What was Apple smoking?
Apple's new iPad mini has been rubbished after a detailed test by DisplayMate Technologies. Raymond Soneira said that the iPad Mini's display is not Apple's best display effort and is behind theits main rivals the Google Nexus 7 and Amazon Kindle Fire HD. Soneira wrote that the displays on existing mini tablets from Amazon and Google outperform the iPad mini in most of his lab tests.
He added that the tablet falls short of Apple's own high standards, set by the gorgeous Retina displays on the last two generations of 9.7-inch iPads, iPhone 4/4S, iPhone 5, and Retina MacBooks. The iPad Mini has a 1,024x768 resolution with a pixel density of 163 pixels per inch (ppi) which is now considered to be old hat. The Nexus 7 and Kindle Fire HD are both rated at 216 ppi.
Screen reflectance on the iPad mini "is a surprisingly high" nine percent. On the Nexus 7 the reflectance is a much lower 5.9 percent, while on the Kindle Fire HD it is 6.4 percent. This means that the iPad mini reflects 53 percent more ambient light than the Nexus 7 and 41 percent more than the Kindle Fire HD.
Soneira dismissed the iPad Mini's "antiquated" small 62 percent Colour Gamut. The Kindle Fire HD and Google Nexus 7 both deliver a much larger 86 percent colour gamut. And the iPad Mini compares even more unfavourably with iPad 3 and iPhone 5, which have full 100 percent standard Colour gamuts.
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