iPad Mini hands-on review

John Gruber at Daring Fireball has published his first thoughts on Apple's 8" tablet. The article is worth reading right the way through, but here are some snippets:

"It’s really light and easy to hold one-handed. The hardware design — chamfered edges, less tapered back, metal rather than plastic buttons — strikes me as better, more elegant, than that of the full-size iPad 3/4."

"But it’s disappointing to go non-retina after using the retina iPad for the last seven months. I adore the size and form factor of the iPad Mini, but I also adore the retina display on my full-size iPad. My ideal iPad would be a Mini with a retina display."

"After a week of using it as my main iPad, the individually discernible pixels are no longer jarring to my eyes. The non-retina resolution is the one and only significant complaint I have with the iPad Mini, and it’s an issue that is only apparent to those of us who already own a nearly-new iPad."

"The Mini weighs less than half a full-size iPad 3 or 4, and the difference that makes is tremendous... it’s just plain fun to hold."

"It also seems optimised for kids. My third-grade son loves the size and weight of the Mini. Reading apps may not be computationally taxing, but games are, and there is no compromise in the iPad Mini’s performance. In both the Geekbench and SunSpider benchmarks, the Mini performs identically to the iPad 3."

"If the Mini had a retina display, I’d switch from the iPad 3 in a heartbeat. As it stands, I’m going to switch anyway. Going non-retina is a particularly bitter pill for me, but I like the iPad Mini’s size and weight so much that I’m going to swallow it."
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