added convenience, will be the most fiercely contested technological battleground for the foreseeable future. All of that matters, and some of it will even affect you directly in the long run. But that’s not the question we need to answer right now.
The iPad mini matters today because small tablets are going to change hands at a ferocious rate this holiday season, and many people will buy the wrong one. It matters because Apple has the gall to to charge more than half again as much for its mighty mite as the Google and Amazon do. It matters because in many ways, it’s the best iPad Apple ever made.
The iPad mini is the most attractive tablet. That’s an inarguable point. It transcends personal preferences and matters of taste. It just is, and if you disagree you’re either a liar or some sort of sentient butter churn.
Tim Cook argued that the iPad mini wasn’t a 7-inch tablet, which was either misguided spin or deep-seated denial. While it offers more display real estate than the Kindle Fire HD (7.9 versus 7 diagonal inches), the two devices have a surprisingly similar footprint. Both those and the slightly narrower Nexus 7 look like they’d be at home as a monster truck’s onboard display.
The difference is that, much like on the iPod touch, Apple has virtually eliminated the vertical bezel. There’s not room for a fingernail along the sides of the iPad mini, much less an entire thumb. It’s jarring, but also a tiny thrill. It feels like your tablet has gotten away with something.
That’s not the only part of the iPad mini that seems like it has no business working. At 7.2mm, the device is thinner than it has any right to be. In the same way the iPhone 5 feels too light to accommodate all of its components, the iPad mini feels too narrow. But don’t confuse that for flimsiness; it’s solid, firm, thanks largely to that just-grippy-enough anodized back.
The one questionable design choice is that the (tinny, thin-sounding) speakers are crunched up next each other on the bottom of the iPad mini, standing guard over the lightning connector. Which means that any time you switch to landscape mode, you cover them with your palm. That’s not great for movies and games.
Everything else is what you’re familiar with by now: home button front, volume rocker side, headphone jack and power button top. You know, an iPad. The prettiest iPad that’s ever been built.
The first thing that hits you when you pick up an iPad mini is that it’s deceptively easy to use one-handed. That might seem like an obvious point, but it’s not; the thin bezel/wide display gives the illusion of width and unwieldiness when it’s sitting on a coffee table. But the iPad mini is less broad than it looks, and terrifically light, and balanced to a perfection that artisanal swordsmiths would envy.
Apple has made the iPad mini smart enough to know when a thumb is just resting on the display and when it’s trying to tap or swipe. It’s a thoughtful touch, given how little room there is to maneuver on the borderlands of portrait mode, but my default grip was simply resting the tablet in my palm, bolstered by my thumb resting along the gently curved side. You can’t hold a Kindle Fire HD or Nexus 7 that cavalierly. I couldn’t, at least.
If you’ve used an iOS device before, you know how to navigate the iPad mini. There are no product-specific tics or quirks here. The biggest concern I had going in was that more involved gestures, like four-finger swipe, would fall victim to the smaller display. They don’t. There’s plenty of room to maneuver; you could high-five it if you had to.
Once you start really digging in, though, it doesn’t take long to notice that the iPad mini is playing with an outmoded processor. The A5 is no slouch, but it’s more than a generation behind, and it’s starting to show its age; apps can take several seconds longer to open than on the Nexus 7, Kindle Fire HD, or the newer full-sized iPads. The overall user experience is very fluid, but I ran into occasional sputters on everything from the graphically intensive Infinity Blade to a basic pull-to-refresh. This wasn’t enough to bother me, and it likely bother you, either. But you’ll notice it.
The iPad mini is too big to fit into your pockets, unless you’re wearing Hammer pants. I did manage to squeeze it into a pair of my old man jeans, but felt pretty certain after that if I moved, something would rip. It’s not like the Kindle Fire HD or Nexus 7 are pocketable either, but don’t assume that this is a device you can just get up and go with.
And that’s fine; the iPad mini works best as a second screen, a coffee or bedside table companion for when you want to check Twitter, email, an article, a quick round of Reckless Racing. It’s your go-to device for when your go-to device isn’t handy.
