iPad mini Ipad Mini Very Nice -- 45 Year Old Eyes, not.

[jdag]

My problem with the mini is not about font size, screen resolution, holding it closer, getting glasses, blah blah blah blah...

It is simply too small FOR ME. I love the look and feel. I love the weight. It is just too small for ME to COMFORTABLY and NATURALLY read.

I can use it, I can read it, I can scroll, I can zoom, etc. But I cannot use it in a similar manner as the full sized iPad because it in fact has a smaller screen.

I believe that is all the OP was saying, and I am not quite sure why some people are considering it a troll post or disagreeing. It is a fact...the mini is smaller and might not be for everyone!

 

[CandyNJ66]

46 here and I concur that the text is just not sharp enough. I have astigmatism in my eyes, so I am thankful I went with the iPad 4. I can read text without a problem without my eyes feeling tired. I need that big screen especially for Netflix!

10 years ago, I probably wouldn't have cared about the SD screen vs the Retina screen but times change. Lol

 

[penlost]

Download Perfect Browser and enable "override font size."

Awesome tip, thanks

 

[mattopotamus]

My problem with the mini is not about font size, screen resolution, holding it closer, getting glasses, blah blah blah blah...

It is simply too small FOR ME. I love the look and feel. I love the weight. It is just too small for ME to COMFORTABLY and NATURALLY read.

I can use it, I can read it, I can scroll, I can zoom, etc. But I cannot use it in a similar manner as the full sized iPad because it in fact has a smaller screen.

I believe that is all the OP was saying, and I am not quite sure why some people are considering it a troll post or disagreeing. It is a fact...the mini is smaller and might not be for everyone!

Same. It's not the text size...size I can enjoy text just fine on my iPhone 5....it's the clarity.

 

[OSMac]

Same. It's not the text size...size I can enjoy text just fine on my iPhone 5....it's the clarity.

At default zoom/size in safari ,
yes the text looks worse than on a retina screen, but once I zoom so its a readable size it looks fine...

 

[mattopotamus]

At default zoom/size in safari ,
yes the text looks worse than on a retina screen, but once I zoom so its a readable size it looks fine...

It definitely makes it look better, but then I am scrolling like a beast. IMO, right now the iPad is still the better buy and very future proof. If the mini goes retina next time around no doubt I will get it. However, since an iPad it basically a PC to me I need that better screen.

 

[AJsAWiz]

Aging

Yep, "reading vision" deteriorates with age. What ever controls the lens which allows the adjustment between near and far doesn't work well in our later years. Therefore older people have difficulty with small print. Reading glasses or bifocals help here Anyway, with my glasses (progressive lens) I have no problem seeing my iPad Mini's screen or any other small print or small objects.

If one has vision difficulties the iPad Mini may not be for them. Perhaps a larger display like another iPad with a larger screen or a desktop computer with a large screen would be more helpful.

I realize that I might get some flak for this post. Hope I didn't offend anyone as that was not my intent.

Oh, I do know that small (for what ever reason) just doesn't work for some people. It's nice to have a choice. That's probably why the iPad 4 was introduced alongside the iPad Mini.

 

[maflynn]

I have astigmatism, and poor eye sight, compounding that problem is my eyes are again and I now need reading glasses.

With that said I found the mini to be fine for general use. Like anything else, say book, paper, magazine, larger tablet. I either need to put on my reading glasses.

My point here is, the text is fine, even for 40+ eyes, in so far that its really no different then a book. Sure a larger tablet or a retina tablet helps the user a bit more but for me I still need my reading glasses regardless of what I use to read.

 

[Blue Sun]

I checked out the iPad mini today. Whilst the size and weight of the device was wonderful, coming from an iPad 3rd generation, the screen was just not up to par. To me, it was very pixelated, and I therefore would not even consider purchasing one until the PPI is improved.

The retina display in it's bigger brother has spoilt it for me completely.

 

[powerbooks]

Compare yourself

iPad mini, iPad 3, and Galaxy Note on web texts.

All zoomed in to nearly the width of their own screen.

