iPad 4 (Late 2012) Review
by Anand Lal Shimpi on December 6, 2012 4:40 PM ESTFinal Words
The 4th generation iPad is a good evolution over the 3rd generation model. It doesn't fundamentally change the device or its function, it just makes it better. Battery life and performance are both improved over the iPad 3, and on the graphics side we finally have an SoC capable of driving good looking games at the iPad's native resolution. I don't know that there's substantial enough of a change to warrant an upgrade from the iPad 3 (unless you happen to be a game developer), but if you've been considering the iPad the 4th gen is a definite improvement over its predecessor.
If you're torn between the big and mini iPads, I've been recommending the mini for those who plan on traveling a lot with their tablet and the iPad 4 for those who will mostly use it at home. The exception to the travel stipulation is if you're a photographer and plan on using your tablet to show your portfolio/proofs/etc, in which case the color accuracy of the iPad 4 trumps the mini's portability.
It's interesting to me that the chassis and thermals haven't really changed since the iPad 3. Given the short cycle time between the 3rd and 4th generation iPads, I suspect there's not a whole lot of time to implement any major changes. I do almost wonder however if we won't see this chassis stick around for one more generation. I just don't know that there's room to shrink the design any further without substantial improvements in display efficiency.
Long term I do wonder what the future holds in store for the big iPad. The iPad is very similar in footprint to the 11-inch MacBook Air, and once the 11-inch MBA gets Haswell/Broadwell we may even see similar idle power battery life. The 13-inch MacBook Pro with Retina Display is pretty much the 13-inch rMBA that everyone wanted, I wonder if a future 9.7-inch iPad may be the same thing for the 11-inch MBA. Ultimately this brings convergence to mind, which itself leads to a lot of questions about form factor, OS and ISA. Apple has been quick to dismiss Microsoft's attempts to bring touch to notebooks, but there's a lot of history around Apple laughing at something only to bring forth its own take later on.
Taking a step back and looking at the market as a whole, there is competition the iPad has today that it didn't previously. Google's Nexus 10 surpasses the iPad 4 in pixel density, although it loses out in color accuracy. I can't stress enough that the competition really has to focus on calibrating its displays in addition to spending money on delivering a good panel. The Nexus 10 is priced more aggressively at $399 and ships with a faster CPU as well. The latter is interesting, especially given how recently Apple introduced its Swift CPU architecture. I wonder if we'll see Apple stick with the holiday launch schedule or move to a different release cadence once again, in order to continue to remain at the forefront of silicon technology.
When choosing between the iPad 4 and Nexus 10 decision boils down to, as is often the case, whether or not you feel more at home in Android or iOS. I've viewed the divide there as a line separating a computing device from an appliance. There's overlap in capabilities, but the overall experience tends to fall along those lines for me. You need to ask yourself what type of device you're more interested in when it comes to a tablet. I suspect Apple's success in the mainstream market with the iPad is due, in no small part, to just how appliance-like the iOS experience can be. It's not for everyone but I can see how it has resonated well among some audiences. Google's $100 price advantage isn't insignificant, and similar to our Nexus 7 vs. iPad mini recommendation, if what you want is a tablet and not necessarily a tablet that runs iOS, the Nexus 10 takes the cake.
Microsoft is now in the mix with Surface RT and Windows RT/8 tablets from its partners. These offerings are pursuing a slightly different user who wants convergence between a tablet and notebook. Conceptually I like the idea. I'd love to be able to only carry around a single device that serves as a wonderful tablet and productive notebook at the same time. I don't believe any of those devices are quite there yet, which makes tablet/notebook convergence still a fantasy for me.
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Zink - Friday, December 7, 2012 - link
HP Touchpad, oops. I live in that place RIM is from so I at least know how hard the PlayBook is failing. I wasn't trying to impact anything, just give my opinion on tablet display sizing.name99 - Sunday, December 9, 2012 - link
Reviewers of Surface, for the most part, disagree.Death666Angel - Saturday, December 8, 2012 - link
I use my tablet for playing games and watching my movies and shows when I'm on the train. Why are you telling me how to use my tablet?coder543 - Thursday, December 6, 2012 - link
How is 4:3 just amazing for books and web browsing? You're not *used* to browsing in a different aspect ratio so you say it's worse. I owned the iPad 1 and used it for a full year as my primary compute device. I even typed a 10 or more page document on the touch screen. I'm very familiar with it. But I can tell you that browsing on a 16:10 display is a wondeful experience, and now that I've gotten past the 'weirdness', I see numerous advantages for it.headrush69 - Friday, December 7, 2012 - link
What makes it's so wonderful?I find it funny because on the desktop with that same ratio, most web sites don't really seem to take advantage of the space and a full screen web browser is mostly wasted space.
Maybe you go to site's optimizing for a mobile browser, but for me, I want the normal site on my tablet, I'm not on a small screen phone.
eallan - Friday, December 7, 2012 - link
Numerous advantages that you didn't list for what reason?name99 - Sunday, December 9, 2012 - link
It IS wonderful if the primary material you read on your iPad is technical PDFs. Use a decent PDF reader to crop the margins, and you'll find that the content of pretty much all technical PDFs is at 4:3 ratio.darkcrayon - Thursday, December 6, 2012 - link
Well, the 3rd gen iPad got dinged for not having enough GPU to drive its pixels... And here we have the Nexus 10 with even more pixels than the 3rd gen iPad, but even less GPU muscle. "Much better tablet"? Ehh not seeing it. And no points for "proper aspect ratio", it was even explained in the article that it's a tradeoff. If you can't see why it isn't helpful to have an aspect ratio that is close to that of typical paper documents, I don't know that to say...coder543 - Thursday, December 6, 2012 - link
The Nexus 10's GPU muscle isn't properly represented by some benchmarks. It is honestly a cross between the iPad 3 and iPad 4 in terms of performance -- far from being worse than the iPad 3.What is the aspect ratio of legal pad? When you need paper that gets stuff done, you don't use anything resembling 4:3.
KoolAidMan1 - Friday, December 7, 2012 - link
A4 paper aspect ratio is about 4:3. I know because I read PDFs on my iPad for work all the time, fits perfectly in portrait mode.Landscape is ideal for web browsing and applications, the extra vertical space is always a good thing. Its the same reason my desktop and laptop monitors are 16:10, much better than 16:9.
All 16:9 is good for is video, and I do way more than just that on my tablet.