A few weeks ago I pre-ordered a Black iPad 3 16GB Wi-Fi model. I don't normally buy tech items before reading a reputable review (at that time, March 10, none had been posted) but I made an exception because I just had to try out that ultra high resolution display. The iPad has many Android tablet competitors but always seems to be a step ahead in some area. With the iPad 2 it was the GPU and with the iPad 3 it's all about the 2048x1536 Retina Display. For simplicity sake and so I don't lose my mind, I will be referring to the new iPad as the iPad 3. I will compare my experience to my Asus Transformer TF101 (this is the original Transformer and not the newer quad-core Transformer Prime TF201) which is running Android 4.0.3 Ice Scream Sandwich. I am not saying these tablets are in the same price category but people who own an original Transformer or a tablet with a similar display (10.1" 1280x800 IPS) might be considering an upgrade to the iPad 3. Before getting into the review let's see what has changed with three generations of iPads, with the Transformer TF101 thrown in there since it will be compared in this review:
The real draw for me was the 2048x1536 Retina Display. That translates to 264 pixels per inch (PPI) and 3,145,728 total pixels. The benefits of the display can be seen with anything you do on the tablet but one huge improvement is with text clarity. Text is more crisp and readable now even in portrait mode for many web sites. The color gamut with the new display has been substantially improved. For a tablet the display is the most important piece as it's how one interacts with the device and the iPad ups the ante big time. It makes the device a pleasure to look at and a joy to use. As of now there are no competitors to speak of with a display this good, at least until the Asus Transformer Infinity is released.
Browser Icon Comparison
Transformer TF101 (Left) and iPad 3 (Right)
Text Clarity Comparison
Transformer TF101 (Left) and iPad 3 (Right)
GPU
A downside to the new display is that it requires a boatload of GPU power. This brings us to the new PowerVR SGX543MP4 GPU. Apple is using the same GPU series but has doubled the GPU cores from 2 to 4. This is actually a similar GPU to the one in the PS Vita which has the SGX543MP4+. I'm not sure what the plus means or how different that makes the GPUs but it could be higher clocks or something more. The Vita has a much lower 960x544 resolution to cope with or around a 6th of the pixels. I'm not saying they cater to the same market as the iPad is for casual gaming and the Vita is designed solely for gaming, but I'm just trying to give you an idea of the power of the GPU in the iPad although it's at a disadvantage with the higher resolution. The new GPU was a necessity with the Retina Display but it's still the most powerful GPU ever in a tablet. It makes gaming at this high resolution somewhat possible. I say somewhat because the resolution is so taxing that not all games can run at the full native resolution but they can at least go higher than the old 1024x768 of the original iPad and iPad 2.
RAM
An appreciated and needed upgrade was the move from 512MB to 1GB of RAM. Now the iPad can hold more programs in memory without having to completely restart the program and this makes multitasking even more of a pleasure. This was a much needed upgrade as many Android tablets have had this RAM size since last year (my Transformer TF101 has 1GB of RAM). This change was also needed since programs that use the new display take up more space in memory.
OS
Overall iOS is much more polished and stable than Android, at least from my experience with my Transformer TF101. The Transformer has many annoying bugs with the OS and firmware. It has a problem that has been dubbed the Sleep of Death. Sometimes when waking the device from sleep it will not turn on. After plugging it into a power outlet the battery is at 0% charge which explains why it won't wake-up. As of yet this bug still hasn't been fixed with the latest firmware. The Android OS is not very stable even with the ICS update because my browser still crashes from time to time as it did in Honeycomb. This was extremely annoying with Honeycomb because I lost all my tabs and had to start over. With ICS it is bearable because it restores all my tabs after the crash. The Wi-Fi and general responsiveness of the OS is also sluggish, at least compared to the iPad. The difference is night and day for me. The iPad is extremely stable, has a responsive UI, fast Wi-Fi, and overall it's has a much better user experience.
App Store
The Apple App Store is a benefit for a few reasons. Apple vets the apps so there is no threat of spyware or other inadvertent downloads. In the Store the apps are separated between iPad and iPhone apps so you know which app was made for which device. Unfortunately the Android Market (or Google Play as it is now called) does not differentiate tablet and smartphone apps which is really annoying. Apple has less diverse hardware since there has only been three generations of iPads, so they are less prone to app incompatibilities. Android tablets have so many different hardware configurations that it's hard to have consistency with compatibility and fluidity of the apps. Obviously if one has the latest Android tablet like the Transformer Prime this is less of a problem.
