Apple's iPad - The AnandTech Review
by Anand Lal Shimpi, Brian Klug & Vivek Gowri on April 7, 2010 9:39 PM EST- Posted in
- Smartphones
- Mac
- Apple
- iPad
- Mobile
USB Charging
There's been a lot of discussion about the iPad's ability (or lack thereof) to charge from most USB power sources. Even among accessories, the compatibility situation ranges from relatively to completely uncertain.
Let's start from the beginning though - it isn't like you're going to be unable to charge the thing. The iPad ships with a beefy 10.71 watt (5.1 volt, 2.1 amp) USB power supply and a heartier-than-normal feeling USB dock cable. Given the device's relatively long battery life (as we've already demonstrated), it isn't like charging is going to be something you'll do more than once a day. But Apple has left the charging situation uncharacteristically vague.
We tested charging with a number of dock connector charger accessories we had, and found the state of things confusing. Let's start with the good; Apple's ultracompact USB power adapter, the one shipped with the iPhone 3G and 3GS, does charge the iPad. If you've still got any laying around, the older, larger iPod chargers that have USB charging circuitry also work. Interestingly, both of these power adapters are only rated at 5 watts.
Support for charging from accessories from 3rd parties, however, varies wildly: devices that support firewire-only charging definitely won't work - the iPad lacks that circuitry the same as iPhones and iPod Touches. Other adapters that lack Apple-specific charging circuitry also don't work. Third party battery packs also won't charge the iPad.
Car chargers are a mixed bag - Griffin's PowerJolt SE car charger, sold at the Apple Store, doesn't charge the iPad at all. However, Belkin's Micro Auto Charger (rated at 5 watts), also sold at the Apple Store, does charge. Interestingly, the Griffin has a hard connected dock connector, while the Belkin has a USB termination and aftermarket dock cable - it's likely that the iPad favors USB-based chargers rated at or above 5 watts.
The iPad is picky about its power - it's something of a connoisseur
On the desktop side, charging is even more of a mixed bag. If you've got a PC, you're probably out of luck unless motherboard supports the USB charging specification. Remember that USB 2.0 by default supports 500 mA of current at 5 volts for a maximum of 2.5 watts. From what we've seen so far, at least 5 watts is required for the iPad to charge. Newer USB ports that support the battery charging specification can supply up to 1.5 amps at 5 volts, for a maximum of 7.5 watts. From what we've seen, it's likely that 5 watts is the requirement for USB charging to work properly. Apple's iPad charging knowledge base document mentions that a "high-power USB port" is required for charging, but neglects to enumerate what computers support the standard, or what standard they're calling high-power. Apple notes that "many recent Mac computers" support the high-power USB port charging standard, and that "most PCs or older Mac computers" will charge the iPad when it's in sleep mode.
We tested with a MacBook Pro 2,1 (pre-unibody Core 2 Duo), Mac Pro 4,1 (Nehalem), Latitude XT, and desktop with an EVGA X58 SLI - none of them charged the iPad over USB while powered on or in standby. It's a step backwards that the iPad discharges while syncing, and keep discharging if you leave it plugged into a non-supported USB port. Remember to plug it back into its special beefy power supply, or you'll likely be left without a working iPad.
The iPad a Super Head Unit is Not
Unfortunately, it looks like the dock connector circuitry on the iPad does not support car head units. We tested with a JVC KD-PDR40 and an Alpine iDA-X001 (which Alpine touts was designed in part with Apple to emulate the iPod interface), and both resulted in the following notification on the iPad:
Bad news for people with aftermarket head units
The Alpine iDA-X001 showed the following:
While the JVC KD-PDR40 constantly reported "reading" as its status:
It seems that, for whatever reason, the iPod playback hardware and software playback paths are not present on the iPad. This is disappointing, especially considering the number of car enthusiasts hoping to use the iPad as a super-sized head unit. In fact, much of the initial speculation was that vehicle integration would be part of the iPad's secret sauce. Based on these results, that obviously was never the intention.
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strikeback03 - Friday, April 9, 2010 - link
My carputer runs fine with temps in the car over 100*F.Mumrik - Thursday, April 8, 2010 - link
Man! You guys must really have been in a hurry to get this review up.It is long, critical and thorough as I expect from you, but there are quite a lot of grammatical errors and you repeat yourself a lot i places. :-D
Sunburn74 - Thursday, April 8, 2010 - link
Anand,When you read the rhetoric between the gtx 470/480 reviews, your most recent Macbook pro reviews, and your current iPad review, its clear the latter is by far the single largest fluff piece ever posted on this site. You seem to have forgotten that people come to your site for one reason. We are the unknowing consumers who turn to your impartial judgement with one, and only one question: should we buy it?
Ryan Smith's gtx 470/480 review was superb. He didn't write "I could see myself buying a $500 gtx 480 for my 4th PC on summer trips to my house in the hamptons where I don't have to be using my real desktop for any real work". He flat out said "Nvidia was too little, too late". He didn't try to sell anyone on what might possibly be on some distant horizon in the upcoming future if you had the extra money; he delineates whether or not people should buy the item right now.
When future potential arrives, then you write another article explaining how the landscape has changed. Anand, your latest article shamelessly bent over backwards to positively sell the iPad in this way. How about comparing the ipad to the ipod touch, the iphone, the blackberry, the android, and explaining if people who own these items that deeply saturate our society what the iPad means to them? How about answering the bottom line question of if I should go buy one right now or if I should wait? How about any statement, however remote it is, on what sort of competition the ipad will face and what that means to the consumer? Who are you serving here? The people? Apple? Or your personal beliefs towards tablet PCs as something you simply want to succeed despite obviously being in infancy?
