“The new Apple iPad mini With Retina display ($399 to $829) is just a shrunken iPad Air. It’s so similar to Apple’s flagship tablet that your decision will pretty much be completely based on size and price,” Sascha Segan reports for PC Magazine. “Like the Air, this is one of the slimmest and best-built tablets you’ll find anywhere. It’s an absolute pleasure to use. But unlike the large-screen Air, the iPad mini has many viable small-tablet competitors that are much less expensive, making it less of a must-buy and more of a luxury purchase.”
“The difference between the mini and the Air is really now about size and price, not weight. I just held both tablets in my hands, and now that the Air is only four ounces more, the weight difference between the two tablets doesn’t feel meaningful,” Segan reports. “The 7.9-inch, 2,048-by-1,536-pixel IPS LCD touch screen is bright and sharp. It’s the exact same resolution as the iPad Air, but in a higher pixel density — 324ppi to the Air’s 253, almost the same density as the iPhone 5s.”
“Its metal-and-glass construction is still tightly elegant, with a shiny chamfered edge around the corner. The narrow side bezel echoes the iPad Air’s, and like the Air, it comes in silver and space gray,” Segan reports. ” I prefer the iPad Air to the mini because I think that once something isn’t truly handheld or pocket-sized… a roomier view on the world and larger touch targets trump slightly better portability.”
Read more in the full article here.
Related articles:
CNET reviews Retina iPad mini: A powerhouse, packed-to-the-gills, top-end tablet beast; Editors’ Choice – November 14, 2013
Associated Press reviews Retina iPad mini: Unmatched by cheaper Android tablets – November 12, 2013
Dalrymple reviews Retina iPad mini: ‘As much as I love the Air, I still find myself reaching for the iPad mini’ – November 12, 2013
Apple starts online sales of iPad mini with Retina display, no in-store pickup available – November 12, 2013
Sascha Segan could work for Consumer Reports.
“…one of the best-built tablets you’ll find anywhere.”
Okay, name one better built? Oh, there are none? Then just call it what it is — the best built.
I realize these are subtle nitpicks to some, but I get tired of these blanket statements that make it seem to some customers out there that there is an equivalent or even better build quality out there somewhere. There’s not. And these reviewers, had they any balls, would write what they know is true.
Agreed its purely so as not to upset competitors and their advertising (and freebie) dollars.
Gotta keep the marketing guys appeased. <- Disgusting.
He did not say there were better built tablets. He said that it was one of the best built.
Perhaps a subtle nitpick.
Instead of it is the best built.
You cannot empirically state that the iPad is the best built because you, nor the reviewer, has set the criteria for what best built means.
A product reviewer would never say unequivocally something is the best without the data.
Oh, wait, this is the net. where all intelligence dies.
what do you call a good writer on the Internet? Lost.
Exactly. No testicles.
Here’s an example. Let’s say that BMW came out with a consumer car that could go 20 mph faster than any other on the market.
Both of these statements are true:
• The new BMW sports car is the fastest consumer vehicle on the market today.
• The new BMW sports car is among the fastest consumer vehicles on the market today.
Both are true, eh? But which one is of better service to consumers?
This is often why school teachers won’t give perfect test scores to students… giving 9/10 instead of 10/10, for example. As good as the results may be, there will always be something that is, or could be, just a bit better. Then there is the “persian flaw” theory, where only God can be perfect. “One of the …” is just “weasel words”, like “virtually”, commonly used to express the best seen that they know of, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t something out there that is better that they haven’t seen yet. There are no facts to support that something is the best, unless there is reasonable evidence to the contrary. It’s a way of “softening the force of a potentially loaded or otherwise controversial statement through some form of understatement”.
He goes on to say that the higher cost of the iPad mini is not justified in comparison to cheaper tablets. More of that cheaper-is-better mantra that gets repeated in a drone like fashion by the media. I don’t want Apple products to be as cheap as everything else. In the race to the bottom, everyone loses – just ask Michael Dell. He knows a thing or two about appealing to the lowest common denominator.