Review: iPad Mini charms with design and finish, but screen is a letdown

NEW YORK, N.Y. - I bet the iPad Mini is going to be on a lot of wish lists this holiday season. I also bet that for a lot of people, it's not going to be the best choice. It's beautiful and light, but Apple made a big compromise in the design, one that means that buyers should look closely at the competition before deciding.

Starting at $329, the iPad Mini is the cheapest iPad. The screen is a third smaller than the regular iPads, and it sits in an exquisitely machined aluminum body. It weighs just 11 ounces — half as much as a full-size iPad — making it easier to hold in one hand. It's just under 8 inches long and less than a third of an inch thick, so it fits easily into a handbag.

The issue is the screen quality. Apple has been on the forefront of a move toward sharper, more colorful screens. It calls them "Retina" displays because the pixels — the little light-emitting squares that make up the screen — are so small that they blend together almost seamlessly in our eyes, removing the impression that we're watching a grid of discrete elements.

The iPad Mini doesn't have a Retina screen. By the standards of last year, it's a good screen, with the same number of pixels as the first iPad and the iPad 2. The latest full-size iPad has four times as many pixels, and it really shows. By comparison, the iPad Mini's screen looks coarse. It looks dull, too, because it doesn't have the same colour-boosting technology that the full-size model has.

This is not an entirely fair comparison, as the full-size iPad starts at $499 and weighs twice as much. The real issue is that this year, there are other tablets that are cheaper than the iPad Mini, weigh only slightly more and still have better screens.

Amazon.com Inc.'s Kindle Fire HD costs $199 and has about the same overall size as the Mini. While the Kindle's screen is somewhat smaller (leaving a bigger frame around the edges), it is also sharper, with 30 per cent more pixels than the Mini. Colors are slightly brighter, too.

Barnes & Noble Inc.'s Nook HD costs $229 and has a screen that's even sharper than the Kindle HD's. It's got 65 per cent more pixels than the iPad Mini.

Why do tablets from two companies chiefly known as book stores beat Apple's latest for screen quality?

Sharper screens are darker, requiring a more powerful backlight to appear bright. That, in turn, would have forced an increase in the battery size. That's the reason the first iPad with a Retina display was thicker and heavier than the iPad 2. So to keep the iPad Mini thin while matching the 10-hour battery life of the bigger iPads, Apple had to compromise on the display.

This can't last, though. By next year, it will likely be even more obvious that Apple is seriously behind in screen quality on its small tablet, and it will have to upgrade to a Retina display somehow. That means this first-generation iPad Mini will look old pretty fast.

The display causes a few other problems, too. One is that when you run iPhone apps on the Mini, it uses the coarsest version of the graphics for that app — the version designed for iPhones up to the 2009 model, the 3GS. You can blow the app up to fill more of the screen, but it looks pretty ugly. The full-size iPad uses the higher-quality Retina graphics when running iPhone apps, and it looks much better.

Some apps adapted for the iPad screen don't display that well on the Mini screen, either, because of the smaller size. Buttons can be too small to hit accurately, bringing to mind Steve Jobs' 2010 comments about smaller tablets. The late Apple founder was of the vociferous opinion that the regular iPad was the smallest size that was also friendly to use.

In some apps, text on the Mini is too small to be comfortably read — the section fronts in The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal apps are examples of this.

Of course, in some other respects, the iPad Mini outdoes the Fire and the Nook, so it isn't just the tablet for the buyer who needs the prettiest and the thinnest. In particular, the Mini is a $329 entry ticket to the wonderful world of iPad and iPhone apps. For quality and quantity, it beats all the other app stores. (Oddly, there's an inverse relationship between screen quality and app availability in this category — the Nook HD has the best screen and the fewest apps, while the second-best Kindle Fire HD has middling access to apps.)

The Mini also has front- and back-facing cameras, for taking still photos and video and for videoconferencing. The Kindle Fire HD only has a front-facing camera for videoconferencing. The Nook HD doesn't have a camera at all.

In short, the iPad Mini is more versatile than the competition, and I'm sure it will please a lot of people. But take a look at the competition first, and figure that by next year, we'll see something from Apple that looks a lot better.

