Gadgetory

it is time at long last to unbox the iPad Mini or as we call it around here the unicorn let's check it out have some other tablets for comparison the iPad Mini as you know is a 7.9 inch tablet every 29 this is a light box I've heard people's overwhelming responses to it seem to be our reviewers saying that it is very light really unexpectedly light getting from it so far no time to waste this box is light this is startling and it's with all the packaging okay Oh chicken wow that is a lightweight tablet it seems like it weighs about as much as an iPhone here's our packaging Kasich air this one does come with the power brick which is nice to see unless you already have a bunch of them there's a move away from power bricks that is environmentally motivated and in some cases I'm in favor of that but still it's kind of useful lightning connector and that's pretty much it a little bit of a construction stuff in here I assume let's get to the tablet so it's thinner let's hold up the old iPad for comparison here we'll do a screen comparison later but here's the size difference between these two guys pretty distinct it's a little bit thinner than the old iPad it makes this thing feel like about a 60 pound brick I mean you feel like you can't believe you were carrying around this clunk this is like possible you have kind of a nice matte black back here now it is wider than some of the true 7 inch tablets here's a nexus 7 by comparison the Kindle Fire HD of course is about this wide and as you know I'm not a huge fan of this size it makes it a little bit hard to hold you can with one hand but after a little while you're gonna get the dreaded seven inch tablet hand cramp all right but let's turn it on we do have some physical buttons on the side and of course power up here while we wait for it to power up and do some setup let's get to the specs the iPad Mini starts at $329 for the 16 gig Wi-Fi version and it goes up from there the max you could pay is 659 dollars for the 64 gig model with LTE the iPad Mini comes in two colors black and white or silver slate and black slate it is 5.3 inches wide and points to eight inches thin it's seven point eight inches tall and it weighs point six eight pounds the display is a 7.9 inch LED backlit multi-touch display it's IPs and the resolution is a somewhat disappointing 1024 by 768 not only is that not a Retina display it's actually worse than both the Nexus 7 and the Kindle Fire HD both of those are 1280 by 800 this is also the first iPad with dual stereo speakers so it should sound pretty good for movies and games it has a dual core a5 processor that's the same as the iPad 2 it obviously runs Apple iOS and it has the new lightning connector there are two cameras the front-facing FaceTime camera takes 1.2 megapixel photos and 720p HD video the rear camera is a 5 megapixel camera for taking photos battery life should be pretty good if it's anything like the original iPads up to 10 hours of surfing on Wi-Fi is what Apple States so the iPad Mini look if you have an iPad or an iPhone with a Retina display and then you go look at this thing it's gonna bug you and $329 is not a lot to pay for an iPad considering that the last ones were 500 but I don't feel like this is a great value I think the size the weight and the apps are wonderful and it's probably gonna be a great seller but I would say that it's probably worth waiting these six to eight months no more than a year before they release this model with a Retina display for the exact same price you know what's gonna happen hold out if you can