Do we have to talk about the camera? Fine. The iPad mini has the same 5MP camera as the third and fourth generation iPads, which is to say a decent one that you should never ever use in a public setting. Your phone’s camera is better. Your phone’s camera is less obtrusive. Use your phone’s camera.
If you insist, here is a picture I took with the iPad mini of my dog. She is refusing to look at me, because I’m acting like an moron:
I’d been a vocal critic of the iPad mini’s price since the day it was announced, and couldn’t fathom how Apple thought it could get away with charging 65% more than the competition. But as soon as I picked it up, I got it. Kind of.
I’ve said this before but I’ll say it again: the iPad mini wins the tablet beauty pageant in a landslide. The Kindle Fire HD and Nexus 7 don’t feel cheap in and of themselves, but putting them against Apple’s offering, on a purely superficial level, is like comparing Jimmy Dean’s frozen sausage links with fresh sopressata.
And the iPad mini’s not just a looker. The 4:3 ratio—the same as an 8.5×11 sheet of paper—brokers a compromise that enables easy browsing, reading, and game play; after the iPad mini, the web feels claustrophobic on the Kindle Fire HD and Nexus 7, and maneuvering the full-size iPad’s chassis around Temple Run feels ridiculous.
This might also be one of the only gadgets I’ve ever tested that actually outshines its listed battery life. Apple says it’ll last 10 hours with average use; I got over 11 with continuous video playback. That’s nuts, and makes the iPad mini a strong travel companion.
But beyond looks, the biggest iPad mini advantages have little to do with the iPad mini itself. By now it’s boring to point out that Apple has by far the most coherent tablet operating system, populated by the best and most bounteous apps. It’s still true, though, and painfully noticeable every time you switch between Android or its heavy Kindle skin’s muddled wasteland and the lush, green pastures of iOS. Android’s catching up, but it’s still not even close.
Let’s start with the little things first. The keyboard is small enough that you’ll miss keys. If you have iPad magazine subscriptions, you should cancel them before you squint yourself to death trying to read the tiny, non-adjustable typefaces here. Ditto comic books. In fact, be ready to have to adjust the letter sizing on any app that allows it; everything is pinched here by default, because it’s optimised for the iPad’s larger display. The Kindle Fire HD gets around this tiny type problem with its text view mode. The iPad mini has no such workaround.
Those nitpicks, along with the relative sluggishness and weird speaker placement mentioned above, don’t add up to much. But then you get to the display.
If you want to get technical about how disappointing the iPad mini’s display is, it has 163 pixels per inch versus 216 for the Kindle Fire HD and Nexus 7. If you want to get even more technical, here are a thousand words explaining how much much it sucks in intricate detail, based on rigorous testing.
All of that is true. The iPad mini’s display is verifiably, technologically, noticeably inferior. But here’s the thing. It’s not bad. It’s fine. But it’s also insulting.
The resolution is what you hear about the most, and it’s true that you’ll notice the difference between it and true retina. Letters look slightly jagged, not perfectly smooth. Videos, because of the 4:3 aspect ratio that was so good for reading blahgs, look downright bad. They play in 1024×576, which is basically standard definition. This is where the difference between the (1280×720) Kindle Fire HD and Nexus 7 is most stark.
And it gets better! Because of the iPad’s reading-friendly dimensions, when you watch a movie in landscape there’s almost more letterboxing than actual video. Seriously. It. Looks. Ridiculous.
Wait, we’re not done. Do you like to read outside on a warm spring afternoon? Good luck, chuckles. The iPad mini has one of the most reflective displays I’ve used. Even with brightness cranked all the way up, I could barely make out the NY Times on my (shaded!) porch on a sunny morning. What I mostly saw was my big stupid face.
The most common apology made for the iPad mini’s weak display is if you’ve never used retina, you won’t notice the difference. And that’s true enough, in the same way that Wendy’s tastes pretty damn good if you’ve never had a P.J. Clarke’s hamburger, and that Hyundais drive pretty great in a world without BMWs. Ignorance of a better option doesn’t somehow make the worse option acceptable. Especially in when worse is so much more expensive.
If you are in desperate need of a small tablet, and already have thousands of pounds sunk into iOS, and don’t watch much video, and have never used a retina display, and have Scrooge McDuckian levels of disposable income, then yes. You should buy the iPad mini.
