The Apple iPad Review (2012)
by Vivek Gowri & Anand Lal Shimpi on March 28, 2012 3:14 PM ESTThe iPad as a Personal Hotspot: Over 25 Hours of Continuous Use
Verizon makes the decision of which iPad to buy even more difficult by being the only of the two US carriers to enable the personal hotspot option on the new iPad. For no additional monthly fee on top of your data plan your Verizon LTE iPad can act as a wireless hotspot, allowing up to five other devices to use its cellular connection over WiFi (2.4GHz only, unfortunately) or Bluetooth. One device can use the hotspot via the iPad's USB dock cable.
If you don't already have the personal hotspot option in the initial settings page, you'll need to go to general settings, then network, and activate personal hotspot there. Once you've done so you'll see a new item for personal hotspot in the default settings page.
You must remain on the personal hotspot settings page for the iPad's SSID to be visible to nearby devices. Once you leave the settings page, the iPad stops broadcasting its personal hotspot SSID.
In general the iPad's personal hotspot seems to be better behaved than similar options under Android. I've noticed all too often that Android hotspots will either stop routing traffic after an extended period of use, requiring either cycling the radio states on the hotspot device itself or in some cases a full reset of the hardware. The iPad wasn't immune to this sort of behavior, it just seemed to happen less than on the Android tablets and smartphones that I've tested. In one test it took only a few hours before I had to reset the iPad to make its hotspot work properly again, while in another case it was only after 24 hours of continuous use that the feature began misbehaving. Overall I am very pleased with the Verizon iPad as a personal hotspot, the bigger issue is the cost of the data that you're sharing with all of those devices.
As I mentioned in our Galaxy Tab 10.1 LTE review, these LTE tablets make great hotspots simply because you are pairing smartphone modems with gigantic (for a smartphone) batteries. The end result is if you have to treat your LTE tablet as a true hotspot (screen off and all), you get great battery life. The new iPad takes this idea to a completely new level since its battery is now squarely in the laptop-sized category, but its LTE modem is still designed to run on a < 6Wh smartphone battery.
Our standard hotspot battery life test involves running four copies of our web browsing battery life test and playing a 128Kbps internet radio stream on a laptop tethered via WiFi to the hotspot being tested. While peak download speeds during this test can reach as high as 1MB/s, remember that these web browsing battery life scripts include significant idle time to simulate reading a web page. The average data transferred over the duration of the test amounts to around 25KB/s if you take into account idle periods.
With the Galaxy Tab 10.1 LTE I tried something different—letting the tethered notebook download at full speed using the Tab's LTE connection. On the new iPad, after nearly an hour of downloads at well over 1MB/s I saw no drop in the battery percentage indicator—it was stuck at 100%. Not wanting to upset Verizon too much, I needed to find a good balance between a realistic workload and something that wasn't going to make me rack up over a hundred GB in overages.
If our standard hotspot test averages around 25KB/s of transfers, I figured doubling it couldn't hurt. I downloaded a sufficiently large file at a constant 50KB/s on a laptop tethered over WiFi to the new iPad to see how long it would last. The result was astounding: 25.3 hours on a single charge
I used up over 4.5GB during this period—almost the entire amount that my $50/month plan gave me, all without having to plug the iPad in to recharge it. That's the beauty of using a 42.5Wh battery to drive a cellular modem that can last a couple of hours on a tenth of that capacity. If you want to use the new iPad as a personal hotspot, you'll likely run out of data before you run out of battery life.
It's a real shame that AT&T decided against enabling personal hotspot on its version of the LTE iPad. It's for this reason alone that I'd recommend the Verizon version, assuming that you're planning on using your iPad in an area where Verizon has LTE coverage of course.
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name99 - Friday, March 30, 2012 - link
Compared to the iPad1, the screen is, IMHO slightly smoother and a lot more oleophobic (ie it's a lot easier to clean off fingerprints by wiping a cloth over it). I never had an iPad2 so I don't know if these improvements are new or came with iPad2.shompa - Friday, March 30, 2012 - link
See = AppleTVTouch = Ipad.
But there was rumors about touch feedback from the screen. Probably in the next Ipad.
rakez - Friday, March 30, 2012 - link
as long as they stick with 4:3 i will never buy it.darkcrayon - Friday, March 30, 2012 - link
Similarly, that's one of the best things about the iPad. I can't see using a widescreen tablet in portrait mode, there is pretty much no popular content that works well there. On the other hand, 4:3 isn't as good for video, but the net effect is that the video is just smaller. I'll take properly positioned and scaled documents and smaller video over larger video and tiny documents.shompa - Friday, March 30, 2012 - link
You know that 16:9 is interesting if movies is the only thing you want to do.If you want to work on a tablet 16:9 does not work. You cant use landscape mode and see enough of the screen when you type. The 4:3 sceen is a bold move against tech nerds. I bet you are one of the tech nerds that screems when there are black bars on the side on you 16:9 TV. "why aren't the TV shows using the whole screen".
Then stupid TV people listen to you and crop 4:3 TV shows to fit 16:9 and cutting of large part of the picture.
The whole 16:9 debacle is actually a step backwards for the computing industry. Apple introduced widescreen displays early 2000. Steve made a great choose in 16:10. 2004 Apple invented the 2560x1600 screen. 16:10. Today its almost impossible to get a 16:10 screen. We all use TV LCDs for our computers = 16:9. 2560x1440. You loose 10% of real estate.
KoolAidMan1 - Saturday, March 31, 2012 - link
4:3 is better for web browsing and applications on a screen that size, the vertical room in landscape is great. It also makes for a much better balanced feel when holding it in portrait mode.Do you also like 16:9 on a desktop monitor? I sure don't, not unless it 27" 2560x1440
rakez - Saturday, March 31, 2012 - link
it's hard to argue with isheep and their products designed by god. i am pretty sure i know what i like more than someone else would know what i like. that being said, once again i prefer to not have 4:3 on my tablet. to each his own,Formul - Saturday, March 31, 2012 - link
starting with isheep and ending with "to each his own" ... you do love your bipolarity, don't you?rakez - Saturday, March 31, 2012 - link
sounds like i hit a nerve. go ahead keep following the herd. in the meantime i will buy what i want.PeteH - Monday, April 2, 2012 - link
Out of curiosity, what do you dislike about the 4:3 aspect ratio, and what's your preferred aspect ratio?