Apple iPad mini

“The iPad mini is nothing more than an iPad 2 with a smaller screen and premium finish. The A5 chipset is two-generations old and the mini has fewer pixels on a bigger screen than the closest Android-powered rivals. Yet, the iPad mini is the biggest thing to come from Apple this season - after an underwhelming iOS 6, after an iPhone 5 and an iPad 4 that are not exactly making the previous versions obsolete. It's a beautiful deice too, we'd go ahead and call it the best looking Apple tablet to date. But portability is by far its biggest asset. Enough probably to make millions of users buy the mini and keep their bigger iPad.”

“If the iPad Mini had a Retina Display, a newer A6 processor, and a slightly lower price, it would be the must-have Apple gadget of the year. Even without that, it's still incredibly appealing. Its $329 price still makes it one of the least-expensive iOS gadgets Apple makes. Does it make more sense than a $299 iPod Touch with the same processor, twice the storage, and a sharper, if smaller, screen? The Touch is a tiny thing, the iPad Mini can be used at a distance, to read and even to type. So can a Touch, but it's not as comfy. It comes down to choice. The iPad Mini works with all of Apple's apps. It's superior for magazines and news, and for illustrated books.I'm not sure who the iPad Mini is for. The budget-minded, perhaps, or kids, or those who want a second iPad. Businesses that want a more portable onsite iPad. People who want to mount an iPad in their vehicles. Actually, I guess I know exactly who the iPad Mini is for. With iOS having such reach, this is another use case, another form. It's as simple as that. The iPad Mini probably isn't for everyone, and that's exactly the point. Like the iPod and Nano, it's another style for another crowd. I will say this: when you see it, you'll desire it. Just remind yourself you may not need it.”

“The iPad mini is an excellent tablet — but it's not a very cheap one. Whether that's by design, or due to market forces beyond Apple's control, I can't say for sure. I can't think of another company that cares as much about how its products are designed and built — or one that knows how to maximize a supply chain as skillfully — so something tells me it's no accident that this tablet isn't selling for $200. It doesn't feel like Apple is racing to some lowest-price bottom — rather it seems to be trying to raise the floor.And it does raise the floor here. There's no tablet in this size range that's as beautifully constructed, works as flawlessly, or has such an incredible software selection. Would I prefer a higher-res display? Certainly. Would I trade it for the app selection or hardware design? For the consistency and smoothness of its software, or reliability of its battery? Absolutely not. And as someone who's been living with (and loving) Google's Nexus 7 tablet for a few months, I don't say that lightly.The iPad mini hasn't wrapped up the cheapest tablet market by any stretch of the imagination. But the best small tablet market? Consider it captured.”

“Apple wanted to be very clear at its product-packed iPad mini launch event that this isn't just a shrunken-down iPad. And, indeed, that starts with a very different case design. While the second, third and fourth generations of iPads have all been more or less indistinguishable, the iPad mini's anodized aluminum back looks entirely different. In fact, the whole thing looks a lot more like a blown-up fifth-generation iPod touch than a shrunken-down fourth-generation iPad.No, this isn't Retina, but maintaining the same resolution as a 10-inch display shrunken down to 7.9 means a necessary boost in pixel density: 163ppi. That's a nice increase over the iPad 2's 132ppi, but it still falls short of the 264ppi of the fourth-generation iPad -- not to mention, the iPhone 5's 326dpi. Naturally, this means that text isn't anywhere near as sharp as on the newer iPads, but this is still a very nice-looking display.The iPad mini is running a dual-core 1GHz CPU with 512MB of RAM, same as in the iPad 2 and as such it throws down the same benchmark scores and overall performance figures. Geekbench averages out at 751 and GLBench shows 24fps on the 2.5 Egypt HD benchmark. The SunSpider JavaScript benchmark completes in 1,426ms.In our standard battery run-down test, which entails looping a video with WiFi enabled and a fixed display brightness, the iPad mini managed an astounding 12 hours and 43 minutes. This gives it the longest battery life of any tablet we've ever tested, besting even the Samsung Galaxy Tab 7.7 by 42 minutes. Indeed during the course of our testing the battery on the iPad mini exceeded our expectations, expectations that were already high thanks to the consistently great battery life offered by the iPad family.The iPad 2 never saw HDR nor the Panorama mode that wowed us so on the iPhone 5, and neither does the iPad mini. It does, however, have a better camera than the iPad 2, a 5-megapixel shooter with an f/2.4 lens, and a 1.2-megapixel Facetime HD camera up front. The one 'round back appears to be the same camera module used on the iPhone 4 and as such, it takes good quality images.”