The Apple iPad 2 Review
by Brian Klug, Anand Lal Shimpi & Vivek Gowri on March 19, 2011 8:01 PM ESTHDMI Mirroring
With the iPad we complained that the A4 didn't seem to include any form of digital video output, only analog outputs were supported. The A5 and the iPad 2 both rectify that as Apple now offers a $39 Apple Digital AV adapter that gives you HDMI out directly from the iPad 2.
The Digital AV adapter is a bit clunky and I believe the future of this is clearly in some form of wireless transmission, but for now it plugs directly into the dock connector. Apple had the foresight to build in a second dock connector into the dongle so you can keep your iPad 2 charged while you're mirroring it's display.
With the adapter connected HDMI mirroring just works as you'd expect it to. There's no setting you have to enable, just plug it in to your display and you're good to go. The iPad desktop is upscaled to either fit your display or it'll appear as a box in the center of your panel.
I tried the AV adapter with three different displays: a 720p Pioneer plasma, a 1080p Samung LCD and a 1920 x 1200 Dell PC monitor. With the 720p and 1080p displays I got an upscaled box in the center of the screen
On the 1920 x 1200 Dell panel I got an upscaled image that took up the total height of the screen:
In all cases Apple maintains aspect ratio.
What about functionality? Everything you see on your iPad you see via the HDMI output. If the keyboard appears on your iPad it'll appear on your HDMI display. Personally, I would like to be able to have the iOS keyboard visible on the iPad 2 but not on the image sent over HDMI. Currently it's a pure clone setup...mostly.
If you try to play video while connected to an HDMI you won't get a mirror instead you'll see the video full screen on the external display. This is true for Apple's own video player app as well as 3rd party apps like Netflix. Note that while playing a video you will only see it on the external display, not both.
Audio is passed exclusively via HDMI as well, the internal speaker is shut off.
Battery life takes a significant hit with the HDMI output enabled. While you'll see that our typical usage tests can easily hit 10 hours, over HDMI you can expect battery life closer to 8 hours. It's still not bad but definitely a larger impact than I expected.
HDMI mirroring on the LG Optimus 2X
HDMI mirroring isn't exclusive to Apple, we first saw it appear on LG's Optimus 2X and later on other Tegra 2 devices. While HDMI mirroring turns your iPad into a portable Netflix machine, it also turns it into a semi-dockable PC. The limitations I mentioned earlier still exist. There's no mouse support and multitasking is a pain compared to a full blown PC, but this is just the first step. If all you've got a light usage model and just want a more ergonomic setup at your desk, there's no reason you can't connect to a standard HDMI display and use the iPad 2 as a glorified keyboard/pointing device.
What I would like to see going forward is support for some sort of a pointing cursor within iOS while connected via HDMI - only on the external screen. The same white circle that's used in Apple's demos would work just fine here.
The question I have to ask is whether tablets based on smartphone hardware and OSes are going to become powerful enough to double as portable PCs or are desktop OSes going to become lightweight and efficient enough to run on smartphone class tablet hardware? The latter seems to be Microsoft's strategy with Windows 8. Unify the software and allow it to run on all platforms, while the former is where Apple is presently headed with the iPad. It's clear to me that convergence between desktop and ultra mobile OSes will happen at some point, I'm just unsure which side will lead the merger.
Charging
The iPad 2 uses the same 10W USB wall charger in combination with a 30-pin dock-to-USB cable as the original iPad. The benefit here is any iPad/iPod/iPhone 30-pin dock cable will charge the device (assuming your USB port properly implements the battery charging spec). On the flip side, even with the 10W wall charger you're looking at ~ 4.5 hours to get a full charge on the device. Charging via the PC is even slower - it'll progress at roughly half the rate as you can get via the wall charger. Note that like the original iPad you'll need a USB port that implements the battery charging specification in order to charge from your PC/Mac. All of the new Mac notebooks seem to implement this spec (2010 MacBook Pro, 2011 MacBook Pro, 2010 MacBook Air) and had no problems charging the iPad 2.
The Xoom by comparison avoids this problem. The USB port on the Xoom is only used for syncing, there's a separate dedicated port for the wall charger. As a result you'll get a full charge on the Xoom in 3 hours.
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JarredWalton - Sunday, March 20, 2011 - link
Considering the source (ARMflix), you need to take that video with a huge grain of salt. It looks like they're running some Linux variant on the two systems (maybe Chromium?), and while the build may be the same, that doesn't mean it's optimized equally well for Atom vs. A9.Single-core Atom at 1.6GHz vs. dual-core A9 at 500MHz surfing the web is fine and all, but when we discuss Atom being faster than A9 we're talking about raw performance potential. A properly optimized web browser and OS experience with high-speed Internet should be good on just about any modern platform. Throw in some video playback as well, give us something more than a script of web pages in a browser, etc.
