Back in 2010, Steve Jobs scoffed at the
“current crop of seven-inch tablets,” calling them “dead on arrival.”
“There are clear limits of how close
you can physically place elements on a touchscreen before users can reliably
tap, flick, or pinch them,” he said on an October earnings call. “This is one of the key
reasons we think the 10-inch screen size is the minimum size required to create
great tablet apps.”
What a difference three years makes.
The 7.85-inch iPad Mini has been a runaway success, and the new iPad Mini with Retina
Display seems poised to become the company’s best-selling tablet. (Although
Apple still needs to overcome early supply constraints.) Surely even Jobs would
now admit that the 7.85-inch Mini deserves its place in Apple’s tablet lineup.
That said, Jobs’ poor instincts might actually go a level deeper. Not only have 7-inch tablets proven their worth—they might just be the superior tablet size, period. First, there are the sales numbers, where the iPad Mini has reportedly cannibalized its bigger brother faster than Apple expected. Next, there’s feedback from users. Here’s a scatter plot charting FindTheBest’s average user rating against screen size for 64 of the most popular tablets.
The 7-inch tablets win handily. It’s
somewhat remarkable to see a trend like this, particularly when the data on
smartphone screen size is much more noisy
The one clear conclusion here:
smartphones over 5 inches are too big. (We’re looking at you, Samsung Galaxy
Mega 6.3.) Otherwise there are plenty of top-rated options—it just depends
on your personal needs and preferences.
So it really does seem that this
phenomenon is unique to tablets. Incidentally, you won’t see the same trend
when looking at tablet reviews from experts, but that’s likely for good reason.
More screen real estate might impress for the first week or so, as
professionals scramble to submit reviews, but what about over time?
Sure,
experts will run benchmarks, analyze hardware design, test out features, and
compare display sharpness, but what about two years later, after months of
reading on a busy subway, or two years of cross-country business trips? In the
end, light-weight, portable options tend to win out.
iPads provide one of the more
obvious examples, with clear user rating differences between Mini and
full-sized options
Apple may not have a 7.0-inch
offering, but the 7.85-inch Minis have the obvious edge over their 9.7-inch
counterparts.
What about Samsung? The trend isn’t
nearly as clear, with the 10-inch Galaxy Tab and Note among the users’ favorite
tablets.
Still, there’s a small surprise
here: users tend to like the 7-inch Galaxy Tabs, despite only average reviews
from experts. Score another point for small-screened devices.
Sony’s tablets fit the theory as
well. Users score the 9.4-inch Xperia Tablet S 0.7 points higher than the
flagship 10.1-inch Xperia Tablet Z.
If there’s any major tablet-maker that seems to break the pattern entirely, it’s Amazon. Users review Kindle Fires pretty consistently, regardless of screen size.
How does Amazon avoid the large-screen curse? Perhaps the 8.9-inch Kindle Fire is just light enough (1.25 lbs), or maybe there’s a breaking point right around 9 inches. We’ll see what happens with Apple’s iPad Air (9.7 inches, only 1 pound) once users have had enough time to really use it. We’re keeping a close eye on our hypothesis as tablets continue to get lighter.
- – - – -
Given that the man revolutionized
the music, phone, and PC industry with his uncanny ability to see into the
future, I’ll excuse Jobs for his oversight on tablet size. After getting so
many things right, it was only a matter of time before he got something wrong.
With apologies to Mr. Jobs, it seems we have a verdict: smaller really is
better.
