The Apple iPad 2 Review
by Brian Klug, Anand Lal Shimpi & Vivek Gowri on March 19, 2011 8:01 PM ESTDisplay
The iPad 2 continues to use what boils down to the same 9.7 inch 1024x768 (XGA) LCD as the iPad 1. It isn’t the 300 or close PPI display that many speculated would launch with the iPad 2. Instead, for the most part, it’s identical to the 132 PPI panel which shipped in the first iPad.
Side by side the two have very similar brightness, black level, and contrast. That said, we’ve noticed some differences in the numbers between the four iPad 2s spread among us. Two are 16 GB WiFi models, one is an AT&T WiFi - 3G, and another is Verizon WiFi - 3G. Each have slightly different brightness and black levels, and correspondingly different contrast as well.
| Display Quality Comparison | |||||
| White Level | Black Level | Contrast Ratio | |||
| Apple iPad 2 #1 (AT&T 3G) | 406 nits | 0.42 nits | 966:1 | ||
| Apple iPad 2 #2 (VZW 3G) | 409 nits | 0.49 nits | 842:1 | ||
| Apple iPad 2 #3 (WiFi) | 352 nits | 0.45 nits | 778:1 | ||
| Apple iPad 2 #4 (WiFi) | 354 nits | 0.41 nits | 859:1 | ||
After looking at the numbers we’ve collected, there seems to be a pretty obvious trend emerging. The WiFi iPads seem to have a brightness closer to 350 nits, whereas the 3G models have brightness levels at 400 nits. It seems entirely possible that there are either multiple suppliers for these panels, or different batches with differing performance characteristics between the WiFi and 3G manufacturing lines.
We measured white point on the iPad 2 with an X-Rite i1Pro and found that (at least my AT&T 3G model) it was right at 6604K, very close to D65 and good performance. Conversely, the iPad 1 WiFi on hand measured around 6908K which is admittedly still acceptable, but not quite as good. In reality, there will probably be a large amount of drift in color temperature across different panel suppliers and batches, just like we saw with the Verizon iPhone 4’s noticeably blue display.
Indoor viewing angles on the iPad 2’s IPS display are still excellent. Uniformity is also good, with one caveat.
There’s been a lot of talk about backlight bleeding on the iPad 2. Initially, I didn’t notice any backlight bleed on my iPad 2, however I now notice a small blotch where backlight bleeds in the bottom right corner. Pressing on the glass surface, I can change the intensity of this backlight bleed, which would imply that the bleed is due to stresses in the glass and TFT like you’d see if you were to press on a panel. It’s not bad at all, especially compared to some of the worst-affected examples I’ve seen in forums online, but hopefully this gets worked out with better manufacturing. Oddly enough, side by side with the iPad 2 the iPad 1 also shows some noticeable light bleed.
Left: iPad 2, Right: iPad 1
Outdoor glare and viewing angles are essentially unchanged. Subjectively the iPad 2 seems a tiny bit better, perhaps thanks to the slightly thinner glass and adhesion process, but it’s still hard to read anything outside in direct sunlight.
Compared to the Xoom, the iPad 2 is more usable outdoors:
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Azethoth - Monday, March 21, 2011 - link
No! 22 seconds is not fast enough. That is 20 seconds wasted each time you do that in a day.benonemusic - Monday, March 21, 2011 - link
Excellent writing and content as usual. As a longtime reader (this is my first post) with an editorial eye, I had a suggestion for future articles such as this with multiple authors but in which the main review is written in the first person singular. It was slightly disorienting to see three authors (Brian, Anand, Vivek) but then much of the article written with "I" (presumably Anand), you might want to avoid listing all three authors as "ands" in that case. One idea would be make the first author the one who is speaking in the first person voice (presumably Anand in the case) and the other two to be listed as "with." If the review is written as "we" then having all three of the authors as "ands" makes sense. There are multiple solutions. You can simply keep the "ands" and then indicate who the "I" is in the first instance. You could obviously say "one of us" in the first instance and indicate "Anand" in parentheses. And so on. Sorry for going on this long, but I'm big on bylines. Keep up the great work with the articles!embeddedGPU - Monday, March 21, 2011 - link
Can you clarify the floating point precision for your GPU GFLOPS figures ? You mention 20-/32-bit for nVidia, but I think the SGX is only 16-bit precision. If so, it's not a totally fair comparison...wellortech - Monday, March 21, 2011 - link
"If you fell in love with the original iPad, the iPad 2 is a significant upgrade."Really? Since when is thinner and a crappy camera a significant upgrade?
mcnabney - Monday, March 21, 2011 - link
You guys missed noticing something when documenting the huge step forward with the iPad2 GPU power.We now have iOS fragmentation.
The entire iPad1 generation was obsoleted in the graphics department. Now developers have to choose between writing for the iPad1 or iPad2. There is far too large of a gulf between the two platforms. To benefit from the GPU advancement, the massive installed base of the iPad1 will have to be written-off.
kmmatney - Monday, March 21, 2011 - link
I don't think this is true. First, we are only talking about 2 models, and second, they can just enable more graphics features for iPad 2. I can see where some truly advanced games might only be written for the iPad 2 in the future, but there is really no way to avoid that.Azethoth - Monday, March 21, 2011 - link
There always was and always will be iOS fragmentation since the 2nd iDevice shipped.As for what it means in a practical sense: check out Infinity Blade on multiple devices (iPhone and iPad). See, not a big deal, content providers are used to scaling artwork and design.
Furthermore, iOS will suffer less from this than Android (fewer device specs). It is one of the aspects of the competition at this form factor that makes me think that Apple will do better than it does at the PC level. (Not that Apple PC profits are not insanely good for their industry: over 50% of entire industry by some accounting).
araczynski - Monday, March 21, 2011 - link
if you're after a notebook/pc replacement, you're kidding yourself with any tablet.if you're after a gaming device, you're golden :) especially if you think gaming on phone sized screens (this includes psp/ds/etc) is plain stupid.
mine is filled to the brim with games, no room for audio/video/etc, just pure games.
i love it, my daughter loves it, even my technophobe wife loves it.
its for entertainment, nothing more.
Azethoth - Monday, March 21, 2011 - link
It is for more than entertainment:You can amuse your cat with it as well!
coolio68 - Monday, March 21, 2011 - link
Great review Anand,regarding this comment though:'The real competition for the SGX 543MP2 will be NVIDIA's Kal-El. That part is expected to ship on time and will feature a boost in core count: from 8 to 12. The ratio of pixel to vertex shader cores is not known at this point but I'm guessing it won't be balanced anymore. NVIDIA is promising 3x the GPU performance out of Kal-El so I suspect that we'll see an increase in throughput per core.'
Worth bearing in mind a couple of things:
SGX 543MP can already incorporate 2 to 16 cores
The even higher performance SGX 554MP cores have also been announced in December
Power VR Series 6 (Rogue), the next-generation, can scale from 210 GFLOPS to 8 TFLOPS , and is already licensed by the usual suspects.
The A9600 chip announced by ST-E at MWC ,containing Rogue, is sampling in H2 2011.
Nvidia are gonna have their work cut out methinks, but the competition is great for the industry and consumers.