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iPad Air: Unboxing, first impressions and benchmarks
Today's the first day of availability for the new iPad Air, and after totally forgetting to order it online at 1 AM MT, I got onto the online Apple Store at around 7:30 AM to order one. After confirming that the model I wanted -- 32 GB, silver, AT&T -- was in stock at the Aspen Grove Apple Store in Littleton, CO, I pushed the button. I picked it up at around 11:30 AM, and was in and out of the store in about five minutes. I'm one of those sick individuals who tends to hold onto the old boxes for my Apple products, so I was able to do a quick size comparison with the 3rd-generation iPad and iPad mini. The box was the same height and thickness as that of the iPad, but not as wide. With that silliness out of the way, it was time to grab the scissors and actually open the box: I apologize for the video quality, but I get sooo excited with a new iPad. Some people like new cars, some people get excited about new clothes, I love new tech. It's when you first get your hands on the iPad Air that you realize just how good a job Apple did at trimming the weight. It weighs only about 6 ounces more than an iPad mini, as you'll see in the weigh-in pictures in the slideshow below. I found the display on the iPad Air to be slightly brighter than that of the 17-month-old 3rd-generation iPad at the same brightness setting, and it had