It might be awkwardly named, but the ‘iPad mini with Retina Display’ is a powerhouse of a tablet. Starting with the form factor of the last year’s smash hit iPad mini, a number of consumer critical aspects have been addressed. With a new screen, new processor, and internals, the new iOS 7, and an improved suite of applications pre-installed and available to download from the App Store, the iPad mini with Retina Display should be regarded as one of the best all round personal computers in the market today.
That’s not just best tablet, that’s the best all-round computer, full stop. Video (and to a certain extent audio editing), large scale photoshop work, and application development, are all valid uses of a personal computer, but they are specialist areas. For the majority of the use cases that apply to the public, this iPad mini has sufficient capability to deliver in an attractive form factor.
The iPad mini with Retina Display is, essentially, a smaller iPad Air with identical high-end specifications. It is the perfect marriage of form and function. That’s why I say the best all-round computer.
The iPad mini with Retina Display comes packaged with Apple’s 10W USB power adaptor, and a lightning to USB cable. The lightning cable, introduced with the iPhone 5 and iPad mini last year is bi-directional in orientation, so there’s no need to worry about which way up the cable plus into your iPad mini. It’s a small touch, but one that makes the almost daily insertion of the cable that little bit easier. It did mean resetting the peripheral line up last year (and that pesky EU regulation about having to support microUSB charging means that Apple needs to stock some port adaptors to meet the letter of the law). Upsetting in the short term, I can see the logic in moving systems. It forces peripheral manufacturers to stay up to date, charging is faster, and moving large media files feels faster than a USB connection to Android and Windows Phone powered handsets.
Style-wise the iPad mini with Retina Display is almost identical to the 2012 iPad mini. Comparing the specifications, you’ll find that the 2013 edition is slightly thicker (by 0.3 mm) and heavier (23g). If you were doing a direct comparison in your hand you’d be able to tell the difference, but from a practical point of view you’re not going to immediately notice a difference. Perhaps if do a lot of standing the extra weight might tire your arm out a little quicker, but if that’s the pay-off for the improved hardware, I consider it worthwhile.
Apple has retained the thinner bezels on the sides of the unit, and larger bezels for the Facetime camera and home button. The iPad mini with Retina Display is not the flagship iPad, so with limited stock and engineering time, even if the iPad Air had a fingerprint sensor to rival the iPhone 5S, I would not have expected to see it on the second generation iPad mini. Two colour options are available, space grey and silver. If you go for an iPad mini with a cellular connection you will get an RF transparent strip of plastic at the top-rear of the unit.
From a physical point of view, there was very little wrong with the 2012 iPad mini, so the 2013 iPad mini with Retina Display is more of the same.
Which leads to the biggest visible change, namely the Retina Display. Doubling the resolution of the original iPad mini to give a resolution of 2048×1536 pixels. That matches the iPad 4 and the iPad Air, but in a screen that is 1.8 inches shorter on the diagonal leads to a very high pixel density, matching the ppi of the iPhone 5. Some users are reporting issues with image retention, likely brought about by multiple component suppliers. I suspect as the the Retina Display mini spends more time on the production lines this issue will sort itself out. Personally I’ve not seen the issue, but it is out there. Early adopters might want to keep an eye out for this and be ready to ask for an exchange.
The screen on the iPad mini does have a huge ppi, but in terms of brightness and colour reproduction it is not as accurate as either the iPad Air, or even the latest Nexus 7. In general use I don’t think there’s a huge difference, but if you do any graphical work on the move, you will need to consider the slight drop in colour against the clarity of a Retina Display. I think Apple might have traded the brightness and accuracy required to improve the battery life. The screen is one of the biggest draws of power, so deciding where the compromise would be between brightness and battery life may have been coloured by the idea of the professionals needing accurate colour going for the iPad Air.
The other notable change on the iPad mini with Retina Display is the A7 processor. If you were expecting Apple to follow their historical indication, this year’s iPad mini would have stepped up once processor from the A5 in the original iPad mini to an A6 this year. With a push towards 64-bit computing, and iOS 7 being the gateway, it makes a lot of sense to move as much of the iOS hardware to 64-bit as quickly as possible. At the same time bringing the iPad mini hardware to match the larger iPad Air turns the mini from a nice secondary piece of mobile hardware into a tablet that is ready to run your life.
