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iPad 2 Review!

2011-03-14
what's up everyone John Rhett enger' from TechnoBuffalo here at the full review for you of Apple's new iPad 2 let's go ahead dig in see if it lives up to the height so before I get to the review I want to run through the specs on the iPad 2 very quickly it has a nine point seven inch and that's measured diagonal IPS display the resolution of 1024 by 768 or 132 pixels per inch or PPI and those specs are exactly the same as a previous generation it's got a fingerprint resistant oleophobic coating which I find is kind of funny if you turn the screen off you can see all the oil that has ever graced my fingertips and I didn't just eat some french fries and touch this I keep generally clean hands but no matter what there's really very little you can do as far as keeping fingerprints off of this so keep that in mind oleophobic or not it's being powered by Apple's new a5 system-on-a-chip which is actually built by Samsung with a clock speed of one gigahertz on each core and it is dual-core now they've been reports that that's going to throttle down to 800 and up as high as one gigahertz depending on what application you were running but Apple is advertising it as a dual-core 1 gigahertz processor it now has two cameras whoo it's got a camera on the back let's go ahead and check out the butt of the iPad 2 you can see it right in the upper left hand corner to the left of the 3G antenna if you have the 3G model it's capable of recording video at 720p at 30 frames per second and I'll put a link down below to the tests I did of the video quality it's really bad so this is mostly going to be used for FaceTime and very short video video recording don't think this is going to replace your camera or gonna be able to take out wedding shots or Ansel Adams like pictures of waterfalls not gonna happen this is a very low quality camera and speaking of the low quality cameras if you go ahead and head on out to the front we've got that little pinhole VGA camera which is also going to take videos at 30 frames per second all little obviously and much lower quality then even the low quality found on the rear facing camera but we'll talk about that a little more as we get into the review what's going to keep this guy's lights on is a 25 watt hour battery life which Apple claims is going to deliver 10 hours of battery and that actually is a little bit of understatement I was easily able to get 10 hours of battery life out of this in fact I got about 10 hours and 14 minutes with brightness turned down about medium you can see where actually where it is right now is where it kept it and I had video kept on loop I did turn Wi-Fi off with Wi-Fi on you're going to probably lose about two hours out of that but if you've got a long cross-country flight and you're flying somewhere you're going to be able to watch plenty of video on the sky without it killing out on you which is very nice and it's gonna deliver about two hours better battery performance then it's close competitor the Motorola Xoom which is a whole extra movie so if media is going to be important to you something to keep in mind let's go ahead and jump back to the home screen start of rounding out some of the specs it's got 802 11 and for Wi-Fi it's got a 3-axis gyroscope accelerometer speaker and mic all the stuff you'd expect this new package is 33% thinner then the last generation iPad you can see my iPad 1 vs. iPad 2 video down below as well to see the thinness comparison it feels really light in hands and ever thought the first generation iPad was heavy or fat but this one definitely feels light and it doesn't sacrifice the sturdiness or build quality it feels really solid and secure in the hands feels very nice and one of the things that I do like about the iPad 2 is you don't have that wiggle the iPad 1 head when it's on a flat surface it now stays nice and solid on the iPad 1 if you put on a flat surface and you hit the corners it would sort of do a little bit of a jiggle go ahead and look like I'm watching webpages there we do a little bit of a jiggle that jiggle ain't gonna happen on the iPad 2 it's gonna come and actually there are I believe 18 different versions of this ranging from 16 up to 64 gigs either just with Wi-Fi or with 3G on either AT&T or Verizon no 4G to be had on this in either HSPA+ or tea varieties and the price range is going to have a very wide range at 499 to 829 and if you're interested in the Smart Covers which we'll talk about those are going to set you back eat a 39 4 polyurethane or almost 70 bucks for leather all right so we've talked about the specs you know what's in here how does it perform well the iPad 2 is largely the same as a first generation iPad if you've used a first generation iPad if you've used an iPhone you've used an iPod Touch nothing else has really changed here it's that same experience on a larger scale now a lot of people say why would I want an iPad it's the same as an iPhone just bigger or it's an iPod Touch but larger and too big since that's true using Apple device and being happy using Apple device you have to be willing to live within its limitations you have to know going in that you're not going to have flash support in the browser unfortunately you're not going to have access at least without jailbreaking to some third party video players Jack we're able to play back every audio and video format you're going to be limited to the Apple ecosystem and you're gonna have to use iTunes as that hub now if you're ok with that you're going to have a very elegant experience the OS works very well if you're not ok with that you're never going to be truly happy with the iPad e you may want to look elsewhere and I think that being able to live within the limitations we're really the definition of what you'd call a fanboy you're not a fanboy words the new F word that you see thrown around on YouTube quite a bit definitely something to keep in mind so let's talk about the browser the new a5 chip does make this very fast again I never thought the first generation iPad was a slow device but we're looking at a very quick experience again if you look at my iPad 1 versus iPad 2 video it loads pages very very fast noticeably faster than the previous