Apple iPad 3 Pro Reviews

Overall the iPad 3 is a decent upgrade from the iPad 2 in a number of key areas. The retina quality display is the most impressive and there’s a faster processor and better cameras. 4G connectivity is handy if you want that feature. All this for roughly the same price refurbished makes this a no brainer.

Although we haven't yet had our hands on the new iPad with Retina display, it's safe to say that third-generation iPad owners shouldn't upgrade. We've yet to hear anyone with an iPad 3 complain that it isn't fast enough, and the Lightning connector is - if anything - a reason not to upgrade. If you own an iPad 2, there's a much stronger case to upgrade. In fact, if you can afford to, it's a no-brainer.

So let's talk about value, since you know, consumers love things that offer a whole lot of bang for the buck. If you've been paying attention up until now, you're probably thinking that the Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1 is well ahead of the curve in this specific aspect, since it offers things that are not available to the iPad – such as the S-Pen, an IR blaster, and some fine-tuned multitasking elements with its software. Surely, those combined features make for one compelling offer, but when you look at the bigger picture, the iPad simply has the balanced value to ensnare a wider audience. Don't get us wrong, the Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1 is a remarkable slate and all, but when we think of other stellar Android tablets, it doesn't quite have the same level of appeal as its extended brethren – namely, the Google Nexus 7 or Asus Transformer Prime. Going down further past the hardware specs, the iPad ecosystem helps to liven the experience – and it's especially notable with its refined third party apps selection.

Seriously people, these are the two best tablets on the market right now. Indeed, it all boils down to personal preference to identify which is going to be the ideal tablet for you. Although there is a huge price difference between the two, $500 for the iPad and $200 for the Nexus 7, it’s more than justified. Specifically, for the $500 you’d dish out to buy the new iPad, you’re getting something that’s on the cutting edge, which is evident by its quality choice of materials, meticulous construction, and polarizing Retina Display. On the other hand, you get a ton of value with the $200 priced Nexus 7, as Android 4.1 Jelly Bean shows off its comprehensive offerings. On top of that, the Nexus 7 still manages to flaunt some admirable hardware under the hood to keep itself in good company with other respectable tablets. Simply, if you prefer something smaller and less impactful on the wallet, the obvious choice for you is going to be Google’s pride and joy. Conversely, if you’re able to pony up more money and prefer something larger, the iPad is the logical decision for you. Therefore, you really can’t go wrong with either device!

The iPad remains my favourite tablet. I prefer the screen size and aspect ratio; it delivers the right performance and functionality for what I want a fondleslab to do; USB – without the need for an adapter – would be nice, but otherwise it has the connectivity I need; third-party apps have got me over the walled garden without jailbreaking; the battery life is great. Android buffs and Apple biters won't care anyway. But the iPad 3 is a good tablet, and its screen sets a higher bar for Apple's rivals to try and leap over.

The iPad is an excellent tablet, one I can’t recommend enough. I am very seriously considering replacing it with my laptop altogether, although that’s a longer discussion for another time. But the power, design, and usability are above and beyond the competition by a longshot. However, the iPad isn’t without its faults, and interestingly many of those faults either have been or don’t need to be addressed by Apple’s own iPad 2, both the older and newer models. The biggest concern is one I am struggling to answer for myself: is battery life more important than a higher-resolution display and better graphics quality? It’s very tough to answer. I don’t use the iPad, nor have any plans, to show off photos, read magazines at length, or even read books on it. Gaming I will certainly do, but games are also available on all iPad models, with only slight differences between them for very stressful games.

Many were expecting a “leap” from iPad 2 to the new iPad, but although we all want “more”, “now”, the reality is that this is going to be a evolutionary process going forward. This time around, Apple has addressed a few priorities like the screen resolution, 4G LTE and the photo/video quality, which were obvious and much needed upgrades. Depending on your usage, this may or may not be important, but to new buyers this is certainly a very positive thing. The only thing that i miss from the iPad 2 is the extremely low rate of battery depletion in standby mode. I think that it is an amazing thing to pick up an iPad 2 that I had not used for a week, and find it with 80%+ charged. This time is over. The new iPad seems to lose 15% or 20% of battery every day, even in sleep mode. In some ways, Apple has added enough “punch” to keep the competition at bay, while keeping its gross margins comfortable. In fact, the margins should be a bit less because the new iPad is said to cost more to produce than the iPad 2. But regardless of the business strategies, what matters is the competitive landscape of the iPad. Today, it stands as the overall best tablet on the market, while the iPad 2 remains a competitive product.

