Review compilation of the Retina display iPad Mini tablet

[RaduTyrsina]

​

The Retina iPad Mini has been launched for customers this week and if you haven't got your hands on it just yet, maybe you should have a quick look and check whether is is available in a store nearby. We will be compiling a short, but informative roundup of reviews for the iPad Mini 2, pretty much in the same way we did with the iPad Air. We already know that the iPad Mini 2 comes with a much bigger battery than the first-generation iPad Mini and that it is also five times faster than its ancestor. But now it's time to see what early reviewers think of this tech beauty.

Scott Stein with Cnet:

The good: The iPad Mini with Retina Display adds an excellent high-resolution display that rivals the iPad Air’s, a far faster A7 processor, and tops it off with improved Wi-Fi and LTE connectivity, with battery life that’s as good or better than in last year’s Mini. The bad: A starting price of $399 places it well above the small-tablet competition, and adding more storage or LTE makes it even more expensive. It lacks the innovative Touch ID fingerprint sensor that the iPhone 5S sports. The bottom line: The new iPad Mini somehow shrinks down the iPad Air into an even more compact package, sacrificing nearly nothing. It’s more expensive than before, but it’s also the perfect smaller tablet.

David Pierce with TheVerge:

To those people, I say: go for it. You can’t lose. I’d buy a mini for myself, because I love having something that doesn’t take up much space in my bag and that I can wield even on a crowded subway. But the mini is now so beautiful and so immersive that you’ll never want to look away from the screen, and the Air now so portable and usable that you’ll rarely need to put it down. The mini used to be the lesser one, the reductive one, the one you bought if you couldn’t fit or afford the iPad. Now it’s just the smaller one.

Christina Bonnington with Wired

The iPad mini is exactly the type of product we expect from Apple. Stunning good looks, a display so high resolution it’d take a magnifying glass to pick out the pixels, and unparalleled performance. This is the smaller iPad that should have debuted last year, but hey, better late than never.

Mark Spoonauer from LaptopMag

The iPad mini with Retina Display is simultaneously a splurge compared with 7-inch Android tablets and one heck of a value in the context of Apple's own tablet lineup. For $100 less than the full-size iPad Air, you get the same sharp screen resolution and blazing A7 chip in a more compact design. We prefer the color saturation and black levels on the Air's screen -- and some will like having the extra real estate on the Air's display for content creation -- but the mini delivers a lot for the money.

Sascha Segan from PCMag

If iPads were the only tablets, you'd be able to make your decision here completely based on size. I prefer the iPad Air to the mini because I think that once something isn't truly handheld or pocket-sized (in other words, wider than a Nexus 7 or a Kindle), a roomier view on the world and larger touch targets trump slightly better portability. But that's just a taste issue.

Jason Snell from MacWorld

The iPad mini was a great size when it was introduced in the fall of 2012, and it’s still a great size today. It’s small enough to hold in one hand and read like a book, yet powerful enough to pivot into landscape orientation and get some work done. The original iPad mini won people’s hearts despite the deficiencies of its processor and screen; the Retina iPad mini has left all of those deficiencies behind. It’s small and light and five times as fast as the old mini, but with 10 hours of battery life.

Neil Hughes from AppleInsider

Pros: Apple's Retina display standard once again lives up to the hype; The 64-bit A7 chip's performance impresses, just as it did on the iPad Air & iPhone 5s;
Same great lightweight, ultraportable design as last year. Cons: Though lower-priced competition continues to improve, Apple has increased the iPad mini price by $70;
Limited supply could make the Retina iPad mini hard to get for the holidays; Some may want to wait for Touch ID in a future model

 

[AQ_OC]

Man...it's impressive to see Apple scoring big marks on the 5th generation iPads. And imagine how all this would be playing out if they had made the mini 2 remain a second-tier device like the mini 1 is. Lession: Put your best product forward always. People don't like you holding back on specs while asking a premium price. And if you ask a premium price, make the product premium to match its price. Finally, people like cheap but the also like premium.