version there's a new Safari engine in here it might help that it's got an extra bit of RAM it's up from 500 and up from 256 to 512 here but things just load fast applications load very quickly pinch to zoom here is really quick again I never thought the first generation was slow but if I want to load some like let's say my favorite Angry Birds things just load very quickly on here go ahead and launch it up you get the splash screen Rovio and things are ready to play generally a few seconds before what you'd have on the first generation so there we go ready to play do a quick rotate you can go ahead and get going it does load fast one of the biggest benefits I think we're going to see from the iPad 2 versus the iPad 1 haven't been realized yet so this is technically capable of twice the speed of the first generation and technically capable of delivering nine times a graphic performance all the applications and all the games that are currently found in the App Store were designed for the iPad ones power so not much of difference now with the iPad 1 and the iPad 2 however moving forward it's presumed that developers will focus a lot more on the iPad twos prowess so we'll see a lot of the benefits of the faster processor of the dual core of that actually the extra core the extra ram in here sort of as we move forward set is yet to be realized so here's Infinity Blade one of the arguably more graphics intensive games I demonstrated during my iPad 1 vs iPad 2 video it looks beautiful but it looked beautiful on the iPad 1 I really like the thinness and I like the design of the iPad 2 it feels very good in hand although it's going to be very tough to say upgrade from an iPad 1 to an iPad 2 you're going to get largely the similar same experience what you're not going to get or what you are going to get rather from the frustration to the second arrow loops cameras which is also going to give you access to photo booth which let you do all kinds of fun little video things here pictures you can use it doing video or stills go ahead and turn that you can see there are nine different choices here I demonstrated this in a previous video again link to that will be down below showing what all these different choices are cuz if I move my hand you can see it doing all kinds of different stuff it's fun it's a little bit of a gimmick something you can use to taking you Facebook self-portraits but again nothing that's going to replace your everyday camera it's a fun addition it's not a compelling reason to upgrade a lot of people were interested in the color Apple has had a hard I'm shipping white devices that aren't MacBooks recently so here we have obviously the white version of the iPad 2 as far as the white versus black goes I decided to go with the white version I thought it was different it doesn't look yellow to me like people are reporting and I haven't had any screen bleeding issues on the sides but I kind of wish that I had gone for the black version the white one for whatever reason feels a little bit cheap and looks a little bit cheap to me I don't know that's because I'm associating the white now with the plastic MacBook but if you have a choice between the white or the black I definitely recommend going into the Apple store and deciding which one's going to be right for you if I could go back in time probably would take out the black one although I am very happy with the white model that we have here so really in summation conclusion it's the iPad it's everything you know or love about the iPad just a little bit faster again I think we're going to see these benefits as developers continue to build and take advantage of the new platform here you've got things like Smart Covers HDMI out and such which are nice features but they're definitely aside selling features so here is the Smart Cover for example I'll go ahead and show you real quickly what this looks like again did a full demonstration of this it is a very expensive cover for your iPad ranging anywhere from ganna from 39 all the way up to $70 to cover your iPad so it uses magnets on the side it'll auto align on the iPad 2 if you just sort of drag it across the bottom on the left and that is it and it will wake it or put it to sleep depending on whether it's open or closed you can go ahead and turn it into a little bit of a triangle and you can prop your iPad up while typing and you can prop it up while watching movies or whatever you want to do to not hold your iPad if you need to hands it's pretty stable go ahead and see that right there I wouldn't necessarily put much pressure on it but it does work to cover for your iPad if there's nothing however to cover the back of your device so you may want to invest in a third-party case go ahead and close this up and put it right back down here so if you are been waiting so if you've been waiting to get a tablet and you weren't sure if the iPad 2 was for you even looking at the iPad 1 even looking at the Motorola Xoom if you can live within the limitations of the Apple iOS ecosystem go ahead and jump right into the iPad 2 you won't be disappointed you're going to get a fast browsing experience you're going to get one of the most elegant mobile browsers that I have seen one that just works very very well on delivers content beautifully the screen while the same as the last generation still delivers very bright content I would have liked you seeing a little bit higher resolution if you have a previous generation iPad or if you've got an older tablet that still works there's not much of a compelling reason to go ahead and upgrade despite the extra year developers might have to develop some games you may be may be better off sleeping this generation and saving your money for the iPad 3 zoom 2 or whatever webOS device may be out then and you guys love to hear your thoughts do you agree or disagree is the iPad 2 for you did you buy one have you been enjoying it are you not enjoying if you're taking it back did you wait in line all that good stuff anything else that you'd like to see on the iPad 2 leave your comments down below I am John renter from TechnoBuffalo be sure to check out the website for all of your tech news and I will see you in the next video bye-bye you
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