The new iPad: Retina Display Analysis
by Anand Lal Shimpi on March 19, 2012 5:49 PM ESTQuantifying Display Performance: Big Gamut Gains
Pixel density may have improved, but what about the rest of the display characteristics? We'll start with the usual suspects - brightness, black levels and contrast ratio:
Despite a tremendous increase in pixel count and density, the new iPad delivers roughly the same brightness and contrast ratio as its predecessor. White point remains unchanged as well at ~6700K.
At the introduction of the new iPad, Apple briefly mentioned a 44% increase in color saturation from the new panel. Although the old display definitely looked good, the new one does actually look better. My eyes aren't normally the best judge of gamut, but we have some tools to help quantify exactly what I was seeing:
Color gamut has definitely improved. While the iPad 2 and TF Prime both were able to represent ~40% of the Adobe RGB color gamut, the new iPad jumps by nearly 50% to representing 65% of the Adobe RGB gamut. More impressive are the gains you see if you look at the color gamut of the new panel compared to the sRGB space:
Here the panel is able to deliver nearly full coverage of the sRGB color gamut. Below is the CIE diagram for the new panel with an sRGB reference plotted on the same chart so you can visualize the data another way (the white triangle is the new iPad, the gray outer triangle is the sRGB reference):
Near perfect coverage. The new iPad's display is a huge step forward in both pixel density and being able to represent a wider color gamut. While it's still no where near the quality of high-end PC displays, this is real progress for tablets. The bar has been raised.
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doobydoo - Tuesday, March 20, 2012 - link
They are 'premium' because they have the longest battery life, highest resolution, best reliability ratings, best customer satisfaction ratings, and by far and away the fastest GPU (over 4x in some benchmarks) when compared to the very best of the rest.If you find a comparable tablet you can describe this one as overpriced. Oh... haters.
gorash - Tuesday, March 20, 2012 - link
You can say the same thing about anything, Transformer Prime, Galaxy Tab, whatever.Transformer Prime... fastest CPU, longest battery with docks, Galaxy Tab 7.7... best screen.
doobydoo - Tuesday, March 20, 2012 - link
You just illustrated the difference.Transformer Prime ..... 4x slower GPU. Not longest battery without being plugged in.
Galaxy Tab, 'best screen' ? Please. That's not a fact at all.
So out of the three examples you gave, for 2 tablets, 2 of them are wrong. That leaves precisely one point you were able to make about the iPad - that it doesn't have the fastest CPU. A point easily debunked by citing the fact that iOS is more heavily optimised and so you don't actually ever feel anything slower due to the CPU. Also iOS is GPU accelerated so the GPU does a lot of the work.
Compare that weak argument to the 5 items I listed, and I could have gone on. You're fighting a losing battle if you're really trying to claim there's a better tablet out there right now.
gorash - Tuesday, March 20, 2012 - link
4x is a stretch, it's more like 2-3x at best. And at native resolution, there's no difference between iPad 3 and iPad 2. And it has 4x the slower CPU than Tegra 3.Please, it has an OLED screen which means it wins by default.
Again with the "iOS is heavily optimized, blah blah blah" myth. It just goes to show that you're yet another blind Apple fanboy.
doobydoo - Wednesday, March 21, 2012 - link
iOS is heavily optimised. Even Google admits that is a large advantage iOS has over Android, which necessarily can never be as tightly coupled to the hardware. The benchmarks for example the GL fill test show over 4x faster in some cases. The iPad also has the capability to render at the lower resolution of the iPad 2 - giving it the choice of either 4x better than Android in FPS, or 4x Android in quality of that FPS. Therefore there clearly is a difference, and to say there isn't is to ignore the quality of the resolution, clearly ridiculous. Your claim that the CPU is 4x slower is simply nonsense, not evidenced by any benchmark anywhere. Just a flat out lie.Comments like 'OLED screen wins by default' aren't logical discussions, particularly when comparing screens with just over 25% of the resolution of the new iPad.
gorash - Wednesday, March 21, 2012 - link
Btw, the latest review on Engadget shows that Galaxy Tab 7.7 has the best battery life by far - by 12 hours :).I don't care what you say, it may be a preference but it is a fact that OLEDs have better response time, color reproduction rate and contrasts than LCDs. FACT.
doobydoo - Thursday, March 22, 2012 - link
The Galaxy Tab 7.7 doesn't have better battery life 'by' 12 hours, it has a 2 hour better battery life 'OF' 12 hours. It is a lower powered, lower sized tablet (7.7 inch screen vs 9.7) and therefore isn't really directly comparable to the Galaxy Tab or the iPad.I will concede the battery life is good though, even taking into account the fact it is a smaller, slower, lower resolution device.
The problem with the Galaxy Tab 7.7 is mainly the fact it stutters with the software it runs.
gorash - Wednesday, March 21, 2012 - link
4x slower CPU is an exaggeration/sarcasm, duh, just like your exaggerated claim of 4x faster GPU.doobydoo - Thursday, March 22, 2012 - link
I'm glad you admit, essentially, that your claim is wrong, and no benchmarks show the CPU being 4x faster.My claim, on the other hand, can be evidenced by some benchmarks:
http://images.dailytech.com/nimage/Tegra3_v_A5X_GL...
gorash - Tuesday, March 20, 2012 - link
Ever notice how you tend to justify everything for Apple? It has a slow CPU... but it's okay, because iOS is so heavily optimized that it doesn't need a faster CPU! Yeah, right. Even if it was, it doesn't help to have a faster CPU.