Apple iPad 2 Tablet PC Review

Apple introduced the iPad tablet in April of 2010. The first publicly accepted tablet, it spent all but a few months at the end of 2010 as the only Tablet PC choice. The Samsung Galaxy Tab 7 inch tablet showed up right in time for the holiday shopping season, but really didn’t make a dent in Apple’s tablet market share. With a year under their belts as a tablet maker, Apple rolled out their second generation tablet, the iPad 2, almost exactly a year after their original tablet. And with a look very reminiscent of the first gen model, Apple devotees and other tablet shoppers wondered what changes were made, and how the Apple iPad 2 would compare to the rest of the growing tablet landscape. Those answers were received quickly, as Apple sold out on its weekend launch, and orders were backlogged up to 3 weeks. But popularity never guarantees performance, so the big question is, does the iPad 2 deliver on all the considerable tablet hype surrounding it? And also, is it still the dominant tablet it was reported to be? That’s what we are going to uncover in this in-depth iPad 2 breakdown.

Design, Display, Cameras Apple iPad 2 Tablet PC Review

The first thing Apple did was make the iPad 2 thinner and lighter, at a skinny 8.8 mm thin and 1.25 pounds. With only the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 thinner and lighter, Apple CEO Steve Jobs delivered on his promise to make the iPad 2 even more svelte and portable. This is a 33% drop in thickness, and a 15% reduction in weight. The iPad 2 carries the same width and length as the iPad original, and delivers the same size 9.7 inch display. This year’s version does offer you a choice of black or white, which is more than all but a handful of tablets, like the Toshiba Thrive, can offer consumers.

The Apple iPad of 2010 had a crisp, beautiful display at 1024 x 768, and Apple did not attempt to change this. Same resolution, same gorgeous display. This is one of the top displays of all the tablets on the market. Apple also added a rear and front cameras, though to call these cameras is an insult to even the $4.99 disposables you can now buy. Suffice it to say these are the worst of the worst in the entire tablet marketplace, but provide a video-chat ability on the front facer, and the opportunity to take video and still shots with the rear camera. The number one complaint of original iPad owners was a lack of cameras, and if this is the best Apple could do, they should have omitted them and dropped the price.

Performance, Power, Price Apple iPad 2 Tablet PC Review

As good as the cameras are bad is the iPad 2′s pc tablet review performance and power. Original users never complained about having enough power and speed, and only those gamers with the most demanding framerates probably ever noticed any issues in the original. But the iPad 2 still cranked up the processing power, and it shows. The new processor is the A5 dual core 1 GHz Apple chip that is nothing short of spectacular. Along with the Nvidia Tegra 2 dual core 1 GHz chip found in a few Android tablets, this is the most powerful and quickest processing engine available. RAM is doubled from 256 MB to 512 MB, and this new iPad 2 is twice as fast as the original. The result is almost instant booting, lightning fast games, apps, downloads and web surfing, and easily the best experience in Table PCs to date. It is also nice to maintain the 10 hour battery life of the original iPad, considering the light weight and ramp up in performance.

Pricing on the Apple iPad 2 is the same as most of the top flight tablets like the Motorola Xoom and Samsung Galaxy Tab. $499 gets you a 16 GB model, $599 buys the 32 GB model, and 64 GB costs $699. This is the same retail as the iPad original, and that is a nice move by Apple. Unfortunately, there is no expansion capability, as there are no SD or microSD slots. You pay for what you get, so plan accordingly.

Software, Operating System, Apps Apple iPad 2 Tablet PC Review

The applications and games available specifically for the iOS recently hit the 50,000 mark. For comparison, the recently released HP TouchPad 10.1 entered the tablet fray with 300+ apps, and the Android Honeycomb OS offers 500 apps. This is far and away the most versatile tablet as far as apps and games is concerned. Photobooth and FaceTime are obvious upgrades internally, and two very nice new notable apps are GarageBand and iMovie, and at $4.99, they are well worth checking out.

With the optional Digital AV Adapter, HDMI video can be mirrored on your HDTV. This is a nice plus, but most of the top tablets also offer HDMI out, so this was really required software. As far as operating systems go, the Apple iOS is probably the smoothest OS we have tested. Following the theme of the original iPad, and other iDevices, Steve Jobs aims to make actually using the iPad 2 simple and headache-free. With some of the clunky Android OS platforms in comparison, the iPad 2 has easily the most enjoyable tablet experience.

Wrap-up Apple iPad 2 Tablet PC Review

Superior to the original iPad, and the product of an entire year of learning under its belt, it is hard to consider any other tablet a better all-around device than the iPad 2. Certainly, every other tablet on the market has better cameras, many have bigger 10.1 inch displays, and most have an SD or microSD slot for expansion. But not one combine speed, power, apps selection and a user interface that is, as a total package, the best tablet offering of them all. Is the iPad 2 perfect? No, far from it, but it is a lot closer than the competiton by far. Perhaps after a year of making mistakes and improvements, the Android and HP operating systems, as well as the physical tablets they run on, will truly test the Apple iPad design and performance, but right now, there are the iPad 2 and a bunch of second place choices.