My First Week With The 3rd Gen iPad

Posted by Randall_Steffens on March 24, 2012 01:18 am 23

I've been using the new iPad now for a week and I don't think it will come as any suprise to say that I love this device. I've been a PC user for many years but my needs have been modest. On PCs I've needed something for doing homework, getting on the Internet, and playing games. For the last two generations the iPad has been fairly decent at meeting those needs (although as a student I find the convenience of editing a Microsoft Word doc in Word itself without having to worry about compatibility issues is something that is sorely missing).

One thing that makes the new iPad great is that it's as functional as a similarly priced netbook with a matured ecosystem to go along with it. I love being able to browse for apps that I would find useful or games I wanna play in a central location. As for the experience I wanna point out that I'm editing this post on my new iPad. Typing on an iPad is a bit out of my comfort zone but if you grew up learning proper typing on a qwerty keyboard you'll be ok, especially thanks to the autocorrect. With the A5X SoC and 1GB of RAM everything runs pretty smoothly, I haven't run into any lag at all, which I guess is the benefit of having hardware and software that are optimized for each other.

I've talked about how the new iPad feels, but how about how it looks? Well no iPad review would be complete without mentioning the Retina Display. The 2048 x 1536 264ppi display is the best I've ever seen, but it's also the best I've ever had as well. So if you have had a lot of good displays in the past you definitely need to check this out to see just how well it stacks up. I spent the weekend reading the first issues of The Walking Dead on a road trip to New Jersey and it was awesome, the images looked crisp and clear and was just an enjoyable experience overall. Now, holding a 10 inch tablet for reading can get tiresome sometimes but when you have a device that looks good you learn to live with it.

I don't have much to say about the cameras cause they don't factor into my daily life that much. I haven't used FaceTime but the front VGA camera is passable, albeit grainy for my taste. The back 5MP lens takes decent shots. And yes it does look silly to walk around using a tablet as a point-and-shoot.

As for the longevity of the device I have to say that I'm impressed. If I left a laptop unplugged on sleep mode I may or may not last the day. The iPad has no problem lasting a 10 hour day on a single charge. I went to work this morning on 100% and with some light browsing and a little gaming I'm only down to 67%. With iOS I don't feel worried anymore about processes running rampant in the background.

The new iPad is a great media consumption device for music, movies, games, and web browsing with a gorgeous display to view it all in. The fluid and intuitive user interface is a joy to experience but if your used to file systems you may feel a sense of loss. Also, apps are getting bigger and bigger. This has been happening in games, like Bard's Tale which is over a gig, but also to apps that want to support the new hi res display. So if you get an iPad go with the 32GB or 64GB. You'll spend more but your device will be more future proof. So, no surprise here but I love this device, been having lots of fun and can't wait to discover cool new apps and games.