Review: New iPad 3 (2012)

Hey guys, this is Austin and today I’m here with my review of the new
iPad 3. As the successor to the iPad 2 which sold roughly 400 gajillion
units the new iPad has a lot to live up to but is it worth it?
At first glance it’s hard to tell the new iPad from the iPad 2. Both have
a nearly identical design and this really isn’t a bad thing. Up front you
have a VGA front facing camera along with the home button and Retina Display.
Like the iPad 2 you can get the new iPad in both black and white as well as
in 16, 32 and 64GB capacities as well as with and without 4G LTE. The back
and sides of the iPad are milled out of a single piece of aluminum with
nothing but Apple and iPad logos on the back. Taking a closer look at the
specs you’ll see it’s slightly thicker and heavier than the previous iPad
but it’s for a good reason that I’ll get into in a minute. Overall if
you’ve ever tried an iPad 2 you’ll know what to expect here, a very premium
product that looks and feels great. Of course I can’t do a review of the new
iPad without talking about it’s headlining feature: the Retina Display.
Compared to the original iPad and iPad 2 it has quadruple the resolution at
2048 by 1536 pixels. To put it in perspective, a high defintion TV is typically
going to have a resolution of 1920 by 1080. While a lot of Apple’s marketing is
over the top, I think they’re spot on with the iPad 3 screen: it simply is
the best. Not only will you not be able to see individual pixels normally but
the color and saturation are excellent, especially as you turn the brightness up.
In general usage I got between 8 and 10 hours out of a charge which is roughly
in line with the 10 hours that Apple quotes. Somewhat surprisingly however is the
fact that the new iPad has a lot bigger battery. The iPad 2 has a 25Wh battery,
in comparison the iPad 3 has 42.5Wh of capacity which is even larger than the
MacBook Air 11” has. The Retina Display is the culprit here and your battery life
can be as low as 4 or 5 hours with the brightness turned all the way up.
Charging times are also much longer, taking six hours or more to get a full charge.
While we’re being all geeky here let’s talk a bit about what makes the new iPad tick.
It’s powered by an Apple A5X chip which combines a dual core 1GHz CPU with a quad
core GPU. The processor is basically identical to the iPad 2 and only slightly faster
than the iPhone 4S but the GPU is twice as powerful with an additional two cores
compared to the iPad 2. It also has twice as much RAM at 1GB. While this looks like
a nice upgrade on paper it ends up being roughly the same. Since the new iPad has to
push a lot more pixels on the display those extra two GPU cores end up making the
performance just about even with the iPad 2. That’s not bad as the last iPad was
no slouch when it comes to performance but it would have been nice to have a more
substantial upgrade. Regardless the new iPad is still very fast and fluid when
doing most tasks. It also runs the same version of iOS, 5.1 as of recording
this review. It remains very similar to on the iPhone and iPod touch and identical
to older models of the iPad although you now get Siri Voice Dictation which
allows you to use your voice instead of typing. Unfortunately the full version of
Siri isn’t available. The new iPad also has a brand new 5 megapixel iSight camera
around back. It’s a mix between the iPhone 4 and 4S cameras and is really quite good.
Pictures are nice and sharp and are nearly as good as on the iPhone 4S. All right so
I am now recording using the rear facing camera on the new iPad. So let's go ahead
and give you guys a little example here, now of course no matter what you do the iPad
is enormous, you're not going to want to use it as a camera or anything for recording.
However the camera, I do have to say is not too bad. So of course it has all the features
from the iPhone 4 as well as the 4S, there I just did tap to focus, it's not quite
as good as the 4S camera but I do think it's a slight bit better than the iPhone 4.
Just like the iPhone 4S was a moderate upgrade from the iPhone 4 so too is the new
iPad compared to the iPad 2. The screen is fantastic, battery life remains solid,
the gaming performance is top notch and the new camera is quite a bit better.
Having optional support for 4G LTE with 3G worldwide is also a nice improvement.
That said, if you have an iPad 2 I really don’t recommend upgrading. The only major
benefit is the better screen, and while I’ll be the first to admit it’s absolutely
excellent I really don’t consider that enough of a reason to upgrade. However if this
is your first tablet or you’re upgrading from an original iPad or other tablet then
I
have no issues in recommending the new iPad. It’s simply as good as it gets. If you
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