With Christmas right around the corner, I hear a lot of folks talking about purchasing a tablet for their loved ones. But a quick online search of tablets or a stroll in the electronics department of your favorite block-and-mortar and you will see that things were a lot easier way back in 2010 — you needed oodles of cash and if you had that, you had a choice between the Apple iPad and the Motorola Xoom. Fast-forward to today and the tablet landscape is littered with choices.

Where there were once two camps from which to select a tablet, there are now four: the iPad, Android-based tablets, readers, and the new Windows Surface.

The iPad is, with little doubt, king of the tablets. Unfortunately, Apple still charges a king’s ransom to own one. There are two models: Wi-Fi and Wi-Fi + Cellular, with three storage capacity models: 16GB, 32GB and 64GB, or as I like to call them: expensive, very expensive and really expensive. Pricing falls in the range of $499-$829.

But never fear, for seven-tenths of the size and price, Apple has introduced the iPad mini and, like it’s slightly larger brother, it comes in the same two different models and three different capacity models with a price range of $329-