Apple’s iPad mini: Should you buy it or not?

Apple finally revealed the iPad mini Tuesday at the California Theater in San Jose. The Post’s Hayley Tsukayama shares some specs on the new Apple device:

There are six different configurations of the iPad Mini with different access capabilities and storage amounts. Each device comes with a 7.9-inch screen measured diagonally and has the same 1024-by-768 pixel resolution as the iPad 2. The Mini has the same dual-core A5 chip as the iPad 2, front and back cameras and 10 hours of battery life. It is 7.2 millimeters (0.28 inch) thick and weighs 0.68 pounds, just over half the 1.33 pounds of the iPad 2. It comes with the new Lightning connector, which was introduced with the new iPhone last month.

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How the new iPad mini stacks up

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Tablet mania: The battle of the seven-inch tablets: Apple unveiled the iPad mini Oct. 23, making it the latest company to add a device to the ever-growing mini-tablet market. Here’s a look at some of the competition the diminutive Apple tablet would face.

— iPad Mini, Wi-Fi only, 16 gigabytes of storage, $329

— iPad Mini, Wi-Fi only, 32 GB, $429

— iPad Mini, Wi-Fi only, 64 GB, $529

— iPad Mini, Wi-Fi + Cellular, 16 GB, $459

— iPad Mini, Wi-Fi + Cellular, 32 GB, $559

— iPad Mini, Wi-Fi + Cellular, 64 GB, $659

Apple’s website will start taking advanced orders for the iPad Mini and the fourth-generation iPad on Friday. They will start shipping and go on sale in stores on Nov. 2.

The Associated Press gives its first impression of the iPad mini :

Apple’s iPad Mini will bring a lot more excitement and a little more confusion to the holiday shopping season.

It only takes a few minutes playing with the iPad Mini to realize the scaled-down tablet computer will be a sure-fire hit with longtime Apple disciples and potential converts who’ve been looking for a more affordable entree into the mobile computing market.

With a 7.9-inch screen, the iPad Mini is perfectly sized to be stuffed in Christmas stockings. Recipients who will discover the pleasure and convenience of being able to take pictures, surf the Web, watch video, read books and listen to music on an exquisitely designed device that’s pancake thin.

As enticing as that all sounds, the iPad Mini also causes a dilemma, albeit a pleasant one.

The new option will make it even more difficult for holiday shoppers to figure out which mobile device to buy for their loved ones —or for themselves.

I felt the pangs of indecision within a few minutes of picking up the iPad Mini for the first time.

As the company usually does at its product unveilings, Apple Inc. only provided reporters with limited, strictly supervised access to the iPad Mini on Tuesday. That meant I could only experiment with it for about 15 minutes, but as an experienced user of the iPad 2, I could quickly see that the smaller tablet does just about everything its bigger brethren does.

Even though the Mini’s screen is 1.8 inches smaller than the standard iPad, the movie “The Avengers” looked lush, even in a side-by-side comparison with the larger tablet. When I pulled up the latest issue of the New Yorker, I didn’t have to strain to see the text or pictures on the smaller screen. A quick check of other websites verified that the Mini’s screen isn’t so tiny that it’s going to cause a lot of squinting. After I took a very crisp picture of another reporter testing out a Mini, I decided to email it to her to test how easy it was to use the keyboard on the smaller screen. No problem there. Best of all, the iPad Mini can be held in one hand and is about half the weight of the larger iPad.