[telecom] Review: Apple's Retina iPad mini is the small tablet we wanted a year ago

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Review: Apple's Retina iPad mini is the small tablet we wanted a year ago

Great screen and drastically better performance both come at a price.

by Andrew Cunningham Nov 16 2013 Ars Technica

You needed to know two things about the first iPad mini. The first thing is that it was, well, mini-it was a 7.9-inch tablet from a company whose CEO once said that users would have to sandpaper their fingers down to comfortably use anything smaller than a full-size iPad. The second was that it didn't include Apple's so-called Retina display, the high-density screen that by then had become standard-issue in iPhones and iPads.

How quickly we got used to those high-resolution screens! The first Retina iPad came out in March of 2012, and in our review of the first mini, we already had trouble going back to a non-Retina display. With this year's iPad mini, Apple addressed our complaints, bestowing upon the tablet a Retina display and removing the single largest roadblock to iPad mini ownership.

How does the new Retina iPad mini stack up compared to excellent, cheap Android tablets like the 2013 Nexus 7? And where does it stand next to Apple's other thin-and-light tablet, the newly svelte iPad Air?

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