 This is David with The Verge and this is the iPad Mini with Retina Display. This is the tablet we've known was coming for 12 months since Apple released the first iPad Mini last year. But when Apple announced it this fall, the new 7.9 inch iPad came as a bit of a surprise. It's spec for spec almost identical to the iPad Air, with the same processor, the same screen resolution, the same storage options. And the price went up. The iPad Mini with Retina Display starts at $399 for 16GB of storage and goes all the way up to a crazy $829 for 128GB of storage and LTE. The word mini used to mean something pejorative, as if it was the weaker little brother of the standard larger iPad. But this year, mini doesn't mean less. It just means, well, smaller. Unlike the new iPad Air, the iPad Mini didn't get a big visual overhaul this year. The Air actually looks a lot like the Mini now, and the Mini hasn't changed much. It comes in Apple's new trademark silver and space gray, and it's every bit as impressive as it was a year ago. It's so solid, so sturdy, so compact. It feels much colder and more machine-like than the Nexus 7, and it's a little harder to hold in one hand just because it's so thin and so wide. But it's still totally unmatched in its build quality. The Mini with Retina Display weighs about three quarters of a pound, and it's 7.5mm thick, thinner but slightly heavier than the Nexus 7, and actually imperceptibly heavier and thicker than last year's iPad Mini. I can't say I noticed the difference, though. It feels fantastic in two hands, though in mine it's still too big to use comfortably in one. With the same metal housing, the same smooth back, and the same tiny bezels, the Mini looks the same as it always did. And then you turn it on. The Mini's new 7.9-inch 2048x1536 display is just ridiculously gorgeous. It's the same resolution as the iPad Air, but smaller, obviously, and it's 324 pixels per inch is incredibly high. Incidentally, its pixel density is almost identical to the Nexus 7, which has an also beautiful 7-inch 1920x1200 display. The screen is beautiful and accurate. It makes reading more fun, games more immersive, and watching videos all the better, even if the 4-3 aspect ratio does lead to some pretty serious letterboxing. Together with the new, super-powerful A7 processor, the new screen really changes the way I think about the iPad Mini. I could read for hours on the Mini, or watch movies without ever really remembering I was looking at a small screen. This doesn't feel like a weaker, cheaper version of the 9.7-inch iPad anymore, just a smaller, lighter one. The A7 processor is crucial, too, because powering a high-res display like that is hard. Typically heavy games do cause the iPad Mini to stutter, but for the most part it's really smooth and really fast. The M7 motion coprocessor is here as well, along with a FaceTime HD camera on the front, a 5 megapixel camera on the back, and the same dual microphones and stereo speakers as last year's model. The new A7 is really the point, and it makes a huge, huge difference. But it can't completely solve some of the problems iOS 7 still creates. For all its power, the iPad Mini with Retina Display still stutters when you close an app using the five-finger gesture. iOS 7 just doesn't feel like it's done for the iPad. I've had no huge, earth-shattering problems, but just too many tiny ones. That said, though, iOS has one thing the Nexus 7, KitKat, and Google can't touch — the App Store. Four hundred and seventy-five thousand tablet-optimized apps, Tim Cook told us. And from paper and GarageBand all the way down to Twitter and Facebook, the simple reality is that even as Android catches up to the iPhone, it's in a distant second to the iPad when it comes to apps. Gaming might be the biggest discrepancy, and it's one of the most fun things to do on the Mini's new Retina Display. I play Ridiculous Fishing, The Room, and dozens of other games, and too many of the best ones simply don't exist for Android tablets. There's one downside to giving the Mini such a high-res screen — some things can seem really ridiculously small. Some icons or navigational elements can be a little harder to press on the smaller screen. They look great, but they're not quite as roomy as on the iPad Air. For all the extra power and all the extra pixels, the iPad Mini's battery life is still impressively good. The ten hours Apple claims is pretty close to correct, though that's constant, heavy use. For normal usage, I'd expect to charge it every three or four days, and the iPad Mini's battery life is mostly something you'll never have to worry about. The iPad Mini with Retina Display is in a weird spot. On one hand, it's competing with the Nexus 7, itself a beautifully crafted, high-res tablet that starts at $170 cheaper than Apple's tablet. If all you want to do is watch Netflix or read books, it's not an easy call between the two. I like the iPad Mini's hardware more and love the 4-3 aspect ratio for reading and playing games, but the Nexus 7 is really a spectacular tablet. Of course, if you want to do more with your tablet, it's no competition. The iOS App Store is more than worth the price difference. On the other side, the $399 iPad Mini is far more similar to the $499 iPad Air than the two models ever were before. It's every bit the iPad Air is equal, in every important way. Both tablets are portable, beautiful, and powerful. Do you want the big one or the small one? No matter who you are or what you do with a tablet, you can't really pick wrong. And that might be the best thing about the iPad Mini. There's not a single compromise anywhere. I think that's worth paying a little more for.