Anand, don't lose that journalistic sense of justice that requires you tell your readers what they need to know, not how you might use the item if you had extra money for a vacation to australia.
vol7ron - Thursday, April 8, 2010 - link
A couple of annoyances in the past with the iPhone 3g (aside form no-Flash) has been (1) it's lingering keyboard, (2) safari drop down menu assistance, and (3) delayed shortcuts1:
An example of the lingering keyboard is when texting someone else. There is no way to hide/autohide the keyboard once it's open. For the text messaging you can go into "edit" mode or simply go back to "messages" page and then back to the text, but why make it hard? I know my IRC apps make it easy to hide the keyboard, by just touching the screen again, why can't Apple just add a button?
2:
While the scrollable, assisted, drop-down menu in Safari is neat, those long-texted options are inadequate. Especially for cases that start off with the same sentence; for instance:
"I am a customer that heard about this site ..." {offscreen: from the web}
"I am a customer that heard about this site ..." {offscreen: from a friend}
"I am a customer that heard about this site ..." {offscreen: from work}
-- basically, you can't see the off-screen stuff until selected. I don't understand that since Apple has made a zoomable, fluid, paging device.
3:
While certain shortcuts would be effective on the iPhone, I think it's the response time that's lacking. For instance, the touch-and-hold period button has a popup option that allows you to select the ellipsis (tri-dot). That would be effective if the popup was more instantaneous - instead, it's faster to type out 3 periods. It's these menus that I hope are still prevalent in the iPad keyboard, but have a better response time.
vol7ron
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PS: loved the review. I am thinking about getting an iPad now - as stated before, I will have to wait for a price drop. $500-1000 is not acceptable, especially given the amount of storage. I'd love to see this device price range reduced to around $250-500 (perhaps hopeful future thinking).
Locut0s - Thursday, April 8, 2010 - link
Looks like it. Nice if so!CSMR - Friday, April 9, 2010 - link
We are seeing that limited devices (iPhone, Windows Phone 7, iPad) have an appeal to many consumers, who just want to do a small and finite number of things with them. This type of device can be stylish and effective.But I think Anandtech and other tech sites should have a prejudice in favor of computers rather than locked down devices. Limited devices can be cool, and I'm not saying AnandTech shouldn't review them, but it should prefer systems that are not limited.
Rather than going along with the average consumer tech sites could show the market how to make unlimited systems (tablets running Win7, phones running OSes like android, windows mobile) better designed and more intuitive, and show users how to use these effectively.
The current proliferation of locked-down devices has some strengths but it is a threat to computing. We've been fortunate that computers have been so popular. What if most people no longer use computers, but devices, and the market caters to them? What if the computer market becomes like the console market? What will advanced users do?
Impulses - Friday, April 9, 2010 - link
Anand mentions that the iPad keeps performance decent by relying on solid state memory and a lightweight OS.... I'd like to see those iPad vs. netbook tests re-run against a netbook w/a SSD... I mean, a decent netbook plus a 40GB Intel X25-V is still cheaper than an iPad. ;)I realize that a $120 drive upgrade to a $300 computer isn't something the average consumer does, but it's pretty common amongst us geeks. /shrug Plus we've seen the X25-V as low as $99 (or $75 for the Kingston version). My X25-V gave my Acer Aspire One a nice kick in the pants, sure it doesn't make it play Flash video any better but it significantly improved multi-tasking, app loading, and hibernation.
A CULV laptop + a decent SSD wouldn't be much more expensive than some of the iPads after you factor in some of the options (stand, apps, 3G, higher capacities, etc). I realize they're not the same type of device, just trying to speak purely to the performance side of the argument here...
Impulses - Friday, April 9, 2010 - link
I wasn't quite done reading the article when I wrote that last post... The battery life numbers for the iPad are pretty impressive, heck even the 3GS numbers seem impressive compared to my 2nd gen iPod touch. I don't know if Plants vs Zombies is just poorly optimized, or if the reduced processing capabilities of my touch drain the battery faster, but I'm lucky if I can get more than two hours of the thing with that game. It just rapes the battery life...I guess one reason Apple might've skipped out on Moorestown would be battery life considerations, 'specially when playing back media... The degree to which many games seem to drain smartphone batteries these days makes me wonder why we even bother though, I can't possibly consider gaming on my smartphone if it means the battery's not gonna last me thru the day because of it... Despite the fact that this one of the few things I do like about the direction Apple has taken the iPhone OS in (the gaming environment/potential).
Mr Alpha - Friday, April 9, 2010 - link
I can of the top of my head think of two reasons why the iBooks app isn't installed by default.1. The iBookstore is US only, and the iPad is international. This means they would either have to ship the iPad with an app people can't use or have two sets of firmware, one for US and another one for the rest of the world.
2. The developer license agreement states that you can't duplicate functionality. So if they had included the iBooks app by default they would have had to either kick all other ereader apps and catch hell for it, or ignore it and come of a hypocritical while undermining their own license agreement.
dagamer34 - Friday, April 9, 2010 - link
The iBooks app does not come with the firmware of the iPad, it is a downloadable app like Remote and iDisk.