Granted, the Note has a terrible screen protector, but the sharpness of the text can still be used for comparison.

 

[drsox]

iPad mini, iPad 3, and Galaxy Note on web texts.

All zoomed in to nearly the width of their own screen.

Granted, the Note has a terrible screen protector, but the sharpness of the text can still be used for comparison.

Excellent post !! Shows clearly to me the superiority of the iPad 3.
I also have bad eyes (bifocals) and have even had to give up using a normal PC display (iMac, TBD etc) as my eyes don't adjust well between bifocals (used for MBA and iPad) and unifocals (used for iMac and TBD). So I expect to have a problem with the iPad Mini when it arrives chez moi. Most likely I'll RMA it and swap for the iPad 3.

 

[Quantus]

I've found Perfect Browser to make web browsing tolerable. However, ios is littered with small text that cannot be adjusted. For example when you click on an app in the store for more info, the text that pops up is barely readable.

 

[cyrways]

The is definitely an issue that apple did not properly deal with when choosing to just reuse the 10 inch iPad resolution and apps. Everything is just shrunk to 7.9 from 9.7. This is different from android which offers a resolution independent interface and is also aware of pixel density and screen size. 7 inch tablets will render apps differently than 10 inch tablets. They will increase the font size to adjust to the higher ppi. Apple really made a gigantic mistake when they designed iOS without considering the fact that screen sizes and resolution differ between devices. You never have to deal with black bars or pixel doubling on Android. Unfortunately these problems are very real on iOS and its also what dictated apple from not being able to use a higher resolution screen I'm the mini.

A good example of what I am talking about is to compare the nexus 7 and the Xoom running the same app. They both have the same resolution yet the nexus 7 is aware that its pixel density is 216 vs around 160 in the Xoom. It therefore renders its elements larger as the actual pixels are smaller. This is all handled seemlessly in android. Do not think of it like iOS where developers specifically have to address device resolutions.

Very insightful post and balanced, thanks!

 

[WilliamLondon]

Imagine a world where people have different experiences than you. Imagine that. After imagining this, is everyone still a troll?

To actually assert and think that the Retina screen isn't compelling and much better... which is sort of implicit in your posts, if anybody's trolling, it's you.

Nice rant. Feel better now? And thanks for inferring incorrectly, gist and specifics both. You're off to a roarin' good start here I see, welcome.

 

[jon3543]

If it's good for you then great. But facts are facts. The Mini has very low ppi and this is reality. This explains why text is fuzzy and the screen pixelated. This, in addition to the flood of "Retina" displays on the market now. Screens with ppi that humans can't discern individual pixels on them.

No small tablet has a "Retina" display today, not the Mini, not the Kindle Fire HD, and not the Nexus 7. The Nook HD comes closest at 243 PPI, but it's still not there. In portrait orientation, when displaying a web site like cnn.com, which is scaled to fit horizontally, the effective resolution of the 7" 16:10 216 PPI tablets is only about 170 PPI as compared to the 7.85" 4:3 Mini's 163 PPI. Rotate to landscape, and the 7" tablets improve to about 202 pixels, while the Mini stays the same. But the Mini's text is bigger, as it always is, partially offsetting the improvement in the others, and the Mini can display more of the page thanks to its squarer aspect ratio. I talked about this more in an earlier message in this thread and explained what I meant by "effective resolution" and how I came up with those numbers.

My take from trying all these tablets is that for relatively large text as is the default in iBooks, the Mini is fine. It is only for insanely small text as you see on full-size web pages like cnn.com where it suffers, but they all suffer. To be readable and usable in terms of clicking on links, I have to rotate to landscape and/or zoom them, as the screens are simply too small physically for that application. It's an inherent limitation, and increasing PPI doesn't solve it.

That said, this is a fast-moving market, and if I were Apple, I'd hope to get the Retina Mini out by summertime. In another thread, I talked about "pinching in" to shrink cnn.com down to Mini size on a Retina iPad, and at the larger 7.85" 4:3 Mini size, the iPad's 264 PPI still looked pretty darn good. A 7" 16:10 tablet would need 264/.79 = 334 PPI to look as good at rendering web pages at their standard size. Apple already has that density in the iPhone and Touch, so the technology is there for the using...