With the new iPad, Apple has chosen to take small steps in many areas, making a logical upgrade on the camera, a modest improvement in graphics performance and the perfectly natural addition of LTE wireless. Other things have been left the same, like the overall size and form-factor, speed, the selection of capacities and, most importantly, the pricing. It's only with the display that Apple made a truly big step forward here over the iPad 2, and for many that's enough to make an upgrade worthwhile. The new iPad doesn't do anything substantially better or particularly different than the iPad 2, offering the same rich world of content as before. But, it's the amazingly high quality window into that world the new iPad offers that is completely unmatched -- for the moment. We have no doubt that others will be bringing similarly high-res offerings to market soon, but for now the new iPad takes the cake. Is it worth a purchase if you still have the original iPad? Yes, absolutely. The iPad 2? That, dear readers, largely depends on how much disposable income you're swinging around, but if you have the means...

This may come as a blow to Android fanatics, but Apple's new iPad is the all-around fastest tablet on the market right now. Much of the credit goes to the upgraded PowerVR graphics engine with four GPU cores that Apple claims are the bees-knees. Put to the test, the new iPad ran circles around NVIDIA's Tegra 3 platform in 3D intensive tasks. It didn't consistently provide four times the performance as Apple's Tim Cook so gleefully pointed out during the iPad launch event, but it was never a close race either. What's more, it looked better courtesy of the vibrant Retina display. For competing tablets, it's like losing a foot race to a trash talking Anne Hathaway on your home turf. All you can do is scratch your head and wonder, 'What the hell just happened?'

The new iPad, albeit a bit predicable in terms of its changes over the iPad 2, is the best tablet on the market right now. Android tablets are broken: the app selection is abysmal and anything with Honeycomb is super laggy and frustrating to use; we're in a bit of a lull of innovation as Android OEMs prepare their flagship tablets for 2012. If you're looking for a tablet and aren't in a rush, we recommend you wait a few months to see what comes from Samsung, Asus, HTC, and the other players. It's possible we might see new iPad-beating specs. But if you want a tablet that has hundreds of thousands of tablet-optimized apps, great battery life, and a display that makes content consumption as natural as reading as a magazine, the new iPad cannot be beat.

New iPad - same question - is it worth the upgrade? Well, depends who's asking. It seems the customers who gave Apple another record-breaking debut weekend had the answer already. For anyone coming from the original iPad, the latest Apple tablet is a great step forward. The situation with the iPad 2 isn't as straightforward but the screen alone is massive point in favor of upgrading. Of course, there's always room for nitpicking. The new Retina display does make a difference. The high resolution makes everything on the screen look smoother and more… natural. It's nothing short of impressive but we think they should've done something about outdoor performance too. A screen of such quality certainly deserved better. The camera has never been an important feature on a tablet, but Apple still decided to give the iPad users one of the best tablet cameras out there - a 5MP snapper with 1080p video recording with excellent quality both in stills and video. It's a huge upgrade over the iPad 2 and its 0.7MP still camera. The new iPad is even louder than the previous one and it boasts the same no-compromise audio quality.

If you’ve never seen or used an iPad before, be prepared for something amazing. If you are a previous iPad owner, still be prepared as there are a lot of improvements here that may make you still throw your cash Apple’s way. The high resolution 2048 x 1536 ‘Retina’ display with 264 pixels per inch is stunning. Double the resolution of the previous iPad, everything is now bright, clear and crisp. Reading web pages is now a lot easier on the eyes than previous versions and you will find yourself zooming into the page a lot less as the text is now a lot clearer and the colours are vibrant and strong. With the increased pixels per inch from 132 of the previous iPad to 264 on this new one, you can’t see the individual pixels that make up the screen and this makes for one of the best tablet displays I have seen to date. The 5 megapixel rear camera is much improved with 1080p video recording, although that seems rather poor in comparison to the Galaxy Note's 8 megapixels but it's still a vast improvement on the, frankly insulting, 0.7 megapixel camera that the iPad2 was released with. The iPad’s front camera is purely for Face Time use as it is only 0.3 megapixels.

I love the new iPad. It's as simple as that. The new iPad is fast, its slick, the new screen is just gorgeous and it has a long life in it because of these things. Sure, the heat issues are there - but the iPad does so much right that it can be easily overlooked. If you're after a new tablet, there's no reason to not fully consider the new iPad. Sure, check out other similar priced tablets, but most people will find themselves circling the new iPad after that. This is why Apple has a strong hold on the market right now. With the next iPad I expect things to jump quite high and show considerable change in design (screen size, heat issues) and a new iOS.