Rear Camera
Another much improved area is the rear camera (the front VGA camera is unchanged from the iPad 2). The rear camera in the iPad 2 never officially got a still photo megapixel spec from Apple, probably because it stunk so bad. Apple states it takes 720P video or 1280x720 and if we convert that to the 4:3 aspect ratio that most still cameras use (when not set to a wide aspect setting) then that translates to 960x720 for still photos. So I'm guessing the rear camera on the iPad 2 takes just above 0.69MP photos which is quite laughable by the standards of today. The iPad 3 swaps that out for a 5MP shooter that takes photos with a resolution of 2592x1936. The Transformer TF101 also has a 5MP rear camera but as you can see below there is quite a difference:
iPad 3 Rear Camera
Transformer TF101 Rear Camera
iPad 3 Rear Camera
Transformer TF101 Rear Camera
The pictures taken with the iPad have truer colors and more detail in low light areas. When looking at the small image the Transformer looks like it has more vibrant colors in the backyard shot of the house but it's actually over saturated when you open it full screen and much less detail can be seen. The iPad's truer colors are best shown with the closeup of the flowers/weeds/leaves. The Transformer just looks washed out, too bright, and the colors look less vibrant. With good light the iPad can really be a pretty great camera and if it's all that's available it will do nicely, which is the only reason you'd use a tablet as a camera. It doesn't have a flash so it's much less ideal for low light and indoor use but the flash on mobile devices are not exactly stellar anyway. The Transformer TF101 doesn't have a flash either but the Transformer Prime has a small LED flash.
Dislikes
iTunes
I never understood why people with iOS devices always complained about iTunes. I actually use iTunes as my main music player on my Windows sig rig and besides it not auto updating the library when files are added to the music folder (like the Zune Software does) it's a great music player. Then I tried using it to load music and wallpapers on my iPad and it was painful. Thankfully iCloud has made iTunes less of a necessity but it's still required if you want to load music or photos that are not in iCloud. Apps take forever to backup in iTunes and the space eating black hole labeled Other in iTunes has strangely wasted my precious storage space on my fresh iPad (one time increasing by 1GB without reason or that many changes to the tablet). If you can avoid using iTunes absolutely do it but if you want to load photos, Retina Display wallpapers, or music it's kind of unavoidable.
Safari Tab Limit
Due to how fast and stable the iPad is I've found myself using it to surf the web all the time. I did this occasionally on my Transformer but the iPad is much more enjoyable to use. This is why Safari being limited to 9 tabs can be very limiting. I'm guessing Apple does this to limit memory use and to ensure a fluid user experience but with the increase to 1GB of RAM I would think Apple could have increased the tab limit or better yet removed it. Safari also compresses photos so you can't view them at the full native resolution of the Retina Display which was fine for the lower resolution iPad 1 and 2 but absolutely maddening on the iPad 3. Many people complain about the lack of Adobe Flash support. I do run into the occasional video that doesn't work but HTML5 implementation is getting better everyday so it's becoming less and less of a problem. Another strange thing with Safari, that happens often, is that when closing a tab it sometimes is a little sluggish to respond (the X lingers glowing white a little). Obviously you can install a third party browser but the stock browser on a tablet is often the best but this is mostly user taste and will vary.
App Size
With the higher resolution display the storage space that updated apps require has increased. There's no way to get around this as higher resolution content naturally takes more space but it might make you run out storage faster than expected. It's surprising Apple didn't release a 128GB model. I have the 16GB model and could easily fill it with just a hand full of games that utilize the new display (Infinity Blade 2 takes 936MB and Real Racing 2 HD takes 1.1GB). Obviously the small storage space is partly due to my decision to buy the cheapest model but it could easily become a problem with the higher capacity models too and even the iPad 2 since there is usually only one version of the app (the Retina enhancements just aren't used on the iPad 2). Still with the lower cost of NAND compared to when the original iPad released, the popularity of the iPad, and increased appeal of HD content thanks to the Retina Display it would have been a smart move by Apple to move the storage sizes up.