 

[hugesaggyboobs]

No small tablet has a "Retina" display today, not the Mini, not the Kindle Fire HD, and not the Nexus 7. The Nook HD comes closest at 243 PPI, but it's still not there. In portrait orientation, when displaying a web site like cnn.com, which is scaled to fit horizontally, the effective resolution of the 7" 16:10 216 PPI tablets is only about 170 PPI as compared to the 7.85" 4:3 Mini's 163 PPI. Rotate to landscape, and the 7" tablets improve to about 202 pixels, while the Mini stays the same. But the Mini's text is bigger, as it always is, partially offsetting the improvement in the others, and the Mini can display more of the page thanks to its squarer aspect ratio. I talked about this more in an earlier message in this thread and explained what I meant by "effective resolution" and how I came up with those numbers.

My take from trying all these tablets is that for relatively large text as is the default in iBooks, the Mini is fine. It is only for insanely small text as you see on full-size web pages like cnn.com where it suffers, but they all suffer. To be readable and usable in terms of clicking on links, I have to rotate to landscape and/or zoom them, as the screens are simply too small physically for that application. It's an inherent limitation, and increasing PPI doesn't solve it.

That said, this is a fast-moving market, and if I were Apple, I'd hope to get the Retina Mini out by summertime. In another thread, I talked about "pinching in" to shrink cnn.com down to Mini size on a Retina iPad, and at the larger 7.85" 4:3 Mini size, the iPad's 264 PPI still looked pretty darn good. A 7" 16:10 tablet would need 264/.79 = 334 PPI to look as good at rendering web pages at their standard size. Apple already has that density in the iPhone and Touch, so the technology is there for the using...

First... I never said everyone had a Retina screen. However, the Nexus 7 and Fire HD 7 have 216 ppi, 54 more than the Mini. It's noticeable and people have commented in many reviews about how nice these mod size tablets screens are.

Second, every review I've read about the Mini they all mention the screen with some disappointment. Even fanboy Gruber is turned off from it.

Further, there are actually Retina tablets out there. The Nexus 10 is 300 ppi better than the iPad 3/4. The 8.9 Fire Hd is also Retina at 254 ppi.

And no, things on the Mini are not bigger. Everything is scaled down which is a source of its major problem. Go read up on the problems in iOS with supporting multiple screen sizes and resolutions. There's no easy answer other than just to have never done the Mini at all. At least not until Apple gets iOS in order and the right ppi down for the 7.9 screen

And yes ppi is the answer: increasing it. But you oversimplify it. You also need to scale up your content... so things are close to if not the exact same physical size (e.g., buttons) just packed with more pixels.

That's how Apple pulled off the Retina MBP. The scale up... Everything on screen is the EXACT same size as non-Retina MBP but on the Retina they're packed with more pixels and things are way sharper. They wrote an algorithm to do this.

Nexus 7 and Android do some scaling too and it's nice. Mini doesn't. And the problem here is that its pixel density is far too low with how small everything is scaled: not enough detail.

 

[jon3543]

First... I never said everyone had a Retina screen. However, the Nexus 7 and Fire HD 7 have 216 ppi, 54 more than the Mini. It's noticeable and people have commented in many reviews about how nice these mod size tablets screens are.

I guess you didn't understand what I wrote about effective resolution. It's not as simple as 216 > 163. None of these tablets look good when viewing full-size web pages like cnn.com. They all need to be rotated to landscape and/or zoomed to make them pleasant to read and possible to operate their tiny links.

Second, every review I've read about the Mini they all mention the screen with some disappointment. Even fanboy Gruber is turned off from it.

Yeah, so? I've also talked about the screen with some disappointment. I've just put it in some perspective by relating it to the current competition, and I also wrote that if I were Apple, I'd want to get a Retina Mini out by summertime, and I explained why.

