Well, it’s finally here, Apple’s new iPad. But how does it compare to tablets from Asus, Samsung, Amazon, BlackBerry, or heck, the iPad 2? We’ve got you covered with this head-to-head spec sheet.
Giz Au Editor’s Note: I’ve edited this story down from its rather enthusiastic original state.
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Clearly the toughest competitor in this chart is the Asus Transformer Infinity. The new iPad has it beaten on pixels per inch, but not by a lot. On paper it looks like the Transformer Infinity crushes the new iPad in terms of guts — the quad-core Tegra 3 is one mean mother — but we’ll have to wait and see how Apple’s new A5X performs in benchmark tests. Similarly spec’d Android tablets will be coming out all year, which means, considering this is a new product, Apple may not be as far ahead of the curve (technology wise) as one would hope. At the same time, Apple products have a long history of outperforming their specs so let’s not jump to conclusions just yet.
The new iPad outpaces most of the other tablets in the chart, from the Galaxy Tab 2 10.1 to the Amazon Kindle Fire to the BlackBerry’s Playbook, although the latter two do benefit from a significant difference in price. $US200 is very cheap. For people who primarily want a tablet for reading books and watching the occasional movie, the Kindle Fire might just be a more frugal investment.
*Note the forthcoming 4G LTE version of the Transformer Infinity will feature Qualcomm’s dual-core Snapdragon S4 processor in stead of the quad-core Tegra 3. You might thing that’s a step down, but initial benchmarking of the S4 has been extremely good, so in most contexts performance is likely to be just as solid.