In action, the A7 runs at 1.3 GHz, the same speed as the iPhone 5S, but slightly down on the iPad Air’s 1.4 GHz. Because the iPad mini’s extra volume over the iPhone 5S allows it to dissipate more heat, the iPad mini with Retina Display has a very slight performance advantage over the smartphone. There’s another step up from the mini to the Air in terms of performance, magnified by the processor speed.
But compared to the original iPad mini, the latest iPad mini has a huge performance gain. Graphics are smoother, the iOS 7 is even more glossy and responsive. Even though there are four times as many pixels being thrown around, the A7 delivers far more performance to this mini. Couple this with the availability of Apple’s new software available to the iPad, including Pages, Numbers, and Keynote, and the iPad Mini with Retina Display delivers a lot of flexibility in a footprint that I find physically appealing.
The iPad mini with Retina Display also comes with the M7 co-processor, which helps collection motion data for fitness tracking apps, wearable sensors and quantified self applications. While the iPad mini is not going to be tucked into your pocket when you go out for a run, the M7 is still going to be collecting position data when in stand-by mode for later collation and processing by the CPU. The advantage here is the M7 is far more power efficient when collecting this data, and with the A7 able to stay in idle, the battery’s standby time is improved.
With a faster processor, more graphical power, a screen with far more information, and users demanding even more from their tablet, it’s a nice surprise to realise that the battery life of the iPad mini with Retina Display matches the original iPad mini, and in some cases exceeds it. Depending on how you use it, the tablet will comfortably go through a whole day of heavy work, and with medium usage (skipping any graphically demanding games or computationally intensive apps) this iPad mini is going to last two full days.
Cameras in tablets have become more than an afterthought, but they are still not the primary focus of the hardware. The 2013 iPad mini’s camera matches the camera on the iPad Air, and shares much of the optical hardware and sensors with the iPad 4 and the current iPad Touch. The camera touches on the iPhone 5S of burst mode and slo-mo are not present, but the speed of image processing is just as fast. The most important camera is the one that is with you, and while the iPad mini with Retina Display has a camera that might not be cutting edge, if it’s all you have then you will capture some fantastic images and memories and you’re not going to feel short changed.
The issues around iOS 7 are well documented, and this year’s iPad hardware, both the iPad mini with Retina Display, and the iPad Air, are built around iOS 7. The ease of use that Apple is perceived to have been weakened in the move from the skeuomorphic iOS 6 to the flatter and more modernistic iOS 7. I’m not at all convinced that’s the case for someone coming to a tablet with no experience, and anyone with experience on another OS version (or another platform) is going to have to make an adjustment, but after a week or two of use I would expect a user to be comfortable with the interface and the ways of iOS 7.
The iPad mini with Retina Display is a tablet designed to be used for multiple years. The hardware inside the machine is at the cutting edge of Apple’s developments, and matches the flagship iPhone 5S and the setup of the iPad Air. The screen has one of the highest ppi count of any consumer tablet or smartphone on the market, and the compromises that had to be made when designing last year’s iPad mini are no longer present.
Next to the onslaught of cheaper seven-inch Android tablets (notably the latest Nexus 7 from Google) the value proposition is a little bit more finely balanced. There is a price premium on the Apple hardware, and I think that will pay off with the longevity of the device. The competition is closer to Apple’s smaller tablet than last year, but I feel that Apple still has the edge.
If you’re already invested in Apple’s ecosystem, the the iPad mini with Retina Display is easy to recommend in the smaller tablet space, especially if you need the performance that’s on offer. It’s certainly a huge step up from the original iPad mini, and I could see it being an attractive choice to upgrade to, even though the turnover time would likely be less than twelve months.
This is how you improve a product. The iPad mini with Retina Display negates the few concerns there were with the original iPad mini. It has power and flexibility, coupled with a comfortable form factor and impressive battery life. Backed up by the extensive collection of apps and games in the iTunes App Store, this is an almost uncompromising vision of the iPad mini concept. Apple has another winner.
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