Although at first sight one would say that the iPad Mini is just an iPad 2 that’s been made smaller, at least when it comes to display things are slightly different. The resolution may be the same, 1024 x 768, but there’s a slight improvement here. The new iPad Mini offers a pixel density of 163 pixels per inch, but under the microscope things get very interesting.
The folks of Repair Labs have decided to test the screen of the smaller iPad and placed all the currently released Apple tablets under a microscope. What they found is that the iPad 2 has much bigger pixels than the iPad 3 and the iPad 4, but the iPad Mini has much smaller pixels than the iPad 2, actually. This means that the image is crisper, as it’s shown above. Even when compared to the iPad 4, the iPad Mini takes the heat well. The source of the comparison is saying that the pixels of the Retina Display are 2/3 of the size of those on the iPad Mini, a very decent achievement.
The idea is simple: the screen is smaller and the pixels are packed more densely and in a more compact way. The image above shows that under the microscope the iPad Mini display achieves smaller pixels compared to the iPad, with the same resolution. iPad 2 has 132 ppi, while iPad Mini has 163. So, at least we’ve got that settled about the Mini…
