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iPad Speed Test: AT&T vs. Verizon

2011-03-17
this episode of TechnoBuffalo is brought to you by netflix go to netflix.com slash buffalo for your free trial membership today what's up everyone John Ritter from TechnoBuffalo here with a 3G iPad showdown we are going to be comparing network speeds and real world tests on AT&T 3G network here on the iPad 1 and Verizon 3G network here in the iPad 2 now I know what you're saying John that's not a fair test iPad 1 vs. iPad 2 not gonna be accurate well I'm going to show you that the specs between the iPad 1 and the iPad 2 the difference in the processor in the RAM aren't going to affect the download and upload speeds of the network which is all that we are testing right here so let's go ahead and dig in and to show you that the tests are going to be run fairly and the difference in specs isn't going to affect these results at least let me go ahead and show you what we're working with so we got everything closed on each with the exception of settings and I'll show you why in just a minute I've got the 3G radio is turned off on each let me show you that both are connected to the same Wi-Fi network so connected to say D here and it should be connected to say D here as well both are running the newest version of iOS version 4.3 to do this test we're going to use actually the iPhone version of the speedtest.net app works very well and it's pretty user friendly it also it's got a nice looking UI fun for video all right so let's go ahead and start with the iPad one I don't want to do at the same time not that I think I don't reload the servers but I want to keep it as fair as possible and it'll ping the same a los angeles-based server where I am so fine and close the server will go ahead and begin test so the speeds that I get on this network tend to vary on the time of day but the speeds this should be relatively similar between the two you know within half a megabit per second or so so we're looking right now at about seven point eight megabits per second down and nine megabits per second up let's go ahead and run the same test on the iPad to go ahead and begin test and we should get speeds that are relatively similar and again this is the same a los angeles-based server that is pinging now look at that we're actually getting speeds that are even slower so the point being in with this illustration is that the strengths don't really affect the download speed the network is what's gonna affect the download speed here that both 802 11 and so the download is actually much faster on the iPad 1 versus the iPad to upload relatively similar alright so now I'm going to turn Wi-Fi off on each and I'm going to turn all in the cellular network so I'll do this all live on camera so you can see that there's no funny business going on here we'll go ahead and kick Wi-Fi off will turn on cellular data on the iPad 2 which is a Verizon flavor give that a moment to turn on we'll do the same thing here on the iPad 1 turn off Wi-Fi and we'll turn on cellular data and this is going to be AT&T the iPad 1 you only get the option for AT&T cellular data built-in I pad too you can have your pick between a verizon or AT&T so let's take a look at signal strength here on AT&T I generally undulate I like to use that word undulate between about three or four bars of service on Verizon I generally undulate between two and three bars a service just want to give sort of full disclaimer alright so now let's run it the same speedtest.net app will start with Verizon this time and Wi-Fi has been turned off so it will ping the network just based on Verizon 3G let's go ahead and begin test and this is going to be in megabits per second so we're looking right now at a little bit below one and certainly speeds are going to vary depending on where your location is how many people are on the network at the time there's a ton of mitigating circumstances that can determine your speed but this would be at least a decent sense of what your speed might be wherever you are located so we got about 0.5 9 down actually not about we got exactly point five nine on the down it looks like we're going to get about point one three point one four ish on the up 0.15 alright let's go ahead and test AT&T and I'll do the same test here it's going to ping the same la-based server and I will say that I've run this test even when the Verizon had four five bars of service and the speeds were relatively similar let's go ahead and begin a test right there and now this is going to be AT&T and let's see if this is any faster it's already we are actually above one megabit per second almost that too actually now we're over to four like I'm calling a sports game here now we're over to two point two three on the downs so that is a noticeable difference in speed now we're looking at 0.2 or so on the up so relatively similar on the upload so two point two three and point two one on the down so there's already a huge difference being seen between the speed between eighteen T and Verizon and if you were going to comment on the specs this is still the iPad one versus the iPad 2 so the next thing you're gonna say is probably about the signal strength but there's not much I can do as far as towers and receptions unfortunately I'm generally in about two to three bars of Verizon service