Monday, November 5, 2012

DisplayMate: Apple’s iPad mini offers ‘just a very capable display’


“The iPad mini has finally arrived,” Dr. Raymond M. Soneira reports for DisplayMate Technologies. “Apple has made displays their most prominent marketing feature because they determine the quality of the visual experience for everything on a Tablet or Smartphone - including Apps, web content, photos, videos, and its camera. So how good is the display on the iPad mini? And how does it compare to the displays on the leading Amazon Kindle Fire HD and Google Nexus 7 Tablets? And how does it compare to the displays on the full size iPads?”



“Pixel resolution has been the number one topic of discussion for the iPad mini - both before and after launch. Many people were expecting a Retina Display like the new iPad 3, but that would have required a 326 Pixels Per Inch display with more than 4 times the screen area of the iPhone 5. That is currently out of the question for both cost and manufacturing volume and yield since it would need to be Low Temperature Polysilicon. Given that Apple has been sticking with either 1024×768 or 2048×1536 iPad displays for compatibility reasons, that meant the iPad mini had to be 1024×768 with 163 Pixels Per Inch. But that's now considered to be rather on the low side,” Soneira reports. “While the display PPI and pixel Resolution seem to get most of the attention, it is the display's Color Gamut together with the Factory Display Calibration (below) that play the most important role in determining the Wow factor and true picture quality and color accuracy of a display... While the iPad 2 and iPhone 4 had reduced 61-64 percent Color Gamuts, the Amazon Kindle Fire HD and Google Nexus 7 both deliver a much larger 86 percent Color Gamut, and the new iPad 3 and iPhone 5 have full 100 percent standard Color Gamuts. So it was a surprise and a major disappointment for the iPad mini to arrive with an antiquated smaller 62 percent Color Gamut.”



Soneira reports, “Apple has been a leader in accurate display calibration - the new iPad 3 and iPhone 5 have among the best and most accurate factory calibrations we have ever measured in a consumer product, including high-end HDTVs. The iPad mini follows that tradition - it has an accurate White Point and a very accurate Intensity Scale, except for a 5 percent compression near the Peak Intensity... The iPad mini is certainly a very capable small Tablet, but it does not follow in Apple's tradition of providing the best display, or at least a great display - it has just a very capable display.”



Read more in the full article here.



MacDailyNews Take: If you’re looking for the very best displays in smartphones, tablets, and portable media players, Apple offers them with iPhone, iPad (4th gen.), and iPod touch (5th gen.). Apple also offers a very portable iPad mini at an affordable price that grants users full admittance into the unmatched iOS ecosystem with a screen area that’s 35% larger than 7-inch also-rans.


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