Gadgetory

hey this is Josh from the verge and we're taking a look at the new iPad Mini which is a smaller iPad the new version has a 7.9 inch display versus the nine point seven inch display of the iPad 2 third generation and now fourth generation iPad the display is also lower in resolution it's 1024 by 768 which is the same resolution as the original iPad in the iPad 2 it's got two colors there's a black version which looks kind of like the black of the iPhone 5 and then a white silver version the black coating is actually has this weird reflective quality that sometimes it looks a little bit blue it's very cool the device feels really good in your hands it's extremely well made it feels really solid but it's super thin and super light because it's as thin and light as it is it can be a little bit hard to hold sometimes it doesn't have a very thick bezel on the sides so it's a little bit awkward holding it with one hand with your thumb over the front of the screen and it is extremely wide for a single hand to hold in fact most of the time I use the Smart Cover that Apple makes for it because it makes it a little bit thicker and a little bit easier to hold with a single hand the screen itself looks really nice the the display looks very close to the surface of the glass and the black levels and colors are really rich I will say that after using it for a while and reading on it you do start to notice that the pixel density here is lower than competing devices it is not a deal-breaker but some people who are very sensitive about how many pixels they see on screen may be distracted by it as I mentioned the bezel along the sides is smaller and apparently the software on the iPad Mini does a better job of rejecting unwanted touches I think it worked fine most of the time though I did feel like some app may have experienced a little bit of miss touching otherwise the software is as you would expect exactly like an iPad there's nothing really different about the software at all here it's running iOS 6 the one thing you will notice is that because the screen is smaller things are smaller on it but it does take some getting used to the keyboard feels a bit smaller for instance in portrait it seems like it should be a little bit taller in landscape it's actually a bit easier to use because of the way you can grip the tab of course because it is just an iPad it runs all of the iPad software and I would say that's the biggest strength of this device in comparison to anything else on the market there's just an enormous selection of apps and they run really well on it inside the device there is an a5 CPU which is actually an older generation processor but performance seemed pretty decent games worked well and almost everything started up quickly there were a few graphically intensive games that were larger that took a little bit longer to start up and I would have liked but in comparison to an iPad 2 they were certainly on par the device I tested had Wi-Fi but Apple's going to be making LTE versions as well and of course like every other iPad there's a variety of storage sizes you can get 16 all the way up to 64 gigs the iPad Mini starts at a not super cheap $329 and you can get it Specht up all the way to six hundred and fifty nine dollars that's a 64 gig version with LTE I think the price is actually really telling about how Apple thinks about this kind of tablet I don't know if they're looking at it as a super cheap version of the iPad I think that they are looking at it as a different version of the iPad in fact when I talked to Phil Schiller at the event for the announcement of the iPad Mini he said as much to me this is not a product that Apple thinks is cheap they just wanted to offer an alternative version of the iPad the Nexus 7 retails for $200 at the low end and for most consumers $129 gap is actually a pretty big golf so I think the question when considering the iPad Mini isn't do you want the iPad Mini or the Nexus 7 or some other cheaper tablet it's do you want the iPad Mini or a bigger iPad