In many ways, the iPad Mini is an amazing device. If it were $200 or even $250, it would be a steal. But at $330, not so much.

I briefly tested the new iPad Mini on Tuesday at Apple’s event in San Jose, Calif. I was blown away by the physical design.

I really like the original iPad, but it can be unwieldy to hold for extended periods. That’s one of the reasons I’ve liked some of the smaller tablets that have hit the market in the past year – they’re much more portable than the iPad, and more comfortable for reading or watching movies.

But the design of the iPad Mini puts even the latest rival minitablets to shame. Despite having a larger screen than those of its nearest rivals, Google’s Nexus 7 and Amazon’s Kindle Fire HD, the iPad is lighter and about half as thick. Amazingly, it’s also narrower than the Kindle Fire HD.

Better yet, despite its lighter weight, it feels much more solid. The Kindle Fire HD and the Nexus 7 have plastic cases; the iPad Mini’s case is aluminum. You might worry about scuffing the iPad Mini’s case, but you won’t worry about breaking it.

It feels great in the hand; I didn’t want to put it down.

Another great feature of the iPad Mini is that it will run all of the apps that are available for the larger iPad. That’s been one of the big advantages of Apple’s tablet over its rivals. Users can choose from some 275,000 apps that have been customized for the iPad, which is far more than are available for Android-based tablets such as the Nexus 7, not to mention the Kindle Fire.

The diversity of apps for the iPad also helps to set it apart from the Kindle Fire, in particular. One of the primary uses for a device of this size is as an e-reader. On the iPad Mini, you’ll be able to read e-books sold by Amazon’s Kindle store, Barnes & Noble’s Nook store or Apple’s iBookstore. On the Kindle Fire, you can choose from Amazon’s e-books, and that’s about it – unless you want to go to the trouble to play with your settings to allow the device to install apps from places other than Amazon’s app store.

Like the latest iPhones, iPod Touches and the bigger iPad, it has Siri, Apple’s speech command system. Like those devices, it has two cameras and the ability to make video calls. It runs the latest version of Apple’s iOS software and appears to include all the same apps as the larger iPad.

What actually distinguishes the iPad Mini from many of the latest Apple devices is a shortcoming: It doesn’t have a high-resolution “retina display” screen. The Mini’s screen is lower-resolution than that of either the Nexus 7 or the Kindle Fire.

One other difference is that the chip inside the iPad Mini is the same one that came with last year’s iPad 2, not the ultrafast next-generation processors that are in the bigger iPad or the iPhone. I didn’t notice much of a difference, though. The game Real Racing HD ran smoothly on the iPad Mini, and the device seemed plenty responsive.

These shortcomings aside, the iPad Mini appears to be a better device overall than its rivals. But is it worth the price? I have my doubts.

If you’ve been itching to get an iPad but couldn’t swallow the $500 price, $330 for the Mini will look tempting. But if what you really want is a minitablet, and it doesn’t have to be the iPad, that price looks mighty expensive compared with the $200 you’d pay for the Nexus 7 or the Kindle Fire HD. The Mini’s beautiful design aside, my first take is that it’s not worth that hefty premium over two very good, well-built and easy-to-use devices.

Which is too bad. I like the iPad Mini a lot. But I would have loved it at a better price.