There is no doubt in my mind which tablet is better among these competitors. Apple’s iPad 3 is more attractive, a bit easier to handle, offers a significantly superior display and far better battery endurance. Using the iPad 3 is simply more enjoyable for all of these reasons. That’s not to say there aren’t reasons to buy the Prime, but they are few. You might want the Prime if you use your tablet outdoors. Some people might like the Prime’s lighter weight. And the Prime is of course more supportive of customization, so some users will prefer it for that fact alone. However, these points are ultimately trivial. The new iPad, taken as a whole, is clearly superior to the Transformer Prime. All the areas where the Prime can claim an advantage are only applicable to a niche. There is a price penalty that you pay for the new iPad’s advantages. You can purchase a 32GB Prime for the price of a 16GB iPad. That difference is worth consideration, but in my opinion the gap in price does not compensate for the Prime’s disadvantages. Not everyone will agree, and you will need to give a bit of thought to your own usage. Anyone who has a lot of media they might wish to store on their tablet may prefer the Prime's more affordable storage, though in my opinion the availability of cloud storage reduces any advantage provided by additional long-term memory. Some have called the iPad 3 an incremental upgrade. I disagree. As I think this comparison shows, the new iPad is substantially better than the next-best competitor. When judged relative to the competition the iPad 3 is the best product Apple makes and among the best consumer electronics products available today. Everyone else is still trying to catch up.

The Apple iPad is the standard by which all other tablets are judged. The iPad 3 does nothing to change that. The iPad 2 was the best tablet you could buy, so it’s little surprise that the iPad 3 has replaced it in that role. I can’t say enough about the display. The impact of it is subtle at first, but the more I used it, the more it impressed me. This was reinforced when I compared the tablet to the iPad 2 and the Transformer Prime. Text is far sharper on the new display, and a direct result of that is a better web experience and easier navigation. You won’t need to spend as much time hassling with pinch-to-zoom because everything is easy to read from the moment a page is loaded. Everything else in the new iPad is built to support the retina display’s resolution, and as a result it merely holds the line in numerous areas. It’s a slight bit thicker and heavier than the previous iPad, and while the battery is much larger, overall battery life is about the same (still better than Android competition, and sometimes by a wide margin). Fortuantely, the iPad 2 was already excellent in these areas, so holding the line isn't a bad thing. The new iPad is the best tablet money can buy and its release has transformed the gap between it and the competition into a canyon. Our praise can’t be much clearer than that, and the new iPad is worth every word of it.

Although the new iPad and the iPad 2 look identical, the new model is actually 50g heavier weighing in at around 650g. This doesn't sound like a lot, but it is noticeable when holding the tablet for extended periods. The extra weight is disappointing, but it has been put to good use – the battery lasted over 17 hours when playing videos which is extraordinary. In regular usage, this means the battery is less likely to run out when you need it most. Just as important is what hasn't changed in the new iPad. Apple still strictly controls what apps are available in its App Store. Hardware features present in Android tablets, such as a USB port or a physical keyboard, are either still absent or only available as add-ons for the iPad.

The third generation Apple iPad is a great tablet device. While I feel that the Retina Display, and its power requirements, might be overkill, there's no denying that it looks fantastic. The iPad's LTE performance on Verizon's network was equally filled with overkill, but in a way that I think is more practical. As for the new iSight camera and the quad-core graphics coprocessor, I don't know that they add much to the real world application of the iPad. But they certainly don't hurt. All added up, this device becomes the new leader of the pack in the tablet market. If you already own an iPad 2, I wouldn't recommend upgrading, but if you are using just about anything else, the new iPad will leave you grinning. You'll find a gallery of photos shot with the Apple iPad's 5 megapixel camera, as well as a sample 1080p HD video, on the following page.

There’s good reason as to why many people regard these two titans as the two best tablets on the market right now. For starters, they are premium in every way, shape, and form – inside and out! Essentially, they epitomize everything that means to be cutting-edge because they share so many drool worthy elements, such as boasting killer industrial designs, lightning fast performances, and top-notch hardware specs. Simply, we have to admit that we’re both wowed and smitten by these stunning tablets. As always, pricing comes to mind, and for the base $500 price point for each respective tablet, they undeniably offer a whole lot of bang for the buck. To tell you the truth, you can’t go wrong with either, especially when they perform similarly to one another, but the biggest difference that most people will need to tackle, is simply, which platform to stick with. Frankly, these two are in a whole league of their own, and more importantly, they’ll be the benchmark to beat going forward for all other future devices. Just like two gods going at each other in the heavens, they’re immortal and cannot be defeated – so yes, they stand equally to one another. Therefore, we have to settle for the fact that neither one can actually claim victory seeing that they share the same pedestal. As a whole, you can’t go wrong with them, but as we’re mentioned numerous times already, it’s eventually going to come down to which platform is regarded in your eyes to be the favorable one.

