The Apple iPad Mini Retina is a bit of a let-down when you compared it alongside the Kindle Fire HDX and the Nexus 7 in benchmark tests. Recently AnandTech put the tablets through their paces using the Marco Arment image retention test. This showed that the Apple iPad Mini Retina didn’t have any retention and the colour gamut had not been improved upon since last year. The tablet came in at bottom place out of the three.
There is a display of indium-gallium-zinc oxide on the Apple iPad Mini retina display, which can be compared to the Nexus 7 and the low temp poly silicon display or the Kindle Fire HDX and the Quantum dots. Dr Ray Soneria tested the three tablets using the following benchmarks.
“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.” He said that the Apple iPad Mini offers the highest resolution along with the largest ppi, however it has just 63% colour gamut. The other two have 100%. Dr Soneria pointed out that:
“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.”
So this tells us that the inferior of the three tablets is the Apple iPad Mini. This is surprising as the Apple iPad Mini retina is the most expensive of the three tablets. Apple have always been thought of as being the market leader for innovative and high end displays. However it was said that “Two innovative Tablet manufacturers, Amazon and Google, have significantly leapfrogged Apple by introducing Tablet displays using LTPS (in the Kindle Fire HDX 8.9 and the new Nexus 7), and they are significantly outperforming the IGZO and a-Si displays in the current iPads. Apple was once the leader in mobile displays, unfortunately it has fallen way behind in both Tablets and Smartphones. This should be a wakeup call…”
CNET also pointed out that the Apple iPad Mini Retina is nowhere as good as the Apple iPad Air. The Apple iPad Air offers full SRGB coverage, this happens to be the same as what is found on the MacBook Pro and the Apple iPad Mini Retina. It was also pointed out that there was skewing in the blue, red and magenta of the Apple iPad Mini Retina along with a lot of reflection. The Apple iPad Mini Retina display was down on brightness by 30% of the Nexus 7. Anyone wanting to watch films on the tablet would therefore be better off with the Kindle Fire HDX or the Nexus 7.