But what most of us should do is wait. The iPad mini costs £110 more than the competition, but there’s no way that it’s £110 better. That doesn’t mean you should go off and buy a Kindle Fire HD or a Nexus 7. But by next year, it’s almost guaranteed that the iPad mini’s performance—and display—will live up to its looks. Take this form factor, add a retina display, optimise typefaces for the smaller screen, give it some processing power, and you’ve got yourself a £270 device. And all of that is just a year away.
Full disclosure: I bought a Kindle Fire HD and an iPad mini for this review, and borrowed a friend’s Nexus 7. My original thought was that I’d just keep which ever one I liked best. I’m returning all of them today.
iPad mini Specs
• OS: iOS 6
• CPU: A5 processor
• Screen: 7.9-inch 1024 x 768 IPS
• RAM: 512MB
• Storage: 16 GB
• Camera: 5MP Rear, 720p Front
• Battery: 4400 mAh
• Price: £270
• Giz Rank: 3.5 stars
Is This the iPad Mini's Display?
iPad Air or iPad Mini, That Is the Question
iPad Mini or Nexus 7?
Pretty good review.
I have come close to buying one of these several times but as you say, next year it will most definitely have the retina display and hopefully the A6 chip (as the iPhone 6 will probably moved onto A7). Then it’ll be worth it.
Yup, holding it in store is a nice introduction to the form factor but the 2nd gen is the one to consider.
First time ever that an Apple product got a fair review.
Keep up the new impartial reviews please Gizmodo.
However, when next year’s model comes out and the same person reviews it and the iPad Mini gets a shining review it won’t be impartial, it’ll be “fanboyism”
That’s how I see this site working anyway.
Lets be honest, the staff of this website are huge Apple fanboys. Read the review and tell me if that sounds like a 3 1/2 star product? If that review was given to another product it would of been nearer 2 1/2 stars.
And yes I fully expect next years iPad mini review to say it’s the best thing ever.
Doesn’t it have a lack of horizontal bezel, rather than vertical?
no vertical is the height, horizontal is like the horizon, flat aka left to right
Exactly…. The iPad mini has no horizontal bezel, but plenty of vertical bezel. The article says the other way around.
‘Apple has virtually eliminated the vertical bezel. There’s not room for a fingernail along the sides of the iPad mini’ I thought Apple had eliminated the horizontal bezel. The home button is at the bottom, not the side, just to clarify. This tablet is designed for portrait, not landscape.
I think you’re mixing up what horizontal and vertical means. In portrait with button at the bottom, run your finger Vertical up the skinny sides.
Vertical meaning top TO bottom instead of top AND bottom (which would be the fat bits)?
That’s exactly my point!Top TO bottom, it has a bezel. Left TO right it has no bezel. Therefore it has no horizontal bezel…
EddyCJ, I’m afraid to say you’re totally wrong on this one. Think about it; if the horizontal had no bezel, where would Apple put the home button and front facing camera?
The horizontal has no bezel; the tablet is a portrait tablet, and the home button and front facing camera is on the vertical bezel…
http://ww2.justanswer.com/uploads/TVTech1/2011-03-11_004418_vertical_vs_horizontal.jpg
The home button would be below this image, and the webcam would be above it… so there’s nothing horizontally.
Seriously? You’re posting a picture of a TV? Clearly you have never held an iPad! If you had, you would know that iPads are primarily set in portrait position as opposed to landscape position (as in that image you posted) – go on Apple’s website and take a look at how they hold it.
In portrait position, the home button is at the bottom of the device and the front facing camera is at the top, making this the HORIZONTAL bezel. The VERTICAL bezel is on the left and right sides.
I’ve said numerous times in my comments that iPads are held portrait…. That doesn’t affect the orientation. No, the top and bottom would be vertical; i.e. y axis. The left and right would be horizontal i.e. x axis…
Noooo lol! The whole iPad has a bezel really. The fat bits go sideways so they are the horizontal pieces.
We’ll get there I promise
….Hang on, are you talking about the widescreen bars for the video image with a clip from Batman? That would fit your theory perfectly except it’s not called a bezel o.0
No! The thin bit is sideways…
You’re holding it wrong
reading things like that makes me think that apple won all those patent dispute based on people lack of knowledge/stupidity/ignorance.
