The Apple iPad 2 Review
by Brian Klug, Anand Lal Shimpi & Vivek Gowri on March 19, 2011 8:01 PM ESTFinal Words
If you fell in love with the original iPad, the iPad 2 is a significant upgrade. You get much faster hardware, a much more ergonomic device and the ability to FaceTime with your friends. If it weren't for the fact that the iPad 3 is likely 12 months away with another set of similarly impressive upgrades I'd recommend all iPad users upgrade to the 2nd generation model.
I find that with Apple products you have to pick an upgrade cadence and firmly stick to it. In the Mac world it's difficult but not too hard to stick to. Upgrading yearly never makes financial sense so usually putting yourself on a 2 - 3 year cycle for the biggest upgraders usually works. Apple hardware tends to hold its value surprising well so as long as you do a good job of reselling your old stuff, this cadence can work well if you absolutely must have the latest and greatest.
The iOS platforms are a bit more difficult to be patient with. As you can see by the SoC upgrades Apple has thrown into the iPad 2, for the next couple of years you should expect Apple to be upgrading at a rate faster than Moore's Law. Eventually this will level off but for the iPad 2, iPad 3 and probably even the iPad 4 we'll see this sort of aggressive ramp in hardware capabilities. You really have to treat the iPad like a smartphone - it's going to be made significantly less desirable in about 12 months so plan your purchasing accordingly.
Cautious purchasing brings me to my biggest complaint about the iPad 2 - its pricing. Motorola gets a bad rap for pricing the first Xoom at $799, but there's only one iPad 2 that sells at $499. Buy a case, pick one of the higher capacity models, add 3G and you're quickly paying a lot more for the iPad 2 than you would a mainstream PC. Granted Apple doesn't make as much off of the iPad as it does other members of its product lineup, but I still feel the price is too much for a device that can only augment your existing computing devices.
I do wish Apple was able to increase display resolution on the iPad 2, although I suspect that combined with the SoC improvements that may have been a little too much for this generation. It's clear that a higher resolution panel is coming as Apple finally has an OS that properly handles DPI scaling. The real question is when, and is that time soon enough that you can hold off buying an iPad until then?
There's no better place to say this so I'll just put it out there: Apple's commitment to increasing performance deserves serious recognition. Whether or not you like the company, Apple outfitted the iPad 2 with a pair of ARM Cortex A9s and a GPU significantly faster than anything else on the market. Look around and you won't see many apps that can really stress the PowerVR SGX 543MP2 that Apple put in the A5. Make no mistake, this is about building a big install base of high performance mobile devices. Apple is eager to win the hearts of game developers with the A5. Gaming will be an important part of the tablet's evolution and Apple clearly understands that. What happens when your tablet is fast enough to run Halo? Performance matters here, maybe not as much today, but when the entire install base has PowerVR SGX 543MP2s at the bare minimum things will get really interesting.
Apple's fat trimming really improved the iPad 2's ergonomics, and the smart covers only helped improve things. While I wouldn't consider porting the original iPad around due to its limited usefulness in my workflow, the iPad 2 is thin and light enough where I'm less bothered by it. Ultimately I feel like tablets (iPad or not) have to be even thinner and even more ergonomic to really come into their own. The good news is that Apple hasn't done anything too exotic in slimming down the original iPad. I'd expect the second generation of Android tablets to be similarly thin/light.
And that brings us to the controversy, the Honeycomb comparison. The Xoom is the only real competition shipping for the iPad 2 today, but within 60 days we'll likely have competitors from ASUS and Samsung on the market as well. Honeycomb has some serious advantages in the feature department. Multitasking is better under Android 3.0, as are notifications and as of yesterday there's finally Flash support. Apple still provides a smoother UI than Honeycomb, however this time around I'm wondering how much of that might be due to the GPU horsepower behind Tegra 2. While Tegra 2 does well on a lower resolution screen, I feel like it is underpowered to deal with the Xoom's 1280 x 800 display.
Hardware-wise Apple has an ergonomics advantage over the Xoom. While I like holding the Xoom more than the original iPad, I prefer the iPad 2's feel to the Xoom. The Xoom has the edge in camera quality and display resolution, while the iPad 2 has a better looking display and a faster GPU. I still fundamentally believe that web browsing and email are the killer apps for tablets and as such I don't put too much weight in Apple's iPad app advantage. Long term I believe that the most important apps will be available on both platforms, so unless there's an app that you want today that's an iOS exclusive I wouldn't lose sleep over it.
So if you're actually torn between the iPad 2 and the Xoom my best advice is to wait. Apple needs to update iOS in a major way and Honeycomb needs a hardware update. Whichever gets it right first should get your money.
If you don't fall into the borderline camp then the decision is pretty simple. If you need a tablet that runs iOS today, the iPad 2 is great. If you're not sure, you should wait. Tablets are still a couple of generations from being really amazing. Everything between now and then are just steps along the way.