Less Ports and Customization
As witnessed by the Safari tab limit and just general OS control, iOS is much less customizable than Android. With Android you can have Widgets on the home screen which is not possible with iOS. Android tablets have much more port and expandability such USB, Micro SD, Mini HDMI, and so on. The Transformer TF101 has a Micro SD slot and Mini HDMI port on the tablet itself and the optional keyboard dock has a two USB ports and a full size SD slot. The iPad is very sparse with ports since it has none besides the dock connector and headphone jack and requires converters if ports are desired. Obviously for us enthusiasts who like to tinker this is a big downside to iOS. Plus you can't just plug in an iPad to your computer and load files onto it super quick like a flash drive as you can with many Android tablets, you need iTunes.
Transformer TF101 Home Screen (Note Weather and Date Widgets)
iPad 3 Home Screen
Backwards
There are actually a few aspects of the iPad 3 that go backwards from the iPad 2. This has been stated by pretty much every review but due to the increased power consumption of the display and GPU the iPad needed a 70% larger battery to sustain a similar run time and as a result it got thicker by 0.6mm and heavier by 51g (iPad 3 Wi-Fi vs iPad 2 Wi-Fi). The thickness increase is basically unnoticeable even side by side. The weight increase for iPad 2 owners will likely be noticeable. With the 70% larger battery and the same 10W power adapter the new iPad takes much longer to charge. AnandTech found from a dead state it takes a whopping 6 hours to fully charge, compared to 4 hours for the iPad 2, and 2.5 hours for the Transformer Prime (source link). It also produces more heat. This has been blown out of proportion by the Internet but it is a tangible difference and a negative compared to the iPad 2. It does get hotter but not uncomfortably so, from my experience. Anandtech's analysis found that during 2 hours of web browsing and 1 hour of Infinity Blade 2 the new iPad got 4.9C and 7.7C hotter respectively compared to the iPad 2 (source link). It by no means makes the device unusable but it's worth noting. None of these are deal breakers in my opinion but they do make the iPad 3 less attractive for iPad 2 owners and are things that any prospective buyer needs to know.
These are a few shortcuts that I had to figure out with a little Googling but will be very useful for new users:
Search Web Pages - Do you want to know the equivalent of Ctrl-F on the iPad? In Safari all you do is tap in the Google search toolbar and the keyboard pops up with Find on Page located right above it. Just enter your search in here and use the arrow icons on the right to go to the next occurrence of your search term.
Take a Screen Shot - Do you want to share the look of your iPad home screen or take a screen shot of something. All you do is hold down the power button and then press the Home button to take a screen shot. There will be a brief white flash on the screen with a camera sound, unless you are in a game then there will only be the white flash.
Gestures - The iPad has three shortcut multitasking gestures. Multitasking is a blast on the iPad so these come in handy. You can use four or five fingers to do the following:
Settings
As we all know the default settings are not always the best, as a matter of fact they rarely are. Here are some default settings I would recommend changing. You're going to laugh at me for this one but I almost thought something was wrong with my display. It kept abruptly increasing the brightness when I hadn't moved or done anything different. Then I thought maybe auto brightness might be on and I was right. If you don't want this annoyance and prefer to set the brightness yourself, turn off auto brightness. It is located in Settings > Brightness & Wallpaper.
I'm not a fan of annoying sounds and with a tablet I don't need it to tell me when I've received an email. If you are like me turn off some of the sound settings. What settings you want to change will depend on you but I disabled the sounds for New Mail, Lock Sounds, and Keyboard Clicks. I also turned on the ringer and alerts Change with Buttons setting which will allow you to use the volume buttons to adjust this setting at the same time as the main volume. This setting also seems to be linked to game sound settings so overall I'd definitely recommend turning it on. All the sound settings are located in Settings > General > Sounds.
Change the side switch to function as the rotation lock instead of the volume mute. Holding the volume down button essentially mutes the volume so the default setting here seems redundant and rotation lock can be quite useful. This setting is located in Settings > General.
Games
Infinity Blade 2 is an example of a game that can't run at the full native resolution due to how taxing the game is on the GPU and bandwidth. According to AnandTech it runs at 1.4x the resolution of the iPad 2 (source link). Still, the game looks great and has been touted as one of the best games on a mobile device. It's one of the most graphic intensive games available for the iPad and is a great showcase of what the iPad 3 can do.
