Specs of two small-screen tablet favorites, the iOS-powered iPad Mini with Retina Display and the Android-running Nexus 7 is compared in this review. We review the hardware, OS, and other features of the unit.

Depending on what the consumer needs, the Nexus 7 and iPad Mini with Retina Display can effectively satisfy the demands of a tablet user who prefers screen sizes south of 9-inch displays

According to the Fuse Joplin, though there have been several competitors for the iPad Mini 2 over the years, the Nexus 7 offers is its topmost competition.

Type of User

The iPad mini is a great tablet for those who have already been sucked into the world of Apple. It is most suitable for those who love consuming media, games and checking out various apps available from Apple on their iPhones and Macs. The Nexus 7 on the other hand runs on Android from Google, which means that the user is free to choose between apps from Google or any other Android developers – a freedom not available to iOS users.

Hardware

At first glance, both devices seem to be of the same dimensions. The iPad however, is actually wider making it ideal for reading books or surfing the web but a bit annoying when watching videos. The Mini has an IPS display of 7.9 inches with 2048 by 1536 resolution giving you 326ppi for clear and bright text as well as video. The Nexus 7 has a 7-in screen that’s 1920 by 1,200 resolutions with 323ppi meaning that both tablets give you fantastic displays.

In regards to the body, the iPad Mini is light in weight and comes with a great aluminum back panel with metal edges that are a bit slanted. It feels quite expensive in your hands when compared with the Nexus 7, which albeit not feeling cheap, does not quite deliver. It has a smooth matte finish that does not retain moisture. It does however have the advantage of being easier to handle in one hand in comparison to the wider iPad Mini.

Design has always been a strong point for the iPad line of products for years. The Nexus 7 attempts to overthrow it by featuring a build quality that the Fuse Joplin describes as second to none. Some reviewers note that the Nexus 7’s design is the best in the market, apart from the iPad. The Nexus 7 weighs 290g for the Wi-Fi only version, while the iPad Mini 2, is much heavier at 350g for the Wi-Fi plus 3G variant.

Memory

The iPad Mini 2 does not support an external memory card but there are a lot of alternatives available in terms of internal memory. The entry-level version of the unit start at 16GB but you can spec up the device up to 128GB. On the other hand, the Nexus 7 only offers two alternatives, the 16GB and 32GB internal memory. In a review by the Fuse Joplin, it notes that the lack of external memory card from the Nexus 7 maybe seen as a disadvantage.

Performance

Both the iPad Mini and Nexus 7 come equipped with very fast processors for great performance. They are pretty much the same unless you disable the animation on the iPad Mini to make it run faster. The iPad Mini is better than the Nexus 7 when it comes to the speaker volume and sound quality but the Nexus 7 has better speaker placement. Apple put their speakers on the right hand side while Nexus put a speaker on each side when held in landscape mode.

Operating Systems

The iPad Mini comes with a preinstalled iOS 7 from Apple while the Nexus 7 runs on Android 4.4 (but now with the Android 4.4.4 KitKat available OTA). These are two different systems but with some similarities. The better of the two systems will totally depend on the type of user you are. One great aspect of the Android 4.4 on the N7 is that you are able to set different profiles to allow the tablet to function in different ways depending on the profile chosen. For example, you may have one profile for each member of the family. A great similarity with both devices is that you can use Google Chrome to sync data (e.g. browsing history & contacts) from various devices and locations as long as you use the same account.

One of the biggest advantages that you will have with the iPad is that there are a lot of apps that will launch on it first before (if ever) they come to Android. If you therefore need to have the newest apps as soon as they are released then the iPad is the right choice for you.

Both devices have great media organization features and apps. They both also allow for immediate saving up to Cloud services. Currently, you can only get Google Play Music on the N7 but it is set to come to the iPad soon as well.

Processor

According to the Fuse Joplin, the Nexus 7 was first promoted as a cheap tablet, but the specifications of the device suggest otherwise, particularly in the aspect of processors. The small-screen slab has a quad-core 1.5GHz processor with Snapdragon. It’s coupled with the Adreno 320 GPU, making it lighting fast at handling the Android 4.4.3 KitKat version of the Android OS. The tech site in their review of the tablet said that you will not be able to tell the difference between the user experience of this tablet, when compared to the higher-end Android tablets.

One key reason for its good performance is that stock Android does not use many resources and its KitKat OS is designed to work with lower-spec models.

The iPad Mini with Retina Display sports the high-end A7 processor found in phones like the iPhone 5S. The chip is a dual-core 1.3 GHz unit, supported by PowerVR G6430 GPU. The GPU unit is quad-core and is presumably designed not only to run the current iOS 7.1.1 update but the upcoming iOS 8.

Cameras

Most smartphones today will take better photos than the tablets in the market. Both Apple and Google decided to go with 5 megapixel cameras on the rear of the tablets and 1.2 megapixel cameras on the front. Despite having the same megapixels, the iPad seems to achieve better video and picture taking.

Battery Life

Both the devices will be able to run all day without requiring a second charge. The Nexus 7 however runs on higher brightness settings thus making it difficult to compare the two’s battery lives. If the brightness is turned down, the Nexus 7 battery can outlast the iPad’s.