Slightly off topic…
iPad’s default view is; “portrait”, that means Home button at the bottom (not to the right, left etc), or where dock connector is
Any other android tablet is landscape (a part from nexus7) due to nav buttons going automatically in horizontal mode. or same as in ipad , dock connector
When apple sued sammy for similar looks they never stack those tablets in their default viewing position. and judging by comments here people have no clue what is what.
Its the vertical bazel that has been shrunk as this is the default viewing position for ipad mini
Exactly! The default viewing position is portrait, so there is no bezel on either SIDE of the screen. On the x-axis, there is no bezel, therefore the HORIZONTAL bezel is absent
I know iPads are viewed in Portrait, I’ve said it about 5 times. Surely you being unable to read is a greater problem. I just disagree with everyones definition of horizontal and vertical.
Thought I’d have one last go at this. Firstly do we agree that there IS actually a continuous plastic bezel going round the ipad?
http://tablet-news.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/U3gj2cNtPKREKBAL-e1351774455254.jpg
Think of a skyscraper; they are tall, thin and go vertical, correct? if you put two side by side (petronas etc) they are both still vertical. They don’t become horizontal now they have a gap between them.
Next would be the word horizontal taken from horizon, that line that goes from left to right when looking out to sea for instance. The fat section of plastic that the home button lives in would be your sandy beach.
I think you need to ignore the empty space where the iPad’s screen is and trace your finger with your eyes shut along the edges to find that the sides go up and the top and bottom go across.
Yes, I agree. And yes, Skyscrapers are vertical, but the horizontal element that is skyscraper doubles, if you have two Skyscrapers.
Taking the horizon as the line from the left of the iPad to the right, the iPad has a smaller width across the horizon than it would if its bezels had the same ratio as the full size iPad. Since the change in bezel size is across the horizon i.e. horizontal, then it is the horizontal bezel that changes in size. I get where you’re coming from, you’re telling me to run my fingers around the ring of the bezel, but that wouldn’t be the right definition for a horizontal vs vertical bezel.
You’re talking about the WIDTH of the whole iPad! I see now, that drawing a line through the middle of the whole ipad IS a width line AND the horizontal line but…
We’re only talking about the bezel. Forget the screen/battery/case like my link above, a flimsy piece of plastic. At a guess, you would measure the width of the sides to be about 5mm across. I suppose you could call that a tiny horizontal measurement. But those sides are probably 170mm tall, and like the skyscraper, tall and skinny equals vertical.
I meant the width! Yes, it is more vertical as a result of having less horizontal, which was my point!
You must be so frustrating to live with..
It is frustrating, me being always right
So wait a year to get a decent iPad Mini… providing there isn’t an even better Nexus tablet out by then which will no doubt be cheaper with a better specification. If you want a small iPad, get the iPad Mini. If you want a small tablet, there’s plenty to choose from. Just don’t go waiting for a year because when you do, you’ll notice there’s something even better coming the following year. Unless it’s an iDevice, then it’ll just be a few minor tweaks and upgrades :p
I must contest this review – and I’m totally impartial between Apple and other vendors. I’ve only owned my iPad mini (black, WiFi, 16GB) for about 72 hours, but as someone who has owned the iPad 1 & 2 and almost every laptop Apple have ever made, the iPad mini is, like the 13″ MacBook Air, one of their most perfectly conceived products:
1. The display is outstanding and I cannot see ANY jaggies. (Yes, I have used a retina iPad and MacBook Pro.) Photos, eBooks, web pages, all look superb, as does video. Please note, on the launch day for the iPad ’3′, I was in an Apple store in Chicago. We all went to handle the try the new iPad. Everyone was blown away by the new display. About 20 minutes later, a blue shirt came over to apologise because one of the staff had forgotten to put the new iPad models out on display and we were ALL using the iPad 2.
Says it all really! The placebo effect in action, hmmm?
2. I can read mine outside, but then, this is England.
3. It has never slowed down on me, except that Chrome fails constantly. Stuttering or literally going into meltdown, but that is a Google issue, not an Apple one.