I prefer racing games the most so this next game I really love and it's called Real Racing 2 HD. This is another sweet game that takes advantage of the new GPU and display. The graphics are quite surprising for a tablet and it's a really fun game to play. The cars look pretty detailed and they do sustain basic damage, as the front and rear bumper can come off if it's hit hard enough. Other areas are less impressive like people in the grand stands are basically paper 2D cardboard cutouts and some of the surroundings don't have a whole lot of detail. Still, overall I really like the game and really enjoy playing it. An interesting aspect of the gameplay is that it uses the accelerometer for steering and the game adjusts the camera angle so the car is always level which might sound like a small thing but does wonders for playability.
Edited by Ben the OCer - 4/21/12 at 8:24pm
Likes
DisplayThe real draw for me was the 2048x1536 Retina Display. That translates to 264 pixels per inch (PPI) and 3,145,728 total pixels. The benefits of the display can be seen with anything you do on the tablet but one huge improvement is with text clarity. Text is more crisp and readable now even in portrait mode for many web sites. The color gamut with the new display has been substantially improved. For a tablet the display is the most important piece as it's how one interacts with the device and the iPad ups the ante big time. It makes the device a pleasure to look at and a joy to use. As of now there are no competitors to speak of with a display this good, at least until the Asus Transformer Infinity is released.
Browser Icon Comparison
Transformer TF101 (Left) and iPad 3 (Right)
Text Clarity Comparison
Transformer TF101 (Left) and iPad 3 (Right)
GPU
A downside to the new display is that it requires a boatload of GPU power. This brings us to the new PowerVR SGX543MP4 GPU. Apple is using the same GPU series but has doubled the GPU cores from 2 to 4. This is actually a similar GPU to the one in the PS Vita which has the SGX543MP4+. I'm not sure what the plus means or how different that makes the GPUs but it could be higher clocks or something more. The Vita has a much lower 960x544 resolution to cope with or around a 6th of the pixels. I'm not saying they cater to the same market as the iPad is for casual gaming and the Vita is designed solely for gaming, but I'm just trying to give you an idea of the power of the GPU in the iPad although it's at a disadvantage with the higher resolution. The new GPU was a necessity with the Retina Display but it's still the most powerful GPU ever in a tablet. It makes gaming at this high resolution somewhat possible. I say somewhat because the resolution is so taxing that not all games can run at the full native resolution but they can at least go higher than the old 1024x768 of the original iPad and iPad 2.
RAM
An appreciated and needed upgrade was the move from 512MB to 1GB of RAM. Now the iPad can hold more programs in memory without having to completely restart the program and this makes multitasking even more of a pleasure. This was a much needed upgrade as many Android tablets have had this RAM size since last year (my Transformer TF101 has 1GB of RAM). This change was also needed since programs that use the new display take up more space in memory.
OS
Overall iOS is much more polished and stable than Android, at least from my experience with my Transformer TF101. The Transformer has many annoying bugs with the OS and firmware. It has a problem that has been dubbed the Sleep of Death. Sometimes when waking the device from sleep it will not turn on. After plugging it into a power outlet the battery is at 0% charge which explains why it won't wake-up. As of yet this bug still hasn't been fixed with the latest firmware. The Android OS is not very stable even with the ICS update because my browser still crashes from time to time as it did in Honeycomb. This was extremely annoying with Honeycomb because I lost all my tabs and had to start over. With ICS it is bearable because it restores all my tabs after the crash. The Wi-Fi and general responsiveness of the OS is also sluggish, at least compared to the iPad. The difference is night and day for me. The iPad is extremely stable, has a responsive UI, fast Wi-Fi, and overall it's has a much better user experience.
App Store
The Apple App Store is a benefit for a few reasons. Apple vets the apps so there is no threat of spyware or other inadvertent downloads. In the Store the apps are separated between iPad and iPhone apps so you know which app was made for which device. Unfortunately the Android Market (or Google Play as it is now called) does not differentiate tablet and smartphone apps which is really annoying. Apple has less diverse hardware since there has only been three generations of iPads, so they are less prone to app incompatibilities. Android tablets have so many different hardware configurations that it's hard to have consistency with compatibility and fluidity of the apps. Obviously if one has the latest Android tablet like the Transformer Prime this is less of a problem.
