Beware the new iPad, not because it's an inferior product, but because it's a superior one. The big culprit here is its stunner screen. It has four times the resolution of the previous models. That's a big, big jump, which makes text and high-resolution images look amazingly sharp and clear. High-definition movies look amazingly detailed. Color reproduction is also improved greatly over the previous models. You can tell at a glance that the colors are more vibrant and nuanced on the new screen. The new iPad's “Retina” screen, with its resolution of 2048 by 1536 pixels, is far better than the competition can muster. Now, the improved screen does come with a significant drawback: It draws a lot more power. One reason is that the graphics chip now has four times as many pixels to handle. When a chip has more work to do, it draws more power. Still, Apple has managed to keep battery life nearly the same. The company rates it at 10 hours of use, the same as the iPad 2. The bigger battery also takes more time to charge. The higher power consumption of the new tablet probably accounts for customers' observations that the new iPad runs hotter than the old one. Another annoying thing is that for some applications, the text looks worse on the new iPad. This has to do with the mechanisms programmers chose in presenting text. Applications that have been updated for the Retina screen look great, such as The New York Times app. But head over to a PDF-viewing program called GoodReader, which hasn't been updated, and it's another story: Letters are more blurry and smeared. A couple of other upgrades in the new iPad are good to have, but not as revolutionary as the screen. The processor is faster. The camera on the rear is improved, now matching the one on the latest iPhone, with 5 megapixels of resolution. Another welcome change: You can dim the screen much further than you could on the iPad 2. That's a good thing if you like to use the tablet in bed before going to sleep.