Further, there are actually Retina tablets out there. The Nexus 10 is 300 ppi better than the iPad 3/4. The 8.9 Fire Hd is also Retina at 254 ppi.

Yeah, so? The first sentence in my post was, "No small tablet has a 'Retina' display today, not the Mini, not the Kindle Fire HD, and not the Nexus 7." You just listed a couple of non-small tablets. Jeez, the Nexus 10 is even bigger than the big iPad! And there you are again comparing numbers without thinking about them. The difference between 264 PPI and 300 PPI will be visually negligible for just about everything. It's just more pixels to push.

And no, things on the Mini are not bigger. Everything is scaled down which is a source of its major problem.

Again, you're not understanding what you're reading. I was very specifically talking about web pages like cnn.com that are scaled to fit horizontally, which is the main thing that looks truly bad on these small tablets. As the Mini is wider than its 7" competitors, everything in this scenario is larger on the Mini. You should go locate these tablets in stores and try it.

There's more to reply to, but this is getting quite tiresome, so I will stop now.

 

[hugesaggyboobs]

I guess you didn't understand what I wrote about effective resolution. It's not as simple as 216 > 163. None of these tablets look good when viewing full-size web pages like cnn.com. They all need to be rotated to landscape and/or zoomed to make them pleasant to read and possible to operate their tiny links.



Yeah, so? I've also talked about the screen with some disappointment. I've just put it in some perspective by relating it to the current competition, and I also wrote that if I were Apple, I'd want to get a Retina Mini out by summertime, and I explained why.



Yeah, so? The first sentence in my post was, "No small tablet has a 'Retina' display today, not the Mini, not the Kindle Fire HD, and not the Nexus 7." You just listed a couple of non-small tablets. Jeez, the Nexus 10 is even bigger than the big iPad! And there you are again comparing numbers without thinking about them. The difference between 264 PPI and 300 PPI will be visually negligible for just about everything. It's just more pixels to push.



Again, you're not understanding what you're reading. I was very specifically talking about web pages like cnn.com that are scaled to fit horizontally, which is the main thing that looks truly bad on these small tablets. As the Mini is wider than its 7" competitors, everything in this scenario is larger on the Mini. You should go locate these tablets in stores and try it.

There's more to reply to, but this is getting quite tiresome, so I will stop now.

Yes, in that sense, the Mini can have more content on its screen than 7"ers because it's bigger, but the actual elements on the screen are an issue with the ppi it has... and that's because of scaling... putting more content on the screen doesn't always mean a better experience. You're just cramming more in, but things aren't necessarily getting larger.

I just played with the Mini again for 10 minutes doing comparison shopping and I just can't endorse this thing. I don't even want to use it I find the screen to be so bad.

You know what's sad? I like the Nexus 7 better and that's not saying much: I don't really like the Nexus 7 and I hate Android. But its screen is yards better than the Mini's.

I hate this because I love the size of it. Lots of potential here. Let me guess, in 6 months Apple will come out with iPad Mini 2 with Retina.

 

[Spellman Jones]

Returned It.

I bought the black 32g iPad mini today. I wanted the 16g, but BestB was out of those.

A friend from work went with me and he bought the same. He is 40 years old.

We both took them in to work with us after lunch. Everyone wanted to play with it, so I passed it around the room. The general consensus was that it was great.

I don't have a problem with it being non-retina. It probably would be awesome if it was, though.

While I cannot find a real gripe with it, I think it is going back tomorrow.

At 45 years old, I have 20/20 distance and supposedly 20/20 near, but something is really wrong here. I am having a heck of a time adjusting to the size of the print.

I compared it to my iphone 3gs and iPad 1. I don't have high expectations with the 3GS, so I accept the small print. The iPad 1 appears to be smallest size tablet that is acceptable for my eyesight. My macbook pro 13" is fine too.

I think a 7" device of any size is probably going to be too small for me to read comfortably.

Again, nothing against the iPad mini. I wish I could keep it but I could feel the eyestrain with 5 minutes.

Anyone else, with tired old eyes, notice the same thing?

