Recently there was a comparison made of the Apple iPad Mini 2 against the Kindle Fire HDX and Nexus 7 2nd gen. What may surprise some people is that the Apple tablet came out last as it was said that colour gamut hadn’t changed since the original version and it didn’t have image retention.
The Apple iPad Mini 2 offers an indium-gallium-zinc oxide display, while the Nexus 7 2nd gen comes with the polysilicon display and the Kindle Fire HDX has the Quantum dot display. When Dr Ray Soneria did tests he tested for “Objective Picture Quality, Absolute Color Accuracy, Screen Reflectance, High Ambient Light Display Performance, Peak Brightness, Contrast Ratio, Image Contrast Accuracy, Viewing Angle Performance, Display Power, and Battery Running Time.”
The Apple iPad Mini 2 did have the highest ppi and resolution but its colour gamut was just 63%, this was the same as on the original Apple iPad Mini.
The Nexus 7 2nd gen and the Kindle Fire HDX both came out ahead with 100% when it came to the colour gamut. This was around the same as that found on the Apple iPad 3 and 4. Dr Soneria said:
“The new Google Nexus 7 has a very impressive display that uses the highest performance LCDs with Low Temperature Poly Silicon LTPS. The very high efficiency LTPS technology allows the new Nexus 7 display to provide a full 100 percent Color Gamut and at the same time produce the brightest Tablet display that we have measured so far in this Shoot-Out series.
Most impressive of all is the Kindle fire HDX 7 – the first Tablet display to use super high technology Quantum Dots, which produce highly saturated primary colors that are similar to those produced by OLED displays. They not only significantly increase the Color Gamut to 100 percent but also improve the power efficiency at the same time. Quantum Dots are going to revolutionize LCDs for the next 5+ years.
And finally… the iPad mini with Retina Display unfortunately comes in with a distant 3rd place finish behind the innovative displays on the Kindle Fire HDX 7 and new Nexus 7 because it still has the same small 63 percent Color Gamut as the original iPad mini and even older iPad 2.
That is inexcusable for a current generation premium Tablet. The big differences in Color Gamut between the Kindle Fire HDX 7 and Nexus 7 and the much smaller 63 percent Gamut in the iPad mini Retina Display were quite obvious and easy to see in the side-by-side Viewing Tests.”
CNET thought that the quality of the Apple iPad Mini 2 was not as good as that of the Apple iPad Air. The latter has the same SRGB as found on the iMac Pro and MacBook. There were also deviations of red, blue and magenta on the Apple iPad Mini 2, while the screen was also said to be reflective. It was also shown that the screen offered 30% less light than what was seen on the Nexus 7 2nd gen. The conclusion was that if anyone wanted to watch movies they should go for the Kindle Fire HDX or the Nexus 7 2.
