Gadgetory

how do googles and Apple's miniature tablets compare I'm Taylor Martin this is PocketNow and this is the 2013 Nexus 7 versus the iPad Mini with Retina display believed by many to be a nice balance of additional utility over a smart phone and more Portability than a full sized tablet smaller tablets are all the rage when two companies with very different philosophies such as Apple and Google create their own miniature tablets the outcome is to vastly different slabs which barely exist in the same category for example the new Nexus 7 and iPad Mini with Retina display are these tablets worth your cold hard cash which is the better Buy let's find out to be blunt these two tablets have practically nothing in common and the series of disabilities begins with the design and build quality it's not that the 2013 Nexus 7 isn't built well it is but just as our own michael fisher explained in his in-depth review of the smaller Nexus 5 the hardware is understated and for good reason the matte finish plastic feels nice and the narrow bill paired with tapered edges makes the tablet quite easy to hold with one hand well there isn't anything particularly impressive or mind-blowing about the design the Nexus 7 feels solid and it's built exceptionally well the latest iPad Mini like last year's model is as high quality as ever the chamfered edges along the front machined rolled speaker grille and aluminum backside easily make it the best built small tablet to date Apple took care with the design and paid close attention to detail at 200 millimeters tall both the Nexus and iPad are the exact same height but the iPad is notably wider and more squared 20.7 millimeters wider making the Nexus 7 much easier to Palm which also means it's far more likely to slip into a pant or jacket pocket the iPad is a bit thinner 7.5 millimeters thick as opposed to the 8 point 7 millimeter thickness of the Nexus 7 yet due to the more premium materials the mini hits the scales at 41 more grams than the Nexus on the inside the differences are even more abundant Apple's iPad Mini comes with practically the same internals as its larger sibling the iPad air it bears the a7 chip set a 1.3 gigahertz dual-core CPU in a quad-core GPU 1 gigabyte of RAM 5 megapixel camera and 4 storage capacity options 16 32 64 and 128 gigabytes running the show is a 23 point 8 watt hour battery the Nexus 7 comes with a Snapdragon s4 pro at 1.5 gigahertz quad-core Krait 300 CPU with an Adreno 320 GPU double the RAM a 5 megapixel camera and two storage options 16 or 32 gigabytes it's 39 50 million power battery is rated at 15 watt hours of course the Nexus 7 also comes with Wi-Fi AC and NFC support while the iPad Mini does not both however support Bluetooth 4.0 the displays while they differ in size and resolution are remarkably similar in density and type the Nexus 7's display as the name suggests is a 7 inch 1920 by 1200 pixel resolution IPS LCD the I've had minis 7.9 inch IPS LCD display there's a resolution of 2048 by 1536 pixels and their respective densities based on the same calculations are 323 and 324 pixels per inch the Nexus 7's display appears to be more heavily saturated and brighter while the iPad minis display sports higher contrast and maybe a hint of deeper blacks frankly the more important factors separating these displays are size and utilization the iPad minis display is obviously larger but it also makes better use of those pixels considering a quarter inch of the bottom of the display on the Nexus 7 is dedicated to on-screen buttons hardware is quite easily summed up by saying the iPad Mini is unquestionably one of the most premium filling tablets around the Nexus 7 also feels great in the hand but there is a rather large margin separating the two in the end we've got to hand it to both apple and a SUSE for creating such premium pieces of hardware though the iPad Mini is quite clearly built better both of these tablets come running the very latest software from both Google and Apple respectively the iPad Mini with Retina display ships with iOS 7 with its newer more fresh appearance and a handful of notable new features such as control center the improved task switcher menu and slightly more useful Notification Center the Nexus 7 as of yesterday is now running Android 4.4 KitKat which brings improved performance fullscreen immersion mode printing framework full SMS integration with hangouts and emoji support as a Nexus device it provides the absolute purest form of the Google experience with pure unadulterated Android exactly as Google intended the software between these tablets believe it or not has quite a few similarities for example quick access to settings toggles pull down on the top right portion of the display on the Nexus 7 and swipe up from the bottom edge of the display on the iPad Mini double click the home button or perform a four finger swipe up to access task switching on the mini switch apps on the Nexus by pressing the dedicated recent apps button long press the home button on the mini to access Siri or swipe up over the virtual home button on the Nexus 7 for Google now that said they sport their fair share of differences as well