Rear Camera
Another much improved area is the rear camera (the front VGA camera is unchanged from the iPad 2). The rear camera in the iPad 2 never officially got a still photo megapixel spec from Apple, probably because it stunk so bad. Apple states it takes 720P video or 1280x720 and if we convert that to the 4:3 aspect ratio that most still cameras use (when not set to a wide aspect setting) then that translates to 960x720 for still photos. So I'm guessing the rear camera on the iPad 2 takes just above 0.69MP photos which is quite laughable by the standards of today. The iPad 3 swaps that out for a 5MP shooter that takes photos with a resolution of 2592x1936. The Transformer TF101 also has a 5MP rear camera but as you can see below there is quite a difference:
iPad 3 Rear Camera
Transformer TF101 Rear Camera
iPad 3 Rear Camera
Transformer TF101 Rear Camera
The pictures taken with the iPad have truer colors and more detail in low light areas. When looking at the small image the Transformer looks like it has more vibrant colors in the backyard shot of the house but it's actually over saturated when you open it full screen and much less detail can be seen. The iPad's truer colors are best shown with the closeup of the flowers/weeds/leaves. The Transformer just looks washed out, too bright, and the colors look less vibrant. With good light the iPad can really be a pretty great camera and if it's all that's available it will do nicely, which is the only reason you'd use a tablet as a camera. It doesn't have a flash so it's much less ideal for low light and indoor use but the flash on mobile devices are not exactly stellar anyway. The Transformer TF101 doesn't have a flash either but the Transformer Prime has a small LED flash.
Dislikes
I never understood why people with iOS devices always complained about iTunes. I actually use iTunes as my main music player on my Windows sig rig and besides it not auto updating the library when files are added to the music folder (like the Zune Software does) it's a great music player. Then I tried using it to load music and wallpapers on my iPad and it was painful. Thankfully iCloud has made iTunes less of a necessity but it's still required if you want to load music or photos that are not in iCloud. Apps take forever to backup in iTunes and the space eating black hole labeled Other in iTunes has strangely wasted my precious storage space on my fresh iPad (one time increasing by 1GB without reason or that many changes to the tablet). If you can avoid using iTunes absolutely do it but if you want to load photos, Retina Display wallpapers, or music it's kind of unavoidable.
Safari Tab Limit
Due to how fast and stable the iPad is I've found myself using it to surf the web all the time. I did this occasionally on my Transformer but the iPad is much more enjoyable to use. This is why Safari being limited to 9 tabs can be very limiting. I'm guessing Apple does this to limit memory use and to ensure a fluid user experience but with the increase to 1GB of RAM I would think Apple could have increased the tab limit or better yet removed it. Safari also compresses photos so you can't view them at the full native resolution of the Retina Display which was fine for the lower resolution iPad 1 and 2 but absolutely maddening on the iPad 3. Many people complain about the lack of Adobe Flash support. I do run into the occasional video that doesn't work but HTML5 implementation is getting better everyday so it's becoming less and less of a problem. Another strange thing with Safari, that happens often, is that when closing a tab it sometimes is a little sluggish to respond (the X lingers glowing white a little). Obviously you can install a third party browser but the stock browser on a tablet is often the best but this is mostly user taste and will vary.
App Size
With the higher resolution display the storage space that updated apps require has increased. There's no way to get around this as higher resolution content naturally takes more space but it might make you run out storage faster than expected. It's surprising Apple didn't release a 128GB model. I have the 16GB model and could easily fill it with just a hand full of games that utilize the new display (Infinity Blade 2 takes 936MB and Real Racing 2 HD takes 1.1GB). Obviously the small storage space is partly due to my decision to buy the cheapest model but it could easily become a problem with the higher capacity models too and even the iPad 2 since there is usually only one version of the app (the Retina enhancements just aren't used on the iPad 2). Still with the lower cost of NAND compared to when the original iPad released, the popularity of the iPad, and increased appeal of HD content thanks to the Retina Display it would have been a smart move by Apple to move the storage sizes up.
Less Ports and Customization
As witnessed by the Safari tab limit and just general OS control, iOS is much less customizable than Android. With Android you can have Widgets on the home screen which is not possible with iOS. Android tablets have much more port and expandability such USB, Micro SD, Mini HDMI, and so on. The Transformer TF101 has a Micro SD slot and Mini HDMI port on the tablet itself and the optional keyboard dock has a two USB ports and a full size SD slot. The iPad is very sparse with ports since it has none besides the dock connector and headphone jack and requires converters if ports are desired. Obviously for us enthusiasts who like to tinker this is a big downside to iOS. Plus you can't just plug in an iPad to your computer and load files onto it super quick like a flash drive as you can with many Android tablets, you need iTunes.
