At a glance, Apple’s new Apple iPad mini is much like its old iPad mini. From a physical stand point it looks and feels almost identical to its predecessor and, software wise, it runs the same operating system and apps as well.

But while the latest generation iPad mini may fool your eye, it won’t fool your Retina. Terrible pun aside, we’ve had the opportunity to put the latest version of Apple’s diminutive tablet, and its upgraded Retina display, through its paces to find out whether it’s worth making the upgrade.

Design

Last year’s iPad mini was an introduction to Apple’s new design language for its tablets. A single piece of highly polished and smooth aluminium, in either Space Grey or Silver, forms the body of the iPad mini, with the only blemishes coming in the form of buttons, ports and logos.

As with the first generation iPad mini, thin bezels flank the display on either side, with larger ones on the top and bottom housing a familiar round ‘Home’ button and the FaceTime camera.

A combination of rounded edges and the relatively compact 7.9-inch display make the Retina iPad mini a pleasure for one-handed use. It’s an especially useful trait for those who love reading books, browsing through web pages or skimming their social media feeds while doing other menial tasks.

Hardware

In the last six months Apple has managed to create a near-homogeneous hardware environment with its new iPads and to a large extent even the iPhone.

While their displays differ in size, both the 7.9-inch Retina display in the iPad mini and its larger 9.7-inch counterpart in the iPad Air, share a display resolution of 2048×1536.

They both have dual-band 802.11n WiFi with MIMO (multiple input, multiple output) for faster connection speeds and low energy Bluetooth 4.0 to connect to peripherals. They even use the same five-element lens over the same 5 megapixel rear and the same 1.2 megapixel front cameras to handle imaging duties

And to power the iFamily, the latest processor from Apple, called the A7, along with the same 1GB of RAM that you would find in an iPhone 5s, although the iPad Air’s A7 does differ slightly.

Software

Being the latest generation of hardware from Apple means that the Retina iPad mini runs the latest version of Apple’s mobile operating system.

The most recent updated to iOS7.1 fixed the minor irritation we had with the tiny button to clear notifications, but on the whole iOS still feels like it was built for the iPhone and just ported across to the iPads without optimising it first.

Small things like the app switcher, which works well on an iPhone’s smaller display as a linear carousel of previews, feels stunted on an iPad. Surely the extra screen real estate would be better used to show four apps simultaneously.

It’s only because the Retina iPad mini is such a polished product in every other way that such an insignificant niggle with the software has become one of my largest gripes. However it’s because of the near perfection of the rest of the package that we expect that extra layer of polish from Apple here too.

Display

The Retina display in the iPad mini forms such a large part of the upgrade in this generation that it even warrants a mention in the product’s name.

At 324 pixels per square inch (ppi) the pixel density in the 7.9-inch Retina display in the iPad mini is almost an exact match for the 326ppi found in the iPhone’s famed Retina display. Just as the iPhone’s display makes it nearly impossible to distinguish individual pixels from each other, the iPad mini’s display is a seamless display ocean of pixels.

Apple has a knack for assembling products with fantastic LCD displays in them and the Retina iPad mini’s display is just as exceptional. Colours are bright and balanced without having any of the harshness that sometimes creeps into displays when you increase the brightness.

Speaking of brightness, while the display has no problem in ratcheting up the brightness to combat direct sunlight, you will definitely notice your reflection staring back at you along with all of your fingerprints, which forced us into a mild OCD wipe down of the iPad mini every time we walked outside.

Camera

While Apple does tout the fantastic pictures you would get from the iPad mini’s new 5 megapixel iSight camera and accompanying five-elements-lens, we found them to be average at best.

With the quality of the cameras in Apple’s iPhones, and most other higher end smartphones these days, taking pictures with your tablet should be a last resort. If you’re in a pinch and there is decent enough lighting, the iPad mini with Retina display won’t serve you with bad photos, but they won’t be great either.

Battery life

Apple has built its range of iPads on the, now standard, ten hours of battery life. From the very first iteration of the iPad in 2010 every single iPad has had impressive battery life for the average user and the iPad mini with Retina display is no different.

Even with the 4x increase in the number of pixels in the display, Apple managed to retain the 10-hour battery life with a combination of a 50% increase in battery size over its predecessor, as well as the massive power-saving abilities of the new Apple A7 processor.

Browsing the web, reading mail and scrolling through social media made little to no observable dent in the battery life of the iPad mini. Even streaming video over a WiFi network or watching YouTube took little toll on the tablet’s battery life.

Heavy 3D gaming was the only thing that managed to give the iPad mini’s battery any trouble and, even then, it was still able to outlast our casual hour-long gaming stints with more than 75% of its charge intact.

Conclusion

The iPad mini with Retina display is simply the best tablet we’ve ever had to review. It offers a combination of fantastic design, build quality, performance and battery life that we seldom see in competing tablets.

Although you could argue that the iPad Air offers much the same as its smaller brethren, it’s the more compact form factor and easy single-handed use that gives the iPad mini with Retina the edge.

It will take a lot of work for another tablet to unseat the Retina iPad mini from its place atop the tablet world.

[symple_box style=”boxinfo”]

Detail

Price: From R4 999
Display: 7.9 inche IPS LCD display, 1536 x 2048 resolution, 324 ppi
Memory: 1GB
Storage: 16/32/64/128GB
Camera: 5 megapixel iSight rear, 1.2 megapixel FaceTime front camera
Networking: Dual-band 802.11n, Bluetooth 4.0, LTE (Cellular models)

[/symple_box]