the iPad still uses a grid of icons and folders for its home screen which grows old quickly and can't become cumbersome to navigate with too many apps on the Nexus 7 you're given five home screens out-of-the-box for organizing your applications and widgets yet you can always refer to the application drawer for an alphabetical list of all apps not only that you also have access to glanceable information through home and lock screen widgets you can also share pictures and other data between various applications and even between other NFC enabled devices simply by tapping them together both the iPad and Nexus come with cloud backup services voice controlled digital assistant services expansive digital content libraries and the most impressive application catalogs in the mobile space most will argue there's still more dedicated content or tablet apps for the iPad Mini but in the 7 to 8 inch tablet space the lack of tablet optimized applications is far less serious than with full-sized tablets at the end of the day what it comes down to is personal preference we have several iPad only applications that were drawn to yet we prefer the more optimized and advanced software on the Nexus 7 performance is an area where both of these tablets excel the dual-core CPU in the a7 chip as we found in both the iPhone 5s and iPad air reviews is great it provided a fluid consistent experience with the air and in a short time with the iPad Mini with Retina display things seem to be just as great applications open without hesitation task switching happens the instant you four fingers swipe between apps etc the tablet performs consistently through lightweight everyday tasks as well as heavy graphic intensive stuff such as gaming and multimedia playback the same goes for the Nexus 7 with the performance improvements brought with project butter and the latest Android update our short time running KitKat on the Nexus 7 has been impressive we've had no notable trouble with any lag or freezing and the tablet has been incredibly quick to respond to user input its performance in gaming has been great as well though the two were much more comparable in real-world performance the iPad Mini ran circles around the Nexus 7 in the SunSpider JavaScript test and other benchmarks speaker performance is a nearly even trade-off between these two tablets the iPad Mini offers a more full sound with a more notable low-end but the location of the speakers especially in landscape creates a sound bias to one side the Nexus 7 speakers are located at opposite ends of the tablet and are quite difficult to accidentally cover though they don't sound as full they're louder and provide a true stereo experience we haven't quite had the iPad Mini long enough to thoroughly comment on battery life so stay tuned for the full review for more info on that we can however recall that the iPad minis battery is rated at 23.8 watt hours to the Nexus 7's 15 watt hour battery the Nexus 7 is a tablet you will likely have to charge every day with heavy usage or maybe every other day on light usage if the new mini lives up to the iPad standard it should muster around 10 hours of usage and only need to be charged every day and a half to three days depending on your usage cameras on tablets admittedly aren't the most important feature of the five megapixel cameras on the back side of these two tablets it's pretty clear which is the winner while the new Nexus 7 provides a wider field of view it's quicker to overexpose and provide significantly less detail in certain scenarios the iPad Mini provides more true to life colors but our contrasts and airs on the warm side whereas the Nexus tends to provide cooler less welcoming images neither tablet is great at image sensing but we were to pick a winner it would definitely be the iPad Mini if we take all of this information and add it up we're still missing one key factor which above all else rules this comparison price the 16 gigabyte iPad Mini starts at $399 plus tax jumping $100 per storage option up to $6.99 for LTE connectivity simply add 130 dollars to each model meaning it can go as high as 829 dollars the Nexus 7 starts at just $229 for 16 gigabytes 32 gigabytes is only $40 more and the most expensive Nexus 7 32 gigabytes with LTE retails for 349 dollars that means the most expensive Nexus 7 is cheaper than the least expensive iPad Mini and there's much to be said for that a soos and Google have created a tablet which is comparable in almost every way to Apple's premium iPad Mini yet sell it for a fraction of the price in the end if you're an iOS fan or have a hankering for the uttermost premium small tablet money can buy the iPad Mini is a no brainer there is a virtually endless supply of content and optimized apps and games if instead you're after the absolute best bang for your buck there is no better tablet value currently out there than the 2013 Nexus 7 period that's gonna wrap up this comparison if you enjoyed the video let us know by clicking the thumbs up button below and subscribing to the channel leave comment if you have a question or suggestion and give us a follow 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