Transformer TF101 Home Screen (Note Weather and Date Widgets)
iPad 3 Home Screen
Backwards
There are actually a few aspects of the iPad 3 that go backwards from the iPad 2. This has been stated by pretty much every review but due to the increased power consumption of the display and GPU the iPad needed a 70% larger battery to sustain a similar run time and as a result it got thicker by 0.6mm and heavier by 51g (iPad 3 Wi-Fi vs iPad 2 Wi-Fi). The thickness increase is basically unnoticeable even side by side. The weight increase for iPad 2 owners will likely be noticeable. With the 70% larger battery and the same 10W power adapter the new iPad takes much longer to charge. AnandTech found from a dead state it takes a whopping 6 hours to fully charge, compared to 4 hours for the iPad 2, and 2.5 hours for the Transformer Prime (source link). It also produces more heat. This has been blown out of proportion by the Internet but it is a tangible difference and a negative compared to the iPad 2. It does get hotter but not uncomfortably so, from my experience. Anandtech's analysis found that during 2 hours of web browsing and 1 hour of Infinity Blade 2 the new iPad got 4.9C and 7.7C hotter respectively compared to the iPad 2 (source link). It by no means makes the device unusable but it's worth noting. None of these are deal breakers in my opinion but they do make the iPad 3 less attractive for iPad 2 owners and are things that any prospective buyer needs to know.
Tips
ShortcutsThese are a few shortcuts that I had to figure out with a little Googling but will be very useful for new users:
Search Web Pages - Do you want to know the equivalent of Ctrl-F on the iPad? In Safari all you do is tap in the Google search toolbar and the keyboard pops up with Find on Page located right above it. Just enter your search in here and use the arrow icons on the right to go to the next occurrence of your search term.
Take a Screen Shot - Do you want to share the look of your iPad home screen or take a screen shot of something. All you do is hold down the power button and then press the Home button to take a screen shot. There will be a brief white flash on the screen with a camera sound, unless you are in a game then there will only be the white flash.
Gestures - The iPad has three shortcut multitasking gestures. Multitasking is a blast on the iPad so these come in handy. You can use four or five fingers to do the following:
- Swipe up to reveal the task switcher where all the running programs reside (Apple refers to this as the Multitasking Bar). To close a program hold down on any icon in the task switcher until all the icons start rocking and a red minus sign on the top left of the icons appear. Just tap the minus sign for the programs you want to close and when you're finished press the Home button to stop the rocking. While still in the task switcher swipe to the right to view brightness, music controls, and volume.
- Pinch to go to the Home Screen.
- Swipe left or right to change among open apps.
Settings
As we all know the default settings are not always the best, as a matter of fact they rarely are. Here are some default settings I would recommend changing. You're going to laugh at me for this one but I almost thought something was wrong with my display. It kept abruptly increasing the brightness when I hadn't moved or done anything different. Then I thought maybe auto brightness might be on and I was right. If you don't want this annoyance and prefer to set the brightness yourself, turn off auto brightness. It is located in Settings > Brightness & Wallpaper.
I'm not a fan of annoying sounds and with a tablet I don't need it to tell me when I've received an email. If you are like me turn off some of the sound settings. What settings you want to change will depend on you but I disabled the sounds for New Mail, Lock Sounds, and Keyboard Clicks. I also turned on the ringer and alerts Change with Buttons setting which will allow you to use the volume buttons to adjust this setting at the same time as the main volume. This setting also seems to be linked to game sound settings so overall I'd definitely recommend turning it on. All the sound settings are located in Settings > General > Sounds.
Change the side switch to function as the rotation lock instead of the volume mute. Holding the volume down button essentially mutes the volume so the default setting here seems redundant and rotation lock can be quite useful. This setting is located in Settings > General.
Games
Infinity Blade 2 is an example of a game that can't run at the full native resolution due to how taxing the game is on the GPU and bandwidth. According to AnandTech it runs at 1.4x the resolution of the iPad 2 (source link). Still, the game looks great and has been touted as one of the best games on a mobile device. It's one of the most graphic intensive games available for the iPad and is a great showcase of what the iPad 3 can do.
