MobileRead Forums - View Single Post - iPad Thinking about exchanging iPad 3 for iPad mini

robinson · 01-20-2013, 04:47 PM

Several people have described the iPad Mini's display as "mediocre" or "lousy", but for millions of buyers they are not!

The display is crisp, clear, and readable--and even has more pixels per inch than the non-Retina iPads... and people extolled the great display on the original iPad when it came out.

Furthermore, there were many *blind* test comparisons of iPad 2 and iPad 3s in which the typical person could NOT pick which one had the retina display! I had that very experience at a Best Buy and it was a hoot watching both customers and BB salespeople unable to tell the difference!

Sure, if you blew up the text to a ridiculously large size (a handful or characters or lines on a page), you could see the difference, but for the most typical viewing, many, if not most, people could not distinguish the two--or were not bothered by any differences that existed!

So, while for many people, a non-retina display is a deal breaker, and feel that the screen looks "inferior", it is not an issue for millions of other users-- either in the past or present--either with the first two iPads or the mini!

This just goes to show you how idiosyncratic perception and judgments are.

An empirical issue: One key reason for the difference in perception could be how close people hold the screens to their eyes. I'll bet there's more difference in non-retina and retina displays seen by those who hold the screen closer to their eyes.

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On another matter...

Good Reader is a class act with an incredibly rich set of features. Its ability to resize and reflow text is something that I wish Apple would build into Safari.

01-20-2013, 04:47 PM	#67
robinson Zealot Posts: 142 Karma: 997293 Join Date: Jan 2003	Several people have described the iPad Mini's display as "mediocre" or "lousy", but for millions of buyers they are not! The display is crisp, clear, and readable--and even has more pixels per inch than the non-Retina iPads... and people extolled the great display on the original iPad when it came out. Furthermore, there were many blind test comparisons of iPad 2 and iPad 3s in which the typical person could NOT pick which one had the retina display! I had that very experience at a Best Buy and it was a hoot watching both customers and BB salespeople unable to tell the difference! Sure, if you blew up the text to a ridiculously large size (a handful or characters or lines on a page), you could see the difference, but for the most typical viewing, many, if not most, people could not distinguish the two--or were not bothered by any differences that existed! So, while for many people, a non-retina display is a deal breaker, and feel that the screen looks "inferior", it is not an issue for millions of other users-- either in the past or present--either with the first two iPads or the mini! This just goes to show you how idiosyncratic perception and judgments are. An empirical issue: One key reason for the difference in perception could be how close people hold the screens to their eyes. I'll bet there's more difference in non-retina and retina displays seen by those who hold the screen closer to their eyes. ----------------------------------------- On another matter... Good Reader is a class act with an incredibly rich set of features. Its ability to resize and reflow text is something that I wish Apple would build into Safari. Last edited by robinson; 01-20-2013 at 04:53 PM.