The iPad Mini 4, which was recently unveiled, has certainly improved; but since tablet sales have cooled, several manufacturers have decided to produce budget versions, which will surely give the Apple device serious competition — one of these tablets is the Samsung Galaxy Tab A 8.0. Here is how these two devices compare.

Design

The winner in this category is the iPad Mini 4, as it comes with Apple's premium design elements — a metal unibody with curved edges. There is a fingerprint scanner incorporated into the home button and it comes in three colors, gray, gold and silver. As for the Galaxy Tab A 8.0, it has a full plastic body, as it is a budget-priced model. It does not come with a fingerprint scanner but it also comes in three colors, blue, white and titanium.

Display

There is an 8.0-inch TFT display on the Galaxy Tab A 8.0 and it has a very low resolution of 768 x 1024 pixels and a density of 160 pixels per inch. As for its competitor, it has an IPS LCD, screen measuring 7.9 inches with a resolution of 1536 x 2048 pixels and a density of 324 pixels per inch.

Specs

There is an Apple A8 chipset in the iPad Mini 4 and it is coupled with a Typhoon CPU with two cores clocked at 1.5 GHz along with a PowerVR GX6450 GPU. Its rival, the Samsung device, has a Snapdragon chipset and a CPU with four cores clocked at 1.2 GHz.

Memory

The iPad Mini 4 does not have a memory slot but the Galaxy Tab A 8.0 has a version which allows for the expansion of up to 128 GB of external storage. As for their RAM, the iPad Mini 4 has 2 GB while the Galaxy Tab A 8.0 with 16 GB onboard storage has 1.5 GB and its 32 GB model has 2 GB.

Camera

A 5-megapixel camera is present on the rear of the Galaxy Tab A 8.0, while the iPad Mini 4 has an 8-megapixel version.

Price

The starting model of the iPad Mini 4 is priced at $399, while the Samsung Galaxy Tab A 8.0 can be purchased for $169 on retail websites.