and generally close to the same in a TMT let's go ahead and try this one more time and see if the speeds were accurate maybe it was just a one time shot and the speeds were different or go ahead and try Verizon one last time and we'll probably get something relatively similar speeds that I've gotten were generally in the 0.4 to 0.62 maybe 0.7 range so this is very representative so it looks like we're going to get almost exactly the same results here with 0.48 and on the upload looks like we're going to be pretty similar as well so it was 18 Keys Network really that much faster than Verizon's well that's going to vary again depending on where you are we'll do some tests now on websites let's actually go ahead and run this one more time on 18t and see if we really do have that big a difference all right so we are going to get this loaded now it appears to be a little bit slower but still noticeably faster than Verizon we're at one and a half whereas we were over two before so still there's a noticeable difference in speed ranging from anywhere from four times faster to three or two depending but you're definitely looking at at least double the speed so 1.91 in this case and it looks like the upload is going to be relatively similar 18t being a little bit slower this time on the upload alright so let's go ahead and move on over to real-world browsing tests and this is where the specs of the device might come into play so we're gonna go ahead and load up TechnoBuffalo here on each and we'll do a refresh test and I will refresh the cache in the next test this is the cache has not been refreshed on either these cookies haven't been cleared none of that let's just see if there's any sort of difference now you would expect the iPad 2 to be faster because it can pull in and analyze the information a little bit quicker than the iPad 1 this isn't a test of just the sheer download speed and upload speed like it was in the speed test app this is actually illustrating content so the specs are going to come into play just a little bit more all right so now let's go ahead and do a refresh and this is with the cache uncleared and see if we have any sort of speed difference so we'll go ahead and get that ready to go right there and we'll get this ready to go on the iPad 1 will it go at the same time go and go and let go and see if we have any sort of difference then we'll run the test one more time so despite the much slower Network speed we are seeing content load first and quicker on the iPad 2 it looks like the iPad ones make it a pretty decent comeback you almost look neck and neck right now both are showing content in about the same place and they finished it almost exactly the same time oh it's very interesting really goes to show the speed improvements from a hardware standpoint of the iPad 2 despite the much faster network speed found in the iPad one in 18 T's the network in this case so let's go ahead and clear the cache and see if that makes any sort of difference and again I'm gonna do all this live on cameras there's any funny tricky work going on here let's go ahead and jump down to mail our Safari rather go ahead and clear cache I'll go ahead and clear cookies for good measure and I'll do the same thing on the iPad one jump it to settings go down to the far T well clear clear cookies and we'll clear cache as well alright and this will be the last test let's go ahead and give these suckers a twirl but go ahead and open up Safari it should start loading the pages at exactly the same time alright so it will do the same thing here and the same thing here let's go ahead and hit go go and let go and see if there's any stir of difference now with the cache cleared they look to be again almost exactly the same they almost look like mirror images showing content both are showing the same content now the iPad 2 actually looks to be way far ahead I've had one is making its late game come back as it did last time content is shown and visible on both and is done on the iPad 2 and still loading on the iPad 1 it's still loading and just finished so this is really going to go to show you that despite the network speed that you might get the specs on the iPad 2 when it comes to real-world usage so actually using the tablet browsing internet and using internet intensive applications this going to make a difference from a spec standpoint the speed test that we ran was just from a network standpoint which is a little bit different so if you're considering upgrading from the iPad 1 to the iPad 2 definitely know that the iPad 2 is going to give you a little bit faster results if you want to pick up the 18 T versus a Verizon version as we saw right here at least in Southern California 18 T Network speeds were noticeably quicker so now let me do a really cool magic trick for you we'll do some stop-motion I want to take a minute to thank our friends at Netflix who are our proud sponsors Netflix is an awesome way to stream movies and TV shows right to your television we have the game console you probably already have sitting there whether it's an Xbox 360 a ps3 or a week for a free trial membership be sure to check out the URL right there netflix.com slash buffalo again for your free trial membership I'm John retina from TechnoBuffalo and I'll see in the next video
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