Apple's latest iPad Mini 4 rocks a great display that's now on par with the iPad Air 2, boasting major improvements over all previous iPad Mini versions.
Display calibration experts over at DisplayMate took the new iPad Mini 4 for a spin and found its display truly impressive. While the new 7.9-inch iPad Mini 4 has the same 2048 x 1536 resolution as its predecessor, it delivers more accurate colors and breaks the record for low screen reflectivity and high contrast in high-ambient light.
In terms of reflectivity, the lower the score the better. According to DisplayMate, the iPad Mini 4 has the lowest display reflectance score ever on a tablet device. The iPad Mini 4 got a 2 percent screen reflectivity score, which breaks the previous record set by the iPad Air 2 at 2.5 percent. The iPad Mini 3, for instance, had a 6.5 percent reflectance, while the original iPad Mini had a blinding 9 percent. A higher score means that things on the display can appear degraded and washed out in ambient light.
This low screen reflectance gives the iPad Mini 4 a high contrast rating for high ambient Light of 225, which breaks another record - DisplayMate says it's the highest ever measured. This, in turn, means that it has improved readability under intense light, including outdoors in direct sunlight. Most other tablets have between 5 percent and 6.5 percent screen reflectance, which means that the iPad Mini 4 has between 2.5x and 3.5x higher contrast in ambient light.
At the same time, with a 2 percent screen reflectance compared to the 2.5 percent of the iPad Air 2, the iPad Mini 4 is 36 percent better in this department.
When it comes to colors, the iPad Mini 4 now covers 101 percent of the sRGB color gamut, compared to previous iPad Mini generations that covered just 62 percent. The color saturation on the iPad Mini 4's display now puts the compact tablet on par with the iPad Air 2 and the latest iPhone generations namely, iPhone 5, iPhone 6 and iPhone 6s, as well as the Plus counterparts of the latter two.
Considering that Apple has previously received a lot of criticism for equipping its iPad Mini models with inferior displays compared to the full-size iPads, the new iPad Mini 4 is a major step forward. The tablet also boasts notable improvements in other departments as well, including processing power and RAM.
