The iPad 2 isn’t a radical departure from the original iPad, as you
might have figured out by now. What the iPad 2 is, however, is a much
more refined product. Things that weren’t possible with the first iPad
have now been featured front and center — a front and rear-facing
camera, a thinner and lighter body, a more tapered design — and it just
works beautifully together. Apple’s use of high quality materials
combined with its ingenious engineering and manufacturing have yielded
the sexiest tablet in the world. I haven’t seen anything that comes
close to being as well put together as the iPad 2.
This time around, two color choices are available, and there’s another
choice in the crowd — the choice of two carriers — as the iPad 2 with
Wi-Fi + 3G comes in either AT&T (GSM) or Verizon Wireless (CDMA)
varieties. Combine this with the fact that there are three capacity
options and you have 18 different iPad 2 configurations. Once you have
settled in on the storage capacity you think you’ll need, you move on to
what carrier (if any) you’d like on your iPad 2, and finally what color
tablet you want to take home. I used both a white and black 64GB
AT&T iPad 2 on and off over the course of a week, and I eventually
settled on the white model. My iPhone 4 doesn’t match and I’m not
thrilled about the back of the device featuring black components (the
top antenna cover is black, the Apple logo is black, and both the volume
and mute buttons are black), but for me, white was the more appealing
color choice. The screen most certainly disappears more in the black
model, though for me, the white iPad 2 blended in better in
my environment, and the black iPad was almost too dark if
you’ve used a white unit.
The iPad 2 features a brand new Apple A5 dual-core 1GHz processor, 512MB
of RAM (up from 256MB), an enormous battery (it’s actually three put
together), and up to nine times the graphics performance of the original
model. In my testing, the iPad 2 performed wonderfully well — easily a
noticeable difference from the original unit, especially with gaming and
when launching resource-hungry apps. Web browsing with the iPad 2 and
iOS 4.3 absolutely screams, and it makes for an almost desktop-like
experience… aside from the lack of Adobe Flash support, obviously.
Apps launch instantly, games perform in an almost console-like way, and
every task is lightning fast without hesitation. It feels like you’re
speeding at 150MPH at 3:00 a.m. on an open highway — the only limit is
on you. Nothing I have used, not one device, has performed as well as
the iPad 2 for the everyday tasks it affords
