Apple iPad mini with Retina Display: Reviewed
by Anand Lal Shimpi on November 16, 2013 8:00 AM ESTCamera
The iPad mini with Retina Display features the same 5MP iSight rear facing camera and 1.2MP FaceTime HD camera as the iPad Air. Both are quite good for a tablet, aided by iOS’ excellent camera UI and the A7’s high performance ISP. The cameras also benefit from the same dual-mic setup of the iPad Air. I won’t talk too much about quality here as it’s no different than the Air, which I've already gone over in greater depth.
| Rear Facing Camera Comparison | |||||||
| Sensor | Resolution | Aperture | Focal Length | ||||
| Apple iPad Air | 5MP | 2592 x 1936 | f/2.4 | 3.3mm | |||
| Apple iPad 4 | 5MP | 2592 x 1936 | f/2.4 | 4.3mm | |||
| Apple iPad 3 | 5MP | 2592 x 1936 | f/2.4 | 4.3mm | |||
| Apple iPad 2,4 | 0.7MP | 960 x 720 | f/2.4 | 2.0mm | |||
| Apple iPad mini | 5MP | 2592 x 1936 | f/2.4 | 3.3mm | |||
| Apple iPad mini (Retina) | 5MP | 2592 x 1936 | f/2.4 | 3.3mm | |||
| Front Facing Camera Comparison | |||||||
| Sensor | Resolution | Aperture | Focal Length | ||||
| Apple iPad Air | 1.2MP | 1280 x 960 | f/2.4 | 2.15mm | |||
| Apple iPad 4 | 1.2MP | 1280 x 960 | f/2.4 | 2.18mm | |||
| Apple iPad 3 | 0.3MP | 640 x 480 | f/2.4 | 1.8mm | |||
| Apple iPad 2,4 | 0.3MP | 640 x 480 | f/2.4 | 1.8mm | |||
| Apple iPad mini | 1.2MP | 1280 x 960 | f/2.4 | 2.2mm | |||
| Apple iPad mini (Retina) | 1.2MP | 1280 x 960 | f/2.4 | 2.15mm | |||
WiFi & Cellular
The iPad mini with Retina Display inherits the same Qualcomm MDM9615 modem and 2-stream dual-band 802.11n from the iPad Air. The move to 2-stream 802.11n more or less doubles peak WiFi performance compared to last year’s mini. The mini's peak WiFi performance is pretty close to that of the iPad Air as well.
Lately I’ve really begun to appreciate the flexibility offered by tablets equipped with cellular modems. Especially now that it’s not terribly expensive to add a tablet to a shared data plan (or even free), the $130 LTE adder for the iPads is something worth seriously considering. The convenience of being able to pull out your tablet, wake it up, and immediately hop on the web/check email/tweet/etc… is awesome. Qualcomm's MDM9615 is a well known quantity at this point. I didn't run into any issues with its performance on the iPad mini.
| iPad Cellular Speeds | ||||||
| Property | iPhone 3G/3GS/iPad 1 3G | iPhone 4 / iPad 2 (GSM/UMTS) | iPhone 4 / iPad 2 (CDMA) | iPad 3 | iPad 4/iPad Mini | iPad Air/iPad Mini w/Retina |
| Baseband | Infineon X-Gold 608 | Infineon X-Gold 618 | Qualcomm MDM6600 | Qualcomm MDM9600 | Qualcomm MDM9615 w/RTR8600 |
Qualcomm MDM9615 w/WTR1605L |
| Max 3GPP Release Feature | Release 5 | Release 6 | Release 7 | Release 9 | Release 9 | Release 9 |
| HSDPA Category | Cat.8 - 7.2 Mbps | Cat.8 - 7.2 Mbps | N/A | Cat. 24 - 42 Mbps | Cat. 24 - 42 Mbps | Cat. 24 - 42 Mbps |
| HSUPA Category | None - 384 Kbps WCDMA only | Cat.6 - 5.76 Mbps | N/A | Cat.6 - 5.76 Mbps | Cat.6 - 5.76 Mbps | Cat.6 - 5.76 Mbps |
| EVDO | N/A | N/A | 1x/EVDO Rev.A | 1x/EVDO Rev.A | 1x/EVDO Rev.A | 1x/EVDO Rev.A |
| LTE | N/A | N/A | N/A | 100/50 UE Cat. 3 | 100/50 UE Cat. 3 | 100/50 UE Cat. 3 |
The new iPad mini, like the iPad Air, is extremely flexible from a mobile operator standpoint. Regardless of what operator you choose at the time of purchase, you can switch to others as long as you have an activated nano SIM (there’s apparently an exception for Sprint, but AT&T/T-Mobile/Verizon should all be easily switchable). The unlocked nature of the device makes it ripe for global use, especially with support for a total of 14 LTE bands (1,2,3,4,5,7,8,13,17,18,19,20,25 and 26).
