7-Inch Tablet Showdown 2012 - IGN

Whether you've never owned a tablet or just you're looking to upgrade from an older one, there's never been a better time to buy than now. The multitude of excellent tablets out now means that not only do we get a choice, but all our options are priced to compete. You can buy a great tablet for about $300, or even less.

Google's $200 Nexus 7 tablet was hailed as the Kindle Fire-killer when it burst onto the scene in July, but Amazon responded with full force this fall, dropping the price on the old Kindle Fire to $159 and announcing new HD models.

Not to be outdone, Apple has released a downsized version of its wildly successful iPad. But while it has the slimmest profit margin of any device Apple sells, the iPad mini still costs $130 more than the Nexus 7 and 7-inch Kindle Fire HD (both of which are sold at cost).

Does the mere fact that it's an iPad make it worth the extra dough? Keep reading to find out.

Display

Apple's position is that the iPad mini is not a 7-inch tablet. This is technically true: at 7.85 inches, it offers more screen real estate than either of its competitors, with the same pixel resolution (1024 x 768) as the iPad 2 and original iPad. But the mini's display is the weakest of Apple's current iOS devices - not even close to Retina quality.

The Nexus 7 and the 7" Kindle Fire HD have the same resolution: 1280 x 800. That's not too many more pixels than the iPad mini, but taking size into account, the Android tablets have substantially better pixel density. It's pretty clear Apple skimped on the display quality to keep costs down.

That might not matter for you though. Most folks' eyes cant distinguish individual pixels on any of these at arm's length - especially not with a moving image. Games, videos, photos and even ebooks look great on all of these tablets.

Also, even if it isn't as nice as the competition, the iPad mini's larger display is handy for touch navigation - particularly on scaled-down iPad apps.

Storage

The Nexus 7 and Kindle Fire HD both start at $200 for 16GB. In both cases, $50 extra doubles your built in storage. The 16GB iPad mini starts at $330, and doubling up on capacity is an extra $100 instead of $50.

Under the Hood

The iPad mini runs on the same 1GHz CPU as the iPad 2, with the same amount of RAM, and as such it performs at almost exactly the same level. The interface is still snappy, and there aren't many games it won't run, but with the proliferation of faster iOS devices already underway it's far from future-proof.

The same goes for the Kindle Fire HD - it's way faster than last year's Kindle Fire, but not on the same level as the Nexus 7.

Google's little tablet runs on a quad-core NVidia Tegra 3, and it absolutely screams, outperforming the iPad mini and Fire HD by broad margins. It runs all the best Android games available now, and while it's not quite as powerful as the brand new Nexus 10 we'll be surprised if any Android game released in the next year is too much for the Nexus 7.

Battery

The Nexus 7's battery lasts about 10 hours of use. The Kindle Fire HD is closer to 11 or 12. But the iPad mini takes the round, with normal-use rundowns lasting up to 13 hours. All of those numbers are impressive, so in a way you can't go wrong as far as battery life is concerned.

Mobile Connectivity

The 32GB Nexus 7 is available with a 3G antenna for $300 ($50 extra). Adding mobile data to an iPad mini is $100, but instead of a 3G antenna you get 4G LTE. The 7" Fire HD isn't available with a cellular antenna and doesn't include a GPS.

That might not make a difference for you, but if you're using your tablet on the go it's nice to have access to navigation and to streaming services like Spotify.

OS and UI

The iPad mini is instantly recognizable as an iPad. It has the same simple, fixed interface as the rest of Apple's iOS devices, so chances are you know what you're getting into. Customizable it isn't - you can't choose your own default apps and there's nothing like Android's widgets - but if you're using it mostly for media and games that might not matter. We actually prefer its App-focused UI.

And while we were worried that scaling down the iPad's interface by 20% might make navigation tricky, we never had any serious problems with it.

If you want to customize your tablet's OS, there's only one real option here. When you buy a Nexus 7, you get the latest version of Android (4.2 Jelly Bean) with no overlays or added limitations. And whenever a new version of Android is released, the Nexus 7 will be among the first devices to get it.