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Peter Svensson can be reached at http://twitter.com/petersvensson

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About the iPad Mini:

The base model of the iPad Mini costs $329 and comes with 16 gigabytes of storage. A 32 GB model goes for $429 and 64 GB for $529. Soon, you'll be able to get versions that can connect through cellular networks, not just Wi-Fi. Add $130 to the price.

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Hands-On With The EZseal iPad Screen Protector

It's not as nice as naked, but the EZseal is as close to Fetherlight as you can get

I love to use my iPad 2 almost bareback, With nothing but the Smart Cover to protect it. This is, however, the gadget equivalent of wearing a t-shirt with no pants or underwear, and offers about as much protection in the outside world.

A few screen-gashes later and I was happy to accept GreatShield’s EZseal screen protector. I usually hate screen protectors, but — despite some problems — this one turns out alright.

First, fitting. The GreatShield claims to be bubble free, and it is. This is done by making only the black, bezel-covering edges sticky. The central section is a mere window onto the screen. You can reapply as many times as you like, and also wash the sheet. Once you get it placed properly so the holes line up with the camera, home button and ambient light sensor, you should be good to go. If you have any “bagginess” in the cover, readjusting eliminates it.

The cover actually feels a little nicer than the screen, or at least a little easier for the finger to glide over. And it does an admirable job of protection. The edges don’t peel away, and I have been tossing my iPad plus Smart Cover into a crowded bag with no problems.

No problems, that is, until last Friday night. I’m not sure when it happened, or how, but in the morning I saw a big, deep scar across the iPad’s screen. Then I realized that the EZseal had taken one for the team, and the screen itself was unscathed.

It’s not perfect, though. The model I tested was the anti-glare version. This cuts down on light transmission. Inside, you only notice this as a slight lowering of contrast when watching movies. Outside, it also scatters sunlight making the screen much harder to see. There is also a pixelly pattern in the protector, although you get used to this fast.

It’s a compromise, but a good one. I will probably buy myself a glossy version, and although the freshly-polished screen of the iPad will always look nicer than any prophylactic, protection is often the more sensible option. The only rub is the price. At $50, you can find cheaper versions that work the same way. And yes, I know that Amazon is selling it for $18, but we list MSRPs here.

Overall, recommended, especially if you get a good price. Available in black or white. One aside: Is it me, or is the iPad 2 screen significantly more susceptible to scratches than the original?

GreatShield EZseal product page [Amazon]

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<b>iPad</b>: Bigger Screen Means More Profit for Developers: Apple «

A new report says people are willing to pay more for iPad apps than they are for those that support only the iPhone, and the gap may be growing. The average price for an iPad app has risen 14.5 percent in the last six months, while the average iPhone app has only experienced a 2.3 percent rise.

The average selling price of an iPad app is just under $5, and that number grows to $5.80 for those found in the top 100 paid apps list. On the iPhone, the average app sells for just above $4, and when you look at the top 100, that number drops to only $2.14. That makes successful iPad apps 171 times more expensive than their iPhone equivalents.

The iPad has only about 13 percent of the total 300,000 apps available in the App Store, with 37,887 titles as of this writing. And only 7 percent of titles are universal, meaning they work on both devices. So while the volume business isn’t quite there yet, and it’s early yet to make any definitive pronouncements, it does seem like iPad owners are willing to spend more on apps than those carrying iPhones.

I know I feel more comfortable spending $9.99 or more on apps for my iPad. The difference in screen size accounts for some of this, which is tied to an increase in usability on the Apple tablet. Also, since the iPad exists somewhere between a smartphone and a computer, I feel comfortable paying prices for software somewhere between what I expect to pay on either platform.

Given that users seem willing to pay more for the iPad, and given that investment in the development process seems to be about the same for apps for both it and the iPhone, I think we’ll see a lot more interest in the platform. We’ve already seen that devs and publishers are keen on providing iPad offerings, and if the device really does sell as much as many are saying it will next year (subscription required), I think iPad-specific apps could see way more growth than anticipated in 2011.

If you’re an iPad owner, are you willing to pay more for apps for your tablet than you would for the iPhone or iPod touch? And if you’re a developer, is iPad development an attractive option because buyers are willing to pay more?

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