Now, none of this means ARM's A9 is bad, but to show that it's as fast as Atom when browsing some web pages is potentially meaningless. What we really need to know is what one platform can do well that the other can't handle properly. Where does A9 fall flat? Where does Atom stumble?
For me, right now, Atom sucks at anything video related. Sorry, but YouTube and Hulu are pretty important tools for me. That also means iOS has some concerns, as it doesn't support Flash at all, and there are enough places where Flash is still used that it creates issues. Luckily, I have plenty of other devices for accessing the web. In the end, I mostly play Angry Birds on my iPod Touch while I'm waiting for someone. :-)
Wilco1 - Sunday, March 20, 2011 - link
The article is indeed wrong to suggest that the A9 has only half the performance of an Atom. There are cases where a netbook with a single core Atom might be faster, for example if it runs at a much higher frequency, uses hyperthreading, and has a fast DDR3 memory system. However in terms of raw CPU performance the out-of-order A9 is significantly faster than the in-order Atom. Benchmark results such as CoreMark confirm this, a single core Atom cannot beat an A9 at the same frequency - even with hyperthreading. So it would be good to clarify that netbooks are faster because they use higher frequency CPUs and a faster memory system - as well as a larger battery...somata - Sunday, March 27, 2011 - link
CoreMark is nearly as meaningless as MIPS. Right now the best cross-platform benchmark we have is Geekbench. It uses portable, multi-threaded, native code to perform real tasks. My experience with Geekbench on the Mac/PC over the years indicates that Geekbench scores correlate pretty well to average application performance (determined by my personal suite of app benchmarks). Of course there will be outliers, but Geekbench does a pretty good job at representing typical code.Given that, the fact that a single-core 1.6GHz Atom (with HT) scores about 28% higher than the IPad's dual-core 1GHz A9s in the integer suite leaves me little doubt that the Atom, despite being in-order, has as good or better per-clock performance than the A9s.
Even the oft-maligned PowerPC G4 totally outclasses the dual A9s, with 43% better integer performance at 1.42GHz... and that's just with a single core competing against two!
tcool93 - Sunday, March 20, 2011 - link
Tablets do have their advantages despite what the article claims. For one thing, their battery life far out lives any Netbook or Notebook. They also run a lot cooler, unlike Notebooks and Netbooks, which you can fry an egg on. Maybe they aren't as portable as a phone, but who wants to look at the super tiny print on a phone.Tablets don't replace computers, and never will. There are nice to sit in bed with at night and browse the web or read books on, or play a simple game on. Anything that doesn't require a lot of typing.
Even a 10" tablet screen isn't real big to read text, but its MUCH easier to zoom in on text to read it with tablets. Unlike any Notebook/'Netbook, which its a huge pain to get to zoom in.
tcool93 - Sunday, March 20, 2011 - link
I do think the benchmarks shown here do show that there is quite an improvement over the Ipad 1, despite what many seem to claim that there isn't much of an upgrade.secretmanofagent - Sunday, March 20, 2011 - link
Anand,Appreciate the article, and appreciating that you're responding to the readers as well. All three of you said that it didn't integrate into your workflow, and I have a similar problem (which has prevented me from purchasing one). One thing I'm very curious about: What is your opinion on what would have been the Courier concept? Do you feel that is the direction that tablets should have taken, or do you think that Apple's refining as opposed to paradigming is the way to go?
VivekGowri - Sunday, March 20, 2011 - link
I still despise Microsoft for killing the Courier project. Honestly, I'd have loved to see the tablet market go that direction - a lot more focused on content creation instead of a very consumption-centric device like the iPad. A $4-500 device running that UI, an ARM processor, and OneNote syncing ability would have sold like hotcakes to students. If only...tipoo - Sunday, March 20, 2011 - link
Me too, the Courier looked amazing. They cancel that, yet go ahead with something like the Kin? Hard to imagine where their heads are at.Anand Lal Shimpi - Monday, March 21, 2011 - link
While I've seen the Courier video, and it definitely looked impressive, it's tough to say how that would've worked in practice.I feel like there are performance limitations that are at work here. Even though a pair of A9s are quick, they are by no means fast enough. I feel like as a result, evolutionary refinement is the only way to go about getting to where we need to be. Along the way Apple (and its competitors) can pick up early adopters to help fund the progress.
I'm really curious to see which company gets the gaming side of it down. Clearly that's a huge market.
Take care,
Anand
Azethoth - Monday, March 21, 2011 - link
Gaming side is a good question. Apple will have an advantage there due to limited hardware specs to code to. They are a lot more like a traditional console that way vs Android which will be anything but.Are actual game controls like in the psp phone necessary?
I am also curious what additional UI tech will eventually make it to the pad space:
* Speech, although it is forever not there yet.
* 3D maybe if its not a fad (glasses free)
* Some form of the Kinect maybe to manipulate the 3d stuff and do magical kinect gestures and incantations we haven't dreamed up yet.
* Haptic as mentioned earlier in the thread.
Speech could make a pad suitable for hip bloggers like the AnandTech posse.