Gadgetory

last year Apple released its first smaller tablet the iPad Mini it admittedly wasn't its best work but this year it's upgrading the iPad Mini with a Retina display and better internals is it worth the upgrade or the extra cash I'm Taylor Martin this is PocketNow and this is our full review of the Apple iPad Mini with Retina display externally the iPad Mini looks virtually identical to its predecessor it bears the same exact design and it's even the same width and height however it is marginally thicker and heftier 0.3 millimeter sticker in about 23 grams more we assume to accommodate for the new display and larger battery the speakers Lightning port camera placement and every last external detail has been left untouched with the exception of one thing an additional microphone on the back side near the top edge as far as hardware concerns go there's practically nothing to complain about the new iPad Mini is unbelievably thin lightweight and fills as premium as any other high-end tablet out there but what about its internals those aren't half bad either if you recall the specifications from our iPad air review the new iPad Mini spec sheet is practically a duplicate of its larger siblings it features the same a 7 chipset which is composed of a 1.3 gigahertz dual-core CPU with a quad core GPU one gigabyte of RAM a 5 megapixel rear camera 1.2 megapixel front shooter and 4 storage options 16 32 64 and 128 gigabytes the battery keeping the show running is rated at 23.8 watt hours and finally the resolution of its 7.9 inch display has been improved from 1024 by 768 pixels to 2048 by 1536 pixels quadruple the resolution or double the density at 324 pixels per inch the Retina display is leaps and bounds better than last year's iPad Mini display which was noticeably washed out pixelated and subpar in many ways this time around the display is incredibly sharp colors could pop a little more but the contrast is passable and black levels are fairly inky beside the larger iPad air however it's easy to see the display is not quite as saturated that's not to say the iPad minis Retina display is bad by no means is it but can parrot of Lee speaking it's clear to see the color simply aren't as vibrant as you may be used to seeing if you're coming from a full-sized iPad the iPad Mini is the most well built high-end tablet under 8 inches period of course it comes running the very latest software from Apple iOS 7 we've covered iOS 7 extensively in previous reviews and walkthroughs so we won't waste too much time here we will say however that the software is very fitting on this tablet more so than the full-sized iPad air there are a lot of ways iOS could be further improved such as a split screen view for simultaneous use of 2 apps or more but the new interface is refreshing the multi-touch gestures make task-switching incredibly fast and intuitive and the amount of content available is practically endless there are literally hundreds of thousands of applications made for iPads as well as countless books movies television shows games magazines and other content which more to make up for the shortcomings of iOS all the improvements of iOS 7 are welcomed but with competition like the Galaxy Note series which allows for true multitasking it's clear Apple cannot rest on its laurels unlike the previous model which was clearly underpowered the performance on the iPad Mini with Retina display is buttery smooth like we found with the iPad air in iPhone 5s reviews the a7 chip on the iPad Mini is powerful the dual-core CPU and the quad-core GPU make the new mini markedly better than its predecessor for gaming and other graphic intensive stuff such as multimedia playback and constant task switching it's quick at just about everything you throw at it and its performance in various benchmarks was exactly what we expected comparable to the iPad air speaker quality is passable but we have some issues with primarily the location of the speaker this as with the air is questionable unlike many other tablets which offer two stereo output which is great for multimedia playback without headphones yeah I've had many speakers are divided around the Lightning port in landscapes this makes it incredibly easy to muffle set speakers to the palm of Japan and even when you're not muffling the speaker's the sound is unbalanced and comes from only one side of the tablet this is still one of those sore points in the minis design battery life on the other hand is eight the increased display resolution and power called for a larger battery which Apple increased from sixteen point three to twenty three point eight watt hours as per usual Apple claims the iPad Mini will survive ten hours of usage and in our testing we can confirm the battery life on the iPad Mini with Retina display is as great as ever we only had to charge the new iPad Mini every other day even through days of unusually heavy usage gaming benchmarking multitasking web browsing and much more it is possible to fully drain the battery in a single day but it takes intent most will survive a day and a half with no problem the camera on the new iPad Mini isn't terrible the rear image sensor offers a max resolution of 5 megapixels in great lighting conditions it provides passable images which unfortunately offer more noise and artifacts than most recent high-end smartphones will still have low contrast they're often dull and then often err on the warm side and the camera is quick to overexpose and the dynamic range could certainly be better video quality on the other hand is great colors are more true to life and the audio is decent though pans are a bit on the jittery side in all the iPad Mini with Retina display is everything we wanted in a remake of the original the only factors we can even begin to complain about other slightly washed out display the speaker location and price truthfully to complain about the display is pedantic it's super sharp and we only notice the difference in saturation when it was beside other tablets the speaker placement is also a minor issue and starting at $400 in climbing $100 per capacity model and another $130 for LTE connectivity the price isn't terrible after all this miniature tablet features the same exact specifications as the iPad air and it's base price is $100 cheaper frankly we think the iPad Mini with Retina display is great and for that we give it a 9 point 2 out of 10 thanks for watching everyone that's going to wrap up this review if you enjoyed it let us know by clicking the thumbs up button below drop a comment if you have any questions or suggestions and be sure to subscribe to the channel to see more videos like this one in the future and videos from the rest of the PocketNow crew be sure to follow us in all the usual places twitter google+ and facebook at pocket now I'm Taylor Martin you can find me on twitter at casper tech and i will see you next time