iOS is still not my favorite mobile platform. I miss the thumbnail previews of Ice Cream Sandwich, and webOS’ multitasking system still bests both Apple’s and Google’s. Android’s key tablet drawback remains apps, however: the selection of titles that actually make good use of 7- to 10-inch screens is pathetic in comparison to iPad-specific software. Although brand, style and specs all play into picking a new tablet, over time it’s the strength of the ecosystem that keeps you engaged. While the hardware and OS of new Android slates continues to interest me from a geek’s perspective, the paucity of apps beyond the out-of-the-box selection is a significant hurdle Google and its developers are yet to overcome. That ecosystem is the new iPad’s biggest draw. The hardware feels, for the most part, like it’s settled; I’d expect Apple to tweak it in future iterations, yes, but the company has a tendency to polish its designs and then avoid change for its own sake. That’s certainly been the case in Apple’s computing lines, and the iPad looks to be following the same route. I’d like to see Google – and others, for that matter; Windows 8 certainly has its points of interest, particularly with ARM support for more frugal, multimedia-centric models – mount a more compelling offense, if only because I like Android and I think the competition is good for the end consumer, but there’s no doubting that, for a great proportion, the new iPad ticks most of the boxes. Upgrading from my first-gen iPad is a no-brainer; the problem for Google and others is that opting for an iPad is likely to remain a no-brainer for many new tableteers, yet to be convinced with what the rest of the market can deliver.

With the original iPad, many questioned whether there was a place in the market for such a device. Netbooks were surging, notebooks were getting faster and thinner, and smartphones finally reached a point where they were effective mobile Internet tools. With the iPad 2 and countless other clones, it started becoming clear that consumers were indeed attracted to the new tablet format. With the iPad 3 and current generation slates, there's no doubt that tablets are here to stay for the foreseeable future.

Let's be clear: the new iPad is in a class by itself, just as its predecessor was. As the latest product in a lineage of devices that defined this category, the iPad continues to stand head and shoulders above the competition. With the addition of the Retina display, LTE, more memory, and a more powerful processor, Apple has absolutely held onto the iPad's market position as the dominant player and product to beat. But should you buy it? I would imagine that the vast majority of people considering the new iPad fall into one of two categories: upgraders (people who already own a previous model or Android tablet), and new buyers. For owners of the iPad 2, this isn't necessarily a slam dunk. While the updated features are a boon to the new iPad, it doesn't offer an experience that is significantly different from the previous version. If your screen never bothered you, and you never wanted a faster cellular connection or a better camera, there's not a great argument to upgrade (especially considering many of you just shelled out for a new tablet less than a year ago). However, if you're in the market for your first tablet, or upgrading from the original iPad or an Android device, do not hesitate. The new iPad is the most functional, usable, and beautiful tablet that any company has ever produced.

If you don’t already own an iPad or an Android tablet then the new iPad could be the one that finally breaks down your resistance. It certainly blows away the Android competition and should ensure that the iPad continues to dominate the tablet category – especially with the iPad 2 still on sale at a reduced price. Existing owners of the iPad 2 are faced with a trickier decision. The new display is lovely, but is perhaps more of a luxury than a must-have. But you’ll want it all the same, and all that bottled-up techno-lust will keep the iPad at the head of the pack for another year.

Apple has the lion's share of the world tablet market because it makes computers that offer the features that millions of people want without being weighed down with extraneous bells and whistles. The new iPad is a fine example of this. The previous models were good, but the Latest one sports some great enhancements, including a touchscreen that sets a new bar for what a display ought to look like. The addition of 4G LTE and more RAM are welcome as well. There are downsides however, such as a back panel that gets warm after extended use. The third-generation iPad starts at $500, which means it isn't the cheapest tablet on the market. But this is a situation where paying a bit more will result in you getting a better device.

Frankly, the Motorola DROID XYBOARD 10.1 is a respectable tablet within the Android sphere, even more when it packs additional goodies such as an IR blaster and stylus, but when it’s pitted against the newly available iPad, its cost is by far its kryptonite. Consider this, that the iPad rocks a starting price point of $630 for the base 16GB LTE model, which is less than the full $700 outright cost of the comparable 16GB LTE version of the XYBOARD 10.1. The more we think about it, they both have their standout features, but when first impressions make all the difference, the iPad has the distinctive advantage in capturing our attention from afar.

Despite the above negative points, there's no doubt we're once again looking at the leader in the tablet race once again. Apple's greatest strength has always been fusing together some headline features with an OS that just works, and will appeal to the largest amount of people. Sure, the price is a little high, and in a vacuum would be a real stick with which to beat the new iPad 3. But given many tablets are coming in at well over £500 these days (plus the fact so many people are willing to pay it) we can't criticise Apple's pricing too much here. We do feel there should be a touch more 'awesome' for a 64GB device at a near £700 price tag, and beyond the screen there isn't too much more of an upgrade on show - at least until we get some titles that really show off the prowess of the new iPad's internals. In short: if you've got an iPad 2, or don't really care about visuals, then you should stick with / purchase the now much cheaper pad, which starts at £329. But we recommend you probably don't look at the upgraded model – once you've gazed adoringly into the Retina Display, played any of the high-power games or watched a Full HD movie in your hands, you'll struggle to not hate any tablet that isn't the new iPad 3.