The Apple iPad Review (2012)
by Vivek Gowri & Anand Lal Shimpi on March 28, 2012 3:14 PM ESTWiFi & GPS
The WiFi stack gets an update with the new iPad courtesy of Broadcom's 65nm BCM4330, compared to the BCM4329 used in the previous two iPads. Both 2.4GHz and 5GHz operation are supported, although as I mentioned earlier the carrier-dependent personal hotspot is only available over 2.4GHz.
As with most smartphone/tablet designs the BCM4330 only supports a single spatial stream, for a maximum link speed of 72Mbps. Similar to the iPad 2, Apple hides the WiFi antenna behind the speaker grille at the bottom of the tablet. The cellular antennas (there are now two) are at the top of the tablet, behind the plastic RF window.
| WiFi Performance Comparison | ||||||
| Distance from AP | 3 feet | 20 feet (Different Room) | 50 feet (Different Room/Floor) | 100 feet (Different Room) | ||
| ASUS TF Prime (2.4GHz) | 26.9 Mbps | 9.85 Mbps | 13.5 Mbps | 2.20 Mbps | ||
| Apple iPad 2 (2.4GHz) | 35.1 Mbps | 29.9 Mbps | 26.9 Mbps | 10.6 Mbps | ||
| Apple iPad 3 (2.4GHz) | 35.1 Mbps | 29.9 Mbps | 27.9 Mbps | 9.98 Mbps | ||
| Apple iPad 2 (5GHz) | 36.7 Mbps | 36.7 Mbps | 36.7 Mbps | 11.9 Mbps | ||
| Apple iPad 3 (5GHz) | 36.7 Mbps | 36.7 Mbps | 36.7 Mbps | 11.7 Mbps | ||
With a similar WiFi stack and similar antenna placement, it's no surprise that I noticed very similar WiFi performance to the iPad 2.
The same goes for GPS performance between the new iPad and the iPad 2. Both devices were able to lock and track me driving around in a car with comparable accuracy from what I could tell.
Airplay Support with the new Apple TV
When paired with a second or third generation Apple TV, the iPad supports wireless display mirroring or content streaming to the iPad via AirPlay. In other words, if you have an Apple TV hooked up to your HDTV, you can use your HDTV as a large, mirrored, secondary display for your iPad—wirelessly. The only requirement is that you have a 2nd or 3rd generation Apple TV and that it's on the same network as your iPad. With those requirements met, enabling AirPlay mirroring is simple—just bring up the iOS task switcher, swipe left to right until you see the brightness/playback controls and tap the AirPlay icon.
Mirroring gives you exactly what you'd expect—a complete mirror of everything you see on the local iPad screen. All sounds are also sent over and come out via your TV's speakers—the local speaker remains silent.
The frame rate isn't as high on the remote display, but there's virtually no impact to the performance of the iPad itself. There's noticeable latency of course since the display output is transcoded as a video, sent over WiFi to the Apple TV, decoded and displayed on your TV via HDMI. I measured the AirPlay latency at ms, which is reasonable for browsing the web but too high for any real-time games. If you want to use the iPad to drive your HDTV for gaming you'll need to buy the optional HDMI output dongle.
While AirPlay mirroring on the iPad works at 720p, if you're playing a 1080p movie on the new iPad and you have a 3rd generation Apple TV, the video is also displayed in 1080p rather than downscaled to 720p.
Video playback is an interesting use case for AirPlay and the iPad. If you don't have mirroring enabled, you can actually start playing a movie on the iPad, have it stream to your TV via the Apple TV, and go about using your iPad as if nothing else was happening. Most apps will allow you to stream video in the background without interrupting, however some games (e.g. GTA 3, Infinity Blade 2) and some apps (e.g. iMovie) will insist on streaming their UI to your Apple TV instead.
Although iOS and the iPad don't do a great job of promoting multi-user experiences, using AirPlay to push video to a TV wirelessly is an exception. If you frequently load your iPad up with movies you can use it to keep others entertained while you either get work done or just goof around on your iPad at the same time. It's a great fit for families where people want to do two different things. If you do put a lot of movies on your iPhone/iPad, the 3rd generation Apple TV is probably a must buy for this reason alone.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
234 Comments
View All Comments
ananduser - Thursday, March 29, 2012 - link
Imagination does own the fastest GPU available today. The current Tegra offerings cannot match it but nvidia goes a different way. They will start piling CUDA cores like they do on the desktop GPU front. Say you'll have in the future a better quad core from Imagination and nvidia's GPU will consist of something like 64 CUDA cores.zorxd - Thursday, March 29, 2012 - link
The problem is that you can't plug an iDevice to a computer a transfer files as you would on a USB thumb drive without iTunes. That's a major disadvantage.Also if you excluse Apple's SoC, what company makes better mobile GPU than Nvidia? The Mali 400 MP4 is good too (about on par it seems), but I wouldn't say that Tegra 3 is the bottom of the performance barrel. You seems to forget the major players of Qualcomm and TI.
darkcrayon - Thursday, March 29, 2012 - link
You can however transfer files to any number of apps via WIFI or with cloud solutions without needing iTunes though. I'd call it a "disadvantage" but not a major one.You're right the Tegra 3 isn't, I was speaking more generally considering how the Tegra 2 performed vs. the competition as well. It just seemed out of place to choose a tablet because you "love nVidia GPUs" when nVidia has not necessarily put out a spectacular GPU in any ARM SoC.
merajaan - Wednesday, March 28, 2012 - link
You guys must be commended on this review. You covered all the areas that I wanted to know about and really didn't leave one stone unturned. I applaud the depth and detail and appreciate that you didn't rush your review out for launch day like many other sites. I also appreciate the unbiased nature in which the review was written and your honest viewpoints!Anand Lal Shimpi - Thursday, March 29, 2012 - link
Thank you for the kind words :)Take care,
Anand
repoman27 - Thursday, March 29, 2012 - link
So you've gone and included a lovely example of how the AnandTech icon looks at 72 and 144 dpi... How's about including <link rel="apple-touch-icon" sizes="144x144" href="icon144.png"/> on this site so we can have a proper icon when we add an AnandTech web clip to our home screens?adrien - Thursday, March 29, 2012 - link
Still reading the review (and liking it), I'm wondering about thermals.What was the temperature of the room? Could you try with different room temperatures? (I'm wondering how it'll change when it gets 15°C hotter and how it'll fare with sun shining on it).
Is there CPU or GPU throttling when it starts heating? Do you know the SoC temp?
Thanks. :-)
Anand Lal Shimpi - Thursday, March 29, 2012 - link
The ambient temperature in the room was approximately 23C. An overheating condition will trigger an OS-wide warning, which I believe causes the system to shut down.I unfortunately don't have access to anything that could read the SoC temp.
Testing at different room temperatures is an interesting idea but one that would be difficult to accurately control without some serious equipment. I ran these tests side by side at the same time to avoid issues with a changing ambient temperature.
Take care,
Anand
adrien - Thursday, March 29, 2012 - link
Ok, thanks. With summer approaching (and very quickly in France), I guess we'll see real-world tests for the temperature in a few weeks anyway. ;-)scribby - Thursday, March 29, 2012 - link
Nice review :)I'm also wondering about thermals,
What was the brightness level when measuring the thermals on the new ipad?
Thank you.