Well, I returned the mini this afternoon. I played around with it a dozen times during the 24 hour period. I just never felt comfortable with the screen.

Someone called me a troll because I started this thread. Funny, I have an airport express b/g/n, iPhone 3GS, Macbook Pro 13" Summer 2012, iPad 1, iPod Gen2, Ipod Video 4th Gen, Mac Mini Core Solo, Mac Mini Core Duo -- but I am a troll.

Then the conversation turned to discontent about it not having retina. None of the products I mentioned above were ever made with retina displays. I've never owned a mac product with a retina screen.

I'm not a troll, nor do I hate non-retina products. I really like the iPad Mini. But, for some reason (probably my eyesight), I kept getting a mild dizzy feeling using it. I cannot explain it. I played Fairway Solitaire for an hour on my iPhone 3GS today while waiting for my wife and I didn't get that dizzy feeling.

I think the iPad mini will be a big seller and I hope everyone enjoys it. I was just looking for input on whether my experience was singular or shared. From the comments, like everything in life, some noticed what I did, others did not. I does appear to be something more noticeable among middle-aged people.

When I returned it to BestB, I did go look at the iPads again. I guess I'll be buying an iPad 4 soon. The iPad 1 that I own is becoming unusable with Safari crashing about 40-50% of the time nowadays. Fairway Solitaire for iPad crashes, too. That was the reason I decided to get a new iPad.

Anyway, thanks for most of the comments.

 

[Dlanod]

Well, I returned the mini this afternoon. I played around with it a dozen times during the 24 hour period. I just never felt comfortable with the screen.

Someone called me a troll because I started this thread. Funny, I have an airport express b/g/n, iPhone 3GS, Macbook Pro 13" Summer 2012, iPad 1, iPod Gen2, Ipod Video 4th Gen, Mac Mini Core Solo, Mac Mini Core Duo -- but I am a troll.

Then the conversation turned to discontent about it not having retina. None of the products I mentioned above were ever made with retina displays. I've never owned a mac product with a retina screen.

I'm not a troll, nor do I hate non-retina products. I really like the iPad Mini. But, for some reason (probably my eyesight), I kept getting a mild dizzy feeling using it. I cannot explain it. I played Fairway Solitaire for an hour on my iPhone 3GS today while waiting for my wife and I didn't get that dizzy feeling.

I think the iPad mini will be a big seller and I hope everyone enjoys it. I was just looking for input on whether my experience was singular or shared. From the comments, like everything in life, some noticed what I did, others did not. I does appear to be something more noticeable among middle-aged people.

When I returned it to BestB, I did go look at the iPads again. I guess I'll be buying an iPad 4 soon. The iPad 1 that I own is becoming unusable with Safari crashing about 40-50% of the time nowadays. Fairway Solitaire for iPad crashes, too. That was the reason I decided to get a new iPad.

Anyway, thanks for most of the comments.

I'm with you on all this. I've had every iPad generation that has come out and this year was looking for something smaller pending iPad Mini. S I bought a Nexus 7 and have been delighted with it. Yes it's plastic and JB is slick but still not as slick as iOS but it was a perfect size. Ordered 2 Mini's at 08:01 when they came on sale and received it on Friday at 14:30. I was so dismayed with the screen that I boxed it up and had arranged a return, cancelled the second one by 15:00. I went to an Apple Store later that day and picked up a 16GB 4th generation iPad. Night and day. So I'll use the Nexus for ultra portable until Apple improve the Mini screen.

 

[MacDarcy]

Ok...This is my situation. I need contacts for distance. My close eyesight is perfect when not wearing contacts. But recently, i noticed that when i wear contacts, my close distance sometimes gets fuzzy. I have the ipad first gen, and sometimes i have to increase text to avoid eyestrain.

I ordered the 64 gig white cellular iPad mini on the first day and am still waiting for it. I began to worry about the screen size, so I spent a couple of hours at the Apple store yesterday foolin around with the iPad mini, and this is my opinion.

I LOVE it.

