Tested: Battery Life on the new iPad
by Anand Lal Shimpi on March 19, 2012 6:06 PM ESTHot on the heels of our Retina Display analysis we have some more data for you: battery life of the new iPad. The chart above is our revamped web browser battery life test that we introduced in Part 2 of our Eee Pad Transformer Prime review. Despite the huge increase in battery capacity, battery life seems to be a bit lower than the iPad 2. The drop isn't huge but it does echo what we've seen in our subjective testing: the new iPad doesn't appear to last as long as the old one.
The drop on LTE is in line with what Apple claims you should expect: about an hour less than on WiFi.
Now for the killer. If you have an iPad on Verizon's LTE network and use it as a personal hotspot (not currently possible on the AT&T version), it will last you roughly 25.3 hours on a single charge. Obviously that's with the display turned off, but with a 42.5Wh battery driving Qualcomm's MDM9600 you get tons of life out of the new iPad as a personal hotspot.
More in our upcoming review...
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eisa01 - Tuesday, March 20, 2012 - link
What brightness setting did you use?cserwin - Tuesday, March 20, 2012 - link
+1eisa01 - Wednesday, March 21, 2012 - link
Apparently it's 200 nits as stated in the Transformer Prime review, would still be nice to know where that is on the brightness scale for a frame of referenceasrey1975 - Tuesday, March 20, 2012 - link
Used ot own a PC tablet - Fujitsu lifebook and go over it pretty quick about 5 years ago.The drawcard for me was being able to write notes on it in meetings. What I later realised was that typing was quicker than writing (and you dont have to go back and convert/correct all your hand written notes). So basically a normal laptop would have done me just fine.
When I used it as a pure tablet, all I did was surf the net and check email. Maybe now I'd add watch videos online etc. I had it for about 12mths and sold it.
Not sure why its taken so long for tablets to get off the ground. The formfactor was available back in 2000 or so on Windows 2000 embeded etc, my housemate had one, cost about the same as iPad under $1000.
Will I buy an iPad X - NO. Transformer Prime looks alot better deal, Keyboard +tablet, better everything, graphics chip, battery, flexibility, Android etc.
Will other people buy it iPad 3. Sure. Apple iPad sheeple are everywhere!
All those extra iPad 3 pixels are realy not gonig to make much difference on such a small screen I say.
PeteH - Tuesday, March 20, 2012 - link
"All those extra iPad 3 pixels are really not gonig to make much difference on such a small screen I say."I strongly disagree. I've never liked the way text looks on computer displays, and it impacts my reading enjoyment. Quadrupling the pixel count should drastically improve the appearance of text.
The purpose of the resolution increase is not to increase the amount of "stuff" you can fit on screen, it's to increase the level of detail that can be displayed. At any screen size that will make a difference. Whether or not the increased display detail is something you find desirable is a different (and completely subjective) question.
Greg512 - Tuesday, March 20, 2012 - link
I do not see how you can claim the Prime has a better graphics chip. From what I have seen, the Tegra 3's graphics chip is weaker than the 'New' Ipad's. As far as CPU power is concerned, however, the Transformer Prime has a substantial lead. App performance is a different question altogether. Plus, iPad sheeple... seriously. I thought such unsubstantiated name calling went out of popularity a while ago. For the record, I do not own either tablet. I own a HP Touchpad, but would prefer either the Prime or the iPad over it.ufon68 - Wednesday, March 21, 2012 - link
You gotta love ignorant people calling others sheeple.KoolAidMan1 - Wednesday, March 21, 2012 - link
You are completely wrong, those small pixels make more and more a difference the closer the display is to your eyes.As it stands, text on my 24" and 27" 2560x1440 IPS displays look inferior to what is on the iPad. I want high PPI in all my monitors now.
If you can't tell the difference then you should get your eyesight checked.
eallan - Thursday, March 22, 2012 - link
Wouldn't it be awesome to not be able to tell the difference? I'd save so much money!zorxd - Monday, March 26, 2012 - link
Text can't look inferior on a 2560x1440 monitor for the simple reason that there are more pixels than on an iPad.Take any given content, say a web page, and strech it to full screen. The text will be rendered with more pixels on your IPS monitors, and therefore will be clearer by any measure.
PPI doesn't matter, it's all about the number of pixels.