Asus may have done the assembly, but this is Google's tablet. That means Chrome is the default browser, and Google services like Maps, Google Drive, Gmail and Google Now are fully integrated out of the box: so if you're into those, awesome; if not, there's another 700,000 apps in the ever-growing Google Play Store.

The Fire HD doesn't do so well in this department: Amazon's heavily-forked version of Android 4.0 (Ice Cream Sandwich) is basically a pseudo-home screen that's been skinned beyond recognizability. And it blocks 3rd-party widgets altogether.

And don't forget about "Special Offers." The lock-screen ads that would get you a $30 discount on the old Kindle E-reader are factored into all the base prices of Amazon's tablets. There's also an "Offers" icon stuck to the home screen. Yes, you can just ignore these - and it's always possible they'll point you to something you actually like (Amazon has an uncanny way of knowing what we want) - but ads do have the effect of making things feel cheap. For $15 you can unsubscribe from the ads at any time, so at least die-hard ad haters have a simpler option than rooting their tablet.

Apps

The Kindle Fire HD's real downfall is that, just like last year's version, it won't let you access the Google Play Store. It won't let you run any of Google's proprietary Apps either, and it doesn't end there. In cutting more than 90% of the Play Store's apps, the Amazon "Apps for Android" store weeds out a lot of trash for sure, but it's a classic baby-with-the-bathwater scenario: Kindle Fire HD owners can wave goodbye to Groupon, Instagram, the best alternative web browsers... tons of apps you might well consider indispensable if you own a smartphone.

Google Play is a big step up from "Amazon Apps for Android," but it still has a long way to go. Google has touted the milestones of its app store's exponential growth just like Apple does, and when it comes to sheer number of apps Google Play has basically achieved parity with the App Store.

But Google has been careful not to mention one important statistic: how many of those apps have been optimized for tablets. The reason for this silence is (presumably) quite simple: whatever the number is, it's nowhere close to the 250,000 iPad apps.

The iPad mini has been called a big iPod Touch. But when it comes to apps optimizing screen space, that accusation is much more apt for any Android tablet. It still has its shortcomings, but Apple's tablet ecosystem is absolutely at the top of the heap - at least for now.

Games

The same holds true for each app store's library of games: it's great on the iPad mini, okay (and steadily improving) on the Nexus 7, and basically a ghost town on the Kindle Fire HD.

There are some fantastic games available for Android: Dead Trigger, Minecraft, Grand Theft Auto III, Heroes Call THD, Oscura…. The list goes on, and as long as a tablet isn't your only gaming device, you probably won't exhaust the selection.

While it's possible some of those titles will make their way to the Fire HD at some point, Amazon's app market has consistently been 6-12 months behind Google Play on major titles.

It might be worth shelling out $130 extra for access to the App Store. Even as Android's market share expands, iOS users are still two to five times more likely to pay for games and apps (according to varying estimates). Developers - game developers in particular - realize this. Even those games that aren't exclusive to iOS frequently don't make it over to Android for months.

For non-gamers and Amazon Prime members looking to use a tablet for media the 7" Fire HD could be the best option: it's got the best display and built in speakers of the bunch, a great battery, and dead-simple access to Amazon's products and services.

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It might be worth shelling out $130 extra for access to the App Store.

Thanks to a full, un-muddled version of Android, the Nexus 7 is a much more serious tablet, and it's perfect for anyone with an Android phone who uses Google apps heavily. It's not the best tablet for gaming right now, but at $200 it's an incredible value.

The iPad mini isn't perfect: it's got budget-level specs at a higher price than its competition. But those specs are still more than enough for most tasks; it feels great in the hand; and it's the only small tablet with access to the App Store. If you can afford it (but you can't afford the full-size 4th-gen iPad) you won't be disappointed.

So what do you think - Is the iPad mini worth the money? Would you still buy a Nexus 7 if they were the same price? Or does the Kindle Fire HD have everything you need? Let us know in the comments.

Jon Fox is a Seattle hipster who loves polar bears and climbing trees. You can follow him on Twitter and IGN.