Apple focused much of its Wednesday tablet presentation on the iPad Pro, glossing over the iPad mini 4, despite the fact that it's brand new.

To be fair, there's not a whole lot to say about the iPad mini 4. While the iPad Pro stole the show with a huge display and beefed-up processor, the iPad mini 4 is an incremental upgrade from last year's iPad mini 3 (now off the market, though you can still get your hands on an iPad mini 2 ). The iPad mini 4 will be facing stiff competition from none other than chief rival Samsung, which recently released the Galaxy Tab S2 8.0.

In body, the iPad mini 4 is basically identical to the iPad mini 3. It's slightly thinner—0.24 inches to the iPad mini 3's 0.29 inches—but has virtually the same dimensions and keeps the 7.9-inch IPS LCD Retina screen. Samsung, on the other hand, has redone the body of its smaller tablet. The Tab S2 8.0 now has a smooth matte back, is 0.22 inches thin, and weighs only 9.3 ounces to the iPad mini 4's 10.4 ounces. It also copied the iPad mini's aspect ratio of 4:3, which is ideal for reading and viewing content.

The Super AMOLED screen most certainly rivals Apple's Retina display. The iPad mini 4 and Tab S2 both have identical resolutions, at 2, 048-by-1, 536 pixels, but Samsung's AMOLED screens tend to pop more with vibrant colors. The iPad mini 4 is also on equal footing with the Tab S2 in the camera—Apple has equipped it with the iPad Air 2's 8-megapixel camera, and kept the 1.2-megapixel front-facing camera. The Tab S2 also has an 8-megapixel camera and a 1.2-megapixel front-facing shooter.

Internally, the iPad mini 4 and the Galaxy Tab S2 have seen major upgrades. The iPad mini 4 now has the same A8 chip as the iPhone 6 , and the Tab S2 8.0 got the Note 4's Exynos 5433 processor with 3GB of RAM. Both should be lighting fast, even during multi-tasking, which is a big part of both Samsung's new tablets and Apple's upcoming iOS 9 upgrade. This makes sense on larger tablets (most certainly on the iPad Pro), but as noted in the Tab S2 review, multitasking on such a small screen can get messy. We'll have to see if iOS 9 can improve on multitasking, but right now we're pretty skeptical.

The Tab S2 and iPad mini 4 are equal in terms of entry-level pricing, starting at $399. But for that, you get a 16GB iPad mini 4 with no expandable storage, or a Tab S2 with 32GB of internal storage and a microSD card slot. At face value, it looks like the Tab S2 is the winner here for the money, and if you've got to have an iPad mini, the more-than-adequate iPad mini 2 has dropped in price to start at $269. But the final verdict will be in once we get a chance to test the iPad mini 4.

Source: www.pcmag.com