Apple iPad mini with Retina Display: Reviewed
by Anand Lal Shimpi on November 16, 2013 8:00 AM ESTBattery Life
Thanks to the mini’s integrated 23.8Wh battery (and the low idle power of the 28nm A7), the Retina Display’s power consumption is more than offset. Battery life in all of our tests is at worst unchanged from the mini, but at best we’re talking about a 21% increase.
Our web browsing test shows a 10% improvement compared to the original iPad mini. The new mini with Retina Display can even last longer than a 4th generation iPad, and it’s hot on the heels of the iPad Air (I'll be updating this section with LTE and LTE hotspot results).
Video playback is where we see the biggest improvement compared to the original mini. Here the new iPad mini lasts 21% longer on a single charge, once again outlasting even the iPad 4. The iPad Air doesn’t offer any appreciable gain in battery life over the Retina mini.
Our 3D battery life test is the only one where the old mini manages to beat the new Retina model. With a 1.31% margin of victory though, it’s pretty safe to say that for current 3D gaming workloads you’ll see similar battery life out of the Retina mini as the old model. This is also the only test where the iPad Air delivers better battery life on a single charge (~11%).
Apple ships the Retina mini with a 10W USB charger and lightning cable. This appears to be the same charger as what shipped with the 3rd generation iPad (but obviously with a different cable). Using the newer 12W charger from the iPad 4/Air has no impact on charge time as the mini still only draws a maximum of 11.7W at the wall (compared to 13.8W for the iPad Air).
The iPad mini with Retina Display completes a charge from 0 to 100% in a sliver under 4 hours. That’s a little quicker than the iPad Air, and similar to the original mini with its 5W charger.
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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