iPad Specs and Speeds

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Source: Macworld.com
Posted on Apr 4, 2010 7:20 am by Jason Snell

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Before diving into the details of the iPad, it’s worth recapping some of the details of the product. There are currently three versions available, all identical save for the amount of onboard storage: a $499 16GB model, $599 32GB model, and $699 64GB model. Three other models with built-in 3G networking in addition to Wi-Fi will be available later in April, at the same storage sizes: 16GB for $629, 32GB for $729, and 64GB for $829. Before you buy a Wi-Fi-only model, it’s worth considering how you might use the 3G models.

Speed test
                   Sunspider 
  iPad             10.4
  iPod touch 64GB  15.6           
    (late 2009)
  iPhone 3GS       15.5 
  iPod touch       33.4 
    2nd-gen. 
  iPhone 3G        40.8 
  iPod touch       44.9 
    1st-gen. 
  iPhone           43.0 
    (original)

Results are in seconds. Best results in bold. Reference systems in italic.
iPad tested with iPhone OS 3.2. All other devices were tested running iPhone OS 3.1.

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With the iPhone and iPod touch, Apple has been reluctant to talk about processors and speeds, preferring to treat those products as magical black boxes. But we must forgive Apple for crowing a little bit about the processor that powers the iPad, because it was custom-designed by Apple itself. The new A4 processor, running at 1GHz, is a “system on a chip”—in other words, it was built to run the iPad, not chosen from a parts list and adapted to work for the iPad.

Geeky chip talk aside, the iPad flies. It was fast at almost everything I threw at it. The only times I found myself waiting were either for content to download over the network or for one of the iWork apps to convert a file into its native file format. Games played smoothly, with gorgeous graphics. There’s no lag when panning and zooming around large images. Any touch-based device stands or falls based on how quickly and smoothly the content on the screen can react to the movement of fingers on that screen. The iPad passes that test masterfully.

As a bare measure of speed, I ran the SunSpider JavaScript performance test from within the iPad’s Safari browser. The iPad passed the tests in 10.4 seconds. Last September I ran that same test on every iPhone OS model ever released, and the fastest device of the lot (the iPhone 3GS) ran the test in 15.5 seconds. (In contrast, the original iPhone took 43 seconds to run that test.) So the iPad has taken the crown as the fastest iPhone OS device on the planet.

Apple hasn’t released details of the battery that’s powering the iPad, but whatever combination of battery and power efficiency is lurking behind that aluminum back, it’s impressive. Apple boasts a 10-hour battery life for the iPad, and most reports from reviewers who have spent a week or more with the device suggest that the real-world life of that battery is even longer. My two days with the iPad bear out those reports. If you charge the iPad overnight, you can pretty much use it the whole day.

We’ll have more extensive speed and battery testing in the next few days at Macworld.com, but the short version is this: it’s fast and the battery lasts.

Next - Typing on the iPad

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