4. Re the speakers, on this, we agree – they do seem pointless. Why they didn’t do what Samsung did and put them on the front is anyone’s guess, but probably a case of aesthetics over function – the only flaw in the whole design.
5. Battery life is outstanding too. Just returned from a day of heavy usage and still have 58% left. I imagine the cellular version and extra RAM will reduce this.
6. I also find the on screen keyboard the perfect size, in particular in portrait orientation. Keyboards are often a matter of taste.
7. Everywhere I go people are buying the iPad mini (or it is out of stock) and it is without doubt, the perfect form factor, not just for reading content, but for using apps like iDraw or Touch Draw, mail, calendar etc. It is so light, your arm never tires when using it. iPad mini is the first tablet whose form factor is very close to that of the PADs used in Star Trek.
8. I predict, 1st QTR 2013, Apple will announce sales of iPad mini beyond their expectations, with most going to children, elderly people (to view family photos), mobile professionals and those who want (as I do) to consume books published by both Amazon through the Kindle app and Apple through iBooks.
I rest my (smart) case M’Lud!
“I’m totally impartial between Apple and other vendors”
The fact you own an iPad mini voids this statement.
“I’m totally impartial between Apple and other vendors”
but as someone who has owned the iPad 1 & 2 and almost every laptop Apple have ever made.
So basicly you’ll buy anything old crap Apple wants to sell you? TBH that doesn’t sound very impartial to me.
My Nexus 7 fits in a Jacket inside pocket. Add did the Kindle I used before it. In my work I don’t want to have to carry a laptop or briefcase. I just need a slate that has access to documents. I can’t really get the bigger tablet idea. It means carrying something I guess.
“The iPad mini is the most attractive tablet. That’s an inarguable point. It transcends personal preferences and matters of taste. It just is, and if you disagree you’re either a liar or some sort of sentient butter churn.”
You know, I think I’d prefer to be the butter churn
There goes Apple Cult. If you disagree you are wrong! Reminds me of my catholic school times when “thinking different” wasn’t cool, at all…
Yeah, because Android users are the most accepting of other peoples tastes and opinions there are.
Not at all, many Android users can be quite a cult indeed. But it doesn’t change the fact that this post resembles apple cultists motos.
I’m glad I didn’t buy one on day one… Waited abit and then found the 4th ipad 16GB for £300! A bargain when you think of the extra tech for such little difference in price…
I struggle to understand why apple even bothered making this product ? If they were gonna make a 7″ tab to compete with the nexus 7 on money terms then i could see the point but i don’t know why anyone other than a serious fanboy would choose the ipad mini over the nexus 7.
I myself use a iphone 5 and own a MacBook Air and a ipad 3 so as you can imagine i really like apple and rate there products but if you want an ipad surely most people would just buy the full sized one and if you did want a 7″ tab the nexus 7 with the spec the machine carries and the great price point its almost a no brainer aint it ?
There is one big difference, it’s NOT a 7 inch dab, it is an 8 inch one (well 7.9). I was after a nexus for a while but the screen is slightly too small for web, where as a full size ipad is just a bit too big and heavy for me (I work at a mobile dev company so get to play with al of them).
However actually using a mini in store the other day I have to say there is a big difference for web browsing with the extra width on the mini, and it is insanely light.
Why everyone gets so annoyed about it puzzles me, I didn’t hear anyone going crazy and moaning or declaring the ‘start of the end of apple’ when they brought out the ipad nano, which is just a more limited and sh*tter ipod touch? This is basically the same thing, I wonder if calling it the iPad Nano would have avoided all this? It’s a cheaper product with worse specs for people who like apple tablets but don’t necessarily want or can’t afford a bigger ipad.
It’s a BUDGET ipad, of course it won’t be the same spec as the bigger ones!
I can genuinely say after actually using one my opinion of it changed, and for the record I use an android phone and think for phones iOS sucks in comparison to Android (but for me tablets and phones have completely different uses so doesn’t bother me on a tablet).
So what your saying is a ipad mini is a little less on spec’s and is a budget ipad ? And generally a little shitter than its bigger brother ? Like comparing a ipod touch to a Nano ?