With my contacts in, I experienced ZERO fuzziness. I found it easy to read, and easy on my eyes! I don't know what all the talk is about, but to my eyes, it's ALOT sharper and crisper than my first gen iPad. I really did.

I couldn't care less about it not being retina. In fact, I compared a retina iPad and the iPad mini side by side, and to be honest...I felt they were comparable! Seriously. I zoomed the text in on both, and the iPad mini didn't seem fuzzy at ALL. I don't see a diff. I don't see pixels. I see sharp text.

If I had one wish, I wish it had an A6 chip inside. Not because I felt it was slow...but if only to make it more future proof. But that is nitpicking.

This thing is great. The perfect size to carry around. Perfect for one handed use. To be honest, I have big hands. But it also Fits right in my coat pocket or cargo pants pocket....even my jeans back pocket! It's the best of the iPhone/iPod and iPad in my opinion.

I plan to transfer my unlimited AT&T data plan from my first gen to this puppy and use it as a large smartphone! Free VOIP calls everywhere baby!

 

[AJsAWiz]

Ok...This is my situation. I need contacts for distance. My close eyesight is perfect when not wearing contacts. But recently, i noticed that when i wear contacts, my close distance sometimes gets fuzzy. I have the ipad first gen, and sometimes i have to increase text to avoid eyestrain.

I ordered the 64 gig white cellular iPad mini on the first day and am still waiting for it. I began to worry about the screen size, so I spent a couple of hours at the Apple store yesterday foolin around with the iPad mini, and this is my opinion.

I LOVE it.

With my contacts in, I experienced ZERO fuzziness. I found it easy to read, and easy on my eyes! I don't know what all the talk is about, but to my eyes, it's ALOT sharper and crisper than my first gen iPad. I really did.

No problem for me, visually, in moving down to a smaller screen size.

When I wore contacts I had a similar problem. Needed a lens for close up, not for distance. The answer for me: monovision. I wore the close up lens in one eye only. The transition for me was seamless. My eyes automatically adjusted (intuitively knew which eye to focus in any situation). Worked great. I have, since then, transitioned back to regular glasses. I opted for the glasses because they offered improved clarity over the convenience fo contacts.

 

[drsox]

Excellent post !! Shows clearly to me the superiority of the iPad 3.
I also have bad eyes (bifocals) and have even had to give up using a normal PC display (iMac, TBD etc) as my eyes don't adjust well between bifocals (used for MBA and iPad) and unifocals (used for iMac and TBD). So I expect to have a problem with the iPad Mini when it arrives chez moi. Most likely I'll RMA it and swap for the iPad 3.

UPDATE : iPad Mini arrived today. The text on the apps I use is even smaller than on my iPhone5. Too small for me (and on Safari also) so it's going back. Pity.

 

[AppleRobert]

I did not let the display hold me back from keeping the mini. I did try other browser for web pages in portrait mode but just decided to use Safari with landscape. It is like a whole new experience. I could fight with portrait and get use to it and zoom but why if landscape is working out fine?

 

[Ubele]

I'm 53, and I've been very near-sighted since I was a teenager, and have had presbyopia since 40. I need glasses for anything farther from my face than a computer screen, but I don't wear glasses to read books, iPads, etc. I can read tiny text on my iPhone 4 without glasses, and I can make out the pixels on the Retina display if I hold it close enough. While my eyesight might be "perfect" at that distance, I don't enjoy reading books on my iPhone, because my eyes start to feel strained after a while. People are different, so it makes perfect sense that some people would experience eyestrain from reading on the iPad Mini, even if their vision is ostensibly 20/20. They aren't deluded or "wrong."

FWIW, I decided to upgrade from my iPad 1 a couple weeks ago. While the iPad Mini was very nice, and while the screen was as legible to me as that of my iPad 1, the iPad 4's Retina screen was so much nicer. I don't find the full-size iPad too big or heavy, so I bought an iPad 4. It's great not having to zoom in on tiny text, which I had to do on my iPad 1.

So buy whatever works best for you, and ignore the people who tell you you're wrong, crazy, or a troll because they perceive things differently and assume the rest of humanity must be the same as they are.