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vol7ron - Sunday, March 20, 2011 - link
Smoking the magic of realism, that's the point this device needs to hit. You can take that back to your IPS gods.I didn't say it was feasible to happen right away, but that's where it needs to be for the low-end devices. The upper-end of the spectrum should land in around $450.
BTW, you misunderstand R&D and cost procurement. Just because these devices have a hefty starting price does not mean the cost of materials is even 1/1000 of that price. Whether the service providers are eating the price, or not, it all comes down to the fact that these devices do have a large mark-up. I think you need to consider the cost of an iPod Touch to the iPhone if you need a simpler way to compare - the 3G modem doesn't cost $300 lol and the Touch still had a high mark-up.
"when the competition with a 2 decade head start still hasn’t been able to compete on price" ... no one has had a 2-decade head start. Technology (manufacturing and supply chain) and costs have both shifted over the last 20 years to make things more affordable. You come at this with an emotional response of "that can't happen", when I say it can and it will. Be care about being shortsighted it will come back to bite you one way or another.
name99 - Sunday, March 20, 2011 - link
Look, if you want a crappy cheap computer, go out and buy one. They make $50 computers (none of that extravagant $100 OLPC nonsense) for India powered by 6502s.But at the end of the day you are being disingenuous. You don't ACTUALLY want a $250 PC --- you can get something like that today if you buy a second hand Eee on eBay. What you want is an actual iPad, not something with a tenth of the functionality, but at $250.
Good luck with that.
And spare us this "eventually". If you're not content with a $250 eBay Eee now, buy the time the $250 iPad equivalent comes around, the real iPad 5 will be quadcore, 2GiB of RAM and a retina display screen, and you STILL won't find the cheap equivalent an acceptable choice, not when there's a real device at $600 that is so much better.
medi01 - Monday, March 21, 2011 - link
"Competition" has such devices for as low as about 100$, go google. They don't come with IPS panel or good battery, but how much do those parts cost?Competitors like Samsung do not have any reason to lower prices, as they are competing for different customers anyway. Not to mention, people perceive cheaper devices to be inferior.
medi01 - Monday, March 21, 2011 - link
PSThere are NETBOOKS (from Acer, Lenovo or pretty much anyone) with multi-touch screens for below 300$.
michael2k - Monday, March 21, 2011 - link
They also weigh 2 to 3 times as much and have half or less the battery life.sean.crees - Monday, March 21, 2011 - link
I still am amazed when people complain about the iPad being too expensive. I remember a little over a year ago everyone expected it to have a starting price of $999. It debuted at half that, and people still complain it's too much.It's now a year later, and even Apple's competitors cannot make a device that is competitive with a $499 starting price point or less.
Here is where i see the iPad fitting in. The console and notebook have effectively replaced my PC. Everything i used to do on a PC i now do on either my notebook or my PS3. You're always going to have a cellphone. The tablet then does what you used to use a notebook for 10 years ago.
You end up with a cell phone, a tablet, a notebook and if you want to game, a console.
I don't know if a tablet will ever replace a notebook, maybe for some who can't afford all 3 and have to choose between a tablet and a notebook and don't need the productivity and power you gain with a notebook. Like how a TV is just for media consumption, a tablet is the same but you carry it around with you.
Mishera - Tuesday, March 22, 2011 - link
People complain about the device being too expensive because for what it is capable of doing, and compared to other devices it is overpriced. For Apple the price makes perfect sense for what they portray as a luxury device. It starts with enough room to drop the price (which they did sort of) and to be able to introduce another smaller ipad at some point in the future without cutting into their sails of macs. That's probably why they went with their keyboard choice.I thought about buying one but came to the conclusion that it simply was far to expensive to justify, especially since all I needed was an ereader, and later a new laptop. But I ended up getting on for Christmas so I wasn't complaining. Turns out the iPad is for EXACTLY what Steve said it was for. This is essentially a couch companion. This takes care of all my computer need when I'm at home and don't have to do work. But that's about all it's good for since it's too big to feasible carry around and doesn't replace your laptop.
I still stand by my belief that the ipad is overpriced though much more attractive at $400. I think tablets will be very important in the future, it's just that they are far away and apple right now is only interested in making consumer devices while everyone else follows them. But right now everyone seems happy with just a new toy..
george1924 - Saturday, March 19, 2011 - link
DSC_2328.jpg and DSC_2364.jpggeorge1924 - Saturday, March 19, 2011 - link
Great in-depth review though! Still can't get excited about tablets very much yet. I've had fun playing around with them, but don't think I could justify it along with a laptop, desktop, etc...MonkeyPaw - Saturday, March 19, 2011 - link
Yeah, and the problem with playing with them at the store is that they always look really gross. I was messing with a tablet at a store today, and immediately washed my hands afterwards. I'm not a huge germ-a-phobe, but when I guy blows his nose, then approaches the electronics, I just start getting uneasy. I guess the screen just shows what's on all the mice and keyboards there, too. :p