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
345 Comments
View All Comments
kyuu - Saturday, November 16, 2013 - link
Bay Trail tabs seem to be charging $50 to go from 32GB to 64GB (32GB upgrade). While still more of a premium than it really should be for cheap eMMC NAND, it's a helluva lot better than the $100 for 16GB to 32GB (16GB upgrade) Apple is sticking with.Daniel Egger - Saturday, November 16, 2013 - link
And which *premium* devices are you talking about? The 2 different vendors offering different memory configurations with BayTrail are Asus and Toshiba. Both are not premium and yet Toshiba is asking 50€ to go from 32GB to 64GB and ASUS even 80€ for the same. Dell, HP and Lenovo only offer one configuration at the moment.Anywhoo, while Apple is not cheap they're by far not the most expensive (see HTC, but there're other examples as well) and they're very consistent in their pricing and go all the way up to 128GB.
kyuu - Saturday, November 16, 2013 - link
Huh? I didn't use the word "premium" in the context of a device being nice or not, so I don't know why you're bringing it up that way. The build quality of many of the Windows tabs are equal to, if not better than, the iPad anyway.I'm actually not aware of any Win8.1 tabs that don't have different memory configurations, and none of them charge $100 for 16GB of NAND, or even for 32GB of NAND. I don't understand what you're trying to get at. I couldn't care less if Apple goes up to 128GB of NAND when they're charging $300 for ~$20 worth of NAND.
Also, it's certainly not "consistent" to charge $100 for 16GB of NAND, then $100 for 32GB of NAND, then $100 for 64GB of NAND.
akdj - Sunday, November 17, 2013 - link
These aren't SanDisk Best Buy SD cards they're shipping. Look at the pricing on decent flash memory, IE, CompactFlash. All manufacturers using real NAND are paying many more dollars than 5 per doubling of capacity. Probably with Windows, the OS and it's bloat take UP all the NAND....and I'm not sure the world you're living in, but there's not a single Win8.1 tablet that comes close to the build quality....of even the earliest of iPads. The new Air and rMini....works of engineering art. Top shelf. Doesn't get ANY better. Certainly not Win 8.1 tablets. Sorry.Morawka - Sunday, November 17, 2013 - link
Nand at these capacities is dirt cheap. Think of how many 16GB chips are in a 128GB Consumer SSD? 8 of them. And the ssd's MSRP is $119 and included in that cost is a storage controller, casing, PCB, and of course, NAND.When you pay for a apple nand upgrade, your just paying for more nand, period.
kwrzesien - Monday, November 18, 2013 - link
Your right, they pay WAY more. BOM increase for 32GB over 16GB is $13! That's over double $5!/s
RadarTheKat - Monday, November 18, 2013 - link
And how much is the Surface keyboard, without which the device is not very usable? Talk about gouging your customers!Puberticus - Saturday, November 16, 2013 - link
Ever bothered to see what the speed of those chips are? I think you'll be shocked. Apple isn't shipping crap.kyuu - Monday, November 18, 2013 - link
I've looked before and haven't been able to find any reports about the speed of the NAND Apple uses, since, y'know, there's no way to benchmark it on Apple's locked-down and functionally gimped OS.Regardless of whether it's good NAND or not, it's still $5-$10 worth of NAND.
Morawka - Sunday, November 17, 2013 - link
Here in America going from a HTC One 32GB to a HTC One 64GB is only $70 more. The 64GB version was supposed to be a AT&T Exclusive from my understanding. Just view their website if you dont believe me.Whoever your buying from is gouging prices. lol