iPad Mini Retina Unboxed – Impresses With Screen And Benchmarks

Sohaib Ahmad

The iPad Air's smaller brother released on 12th November unboxed here. Although it has a smaller screen and the overall impact is 'tinier' than its big brother, the iPad mini retina by no means fails to impress. It is Powered by the same processor which is ticking inside the iPad Air and the iPhone 5s.

Unboxing Pictures And Benchmarks Of The iPad Mini Retina

Apple's signature box with minimal description and simple in nature.

ipad mini retina

The speaker grill and the lightning port

The iPad Mini Retina in all its Glory

ipad mini retina

The iPad mini retina has a significantly smaller footprint than its bigger brother. The iPad Air's screen looks quite big in comparison. Also with the high 2048 x 1536 resolution, the ppi of the mini retina comes out to be 326 which is well within the "Retina" standard and well above the 264 ppi of the iPad Air.

Although it was previously rumored that the iPad mini retina will be carrying half a gig of Ram, now its confirmed via a teardown.

Now for some benchmarks.

The iPad mini retina is hot on the heels of the iPad air, even though they share the same processor the iPad mini retina's clock speed is 100 mhz slower than its big brother. The performance difference is clearly seen in the Single core comparison.

We see the same situation with the multi core benchmark. Just because of the clockspeed difference there is a slight difference between the iPad Air and the mini retina.

The performance difference is negligible to influence any real life performance variation between the two iPads. The new mini retina's score nearly five times when compared with its predecessor. The old mini puts out an abysmal 493 compared with a 2486 of the iPad mini retina, the difference being majorly because of the new A7 chipset.

We learn from iFixit's teardown that the display of the mini retina is manufactured by LG and the battery capacity is bumped up from 16.3 Watt hour of the previous iPad mini to 24.3.

The new iPad mini is a worthy Tablet, worthy enough to be called "Good". It is good in every aspect except the price. The Nexus 7 2013 albeit having a slightly smaller screen is available for almost $150 less.

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