I prefer racing games the most so this next game I really love and it's called Real Racing 2 HD. This is another sweet game that takes advantage of the new GPU and display. The graphics are quite surprising for a tablet and it's a really fun game to play. The cars look pretty detailed and they do sustain basic damage, as the front and rear bumper can come off if it's hit hard enough. Other areas are less impressive like people in the grand stands are basically paper 2D cardboard cutouts and some of the surroundings don't have a whole lot of detail. Still, overall I really like the game and really enjoy playing it. An interesting aspect of the gameplay is that it uses the accelerometer for steering and the game adjusts the camera angle so the car is always level which might sound like a small thing but does wonders for playability.
Size Comparison
The Transformer TF101 has a 16:10 display and the iPad has a 4:3 display. The different screen ratios can be seen by how much wider the Transformer is in landscape mode than the iPad. The Transformer measures 6.96" by 10.67" and the iPad is 7.31" by 9.5." As with many things the aspect ratio has a lot to do with personal taste but for me the iPad has a more natural shape. What do I mean by more natural shape? The 16:10 ratio of the Asus Transformer seems too wide and is kind of an awkward shape to hold in portrait mode and hard to type with in landscape mode. The iPad more closely resembles the shape of a 8.5x11 sheet of paper or a book. This makes the iPad perfect for reading, be it a book, web page, or magazine. Few web sites are designed to fully take advantage of a widescreen display. Obviously a 4:3 ratio is not ideal for 1080P HD content but it still looks great with the Retina Display, and with a tablet that is so close to your face it's not a real problem for me.
Edited by Ben the OCer - 4/21/12 at 8:24pm
Contains Awesome
(14 items) |
Win Mini HTPC
(13 items) |
Mini Server
(7 items) |
| CPU | Motherboard | Graphics | RAM |
|---|---|---|---|
| AMD A8-3850 Llano APU | Asrock A75M-ITX FM1 | AMD HD6550D | G.SKILL Eco 4GB DDR3-1600 Kit |
| Hard Drive | Optical Drive | Cooling | OS |
| Corsair Nova 32GB SSD | Hitachi CA10N Slim Slot Load Blu-Ray Drive | Silverstone NT07-AM2 Slimline | Windows 7 Home Premium x64 |
| Keyboard | Power | Audio | Other |
| Lenovo Multimedia Remote with Keyboard (N5901) | 120W Internal/ 60W AC Adapter | Klipsch ProMedia 2.1 THX Speaker System | Epson EX70 Projector |
| Other | |||
| Habey EMC-800S Slim Case | |||
| View all | |||
| CPU | Motherboard | Graphics | RAM |
|---|---|---|---|
| AMD E-350 1.6GHz APU | ASRock E350M1 Mini ITX | HD6310 | Avexir 2GB DDR3-1333 |
| Hard Drive | OS | Other | |
| Samsung F3 1TB | Windows Server 2008 R2 Standard | Habey EMC-600B Slim Case | |
| View all | |||
|
Contains Awesome
(14 items) |
Win Mini HTPC
(13 items) |
Mini Server
(7 items) |
| CPU | Motherboard | Graphics | RAM |
|---|---|---|---|
| AMD A8-3850 Llano APU | Asrock A75M-ITX FM1 | AMD HD6550D | G.SKILL Eco 4GB DDR3-1600 Kit |
| Hard Drive | Optical Drive | Cooling | OS |
| Corsair Nova 32GB SSD | Hitachi CA10N Slim Slot Load Blu-Ray Drive | Silverstone NT07-AM2 Slimline | Windows 7 Home Premium x64 |
| Keyboard | Power | Audio | Other |
| Lenovo Multimedia Remote with Keyboard (N5901) | 120W Internal/ 60W AC Adapter | Klipsch ProMedia 2.1 THX Speaker System | Epson EX70 Projector |
| Other | |||
| Habey EMC-800S Slim Case | |||
| View all | |||
| CPU | Motherboard | Graphics | RAM |
|---|---|---|---|
| AMD E-350 1.6GHz APU | ASRock E350M1 Mini ITX | HD6310 | Avexir 2GB DDR3-1333 |
| Hard Drive | OS | Other | |
| Samsung F3 1TB | Windows Server 2008 R2 Standard | Habey EMC-600B Slim Case | |
| View all | |||
