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New iPad mini fails to wow the crowd

by on22 October 2013

Very impressive, very pricey

The iPad mini finally got a Retina display, but it also ended up with a nasty price tag that didn’t get much applause. Gasps were heard as the $399 price tag was announced.

To be honest, it is a massive improvement over the first generation, but the price is still a bitter pill to swallow. It finally has a 2048x1536 Retina display and the mighty A7 SoC is running the show and like the Air it also boasts MIMO and a new 5-megapixel camera.

The iPad mini is up to 4 times faster than original iPad mini 2012, but with LTE it will get cost you $529 which is kind of expensive to say the least. The GPU is up to eight times faster and CPU performance saw a fourfold increase over the original one, with the A5 chip. It should give you 10-hour battery life.

It comes in silver, white, gray and black which is definitely more colour options than the last generation and they even have new fancy covers for it. However, the really fancy leather cover is at $79, as if the $399 price tag wasn’t bad enough. The plastic cover stars at $39. The new iPad mini is already listed in the Apple Store and the 16GB sells for $399, 32GB for $499, 64GB for $599 and finally the 128GB version goes for $699. The celular version for the US market starts at $529 for 16GB, $629 for 32GB, $729 for 32GB and finally $829 for 128GB.

Need we say that $829 is way too much money for an 8-inch tablet?

As a result, the old iPad mini will remain on sale and it gets a small price cut, but it still ends up at $299 which isn’t the price cut many analysts were hoping for. The $249 iPad mini failed to materialize. Even the old iPad mini will cost a lot more than the Nexus 7 and other small Android tablets with HD screens.

The new iPad mini is very impressive, but on the other hand the pricing and the price cut for the 2012 model indicate that Apple has practically ceded the sub-$299 market to Google. In fact, even Windows 8.1 tablets with Bay Trail chips and 1280x800 8-inch displays are available for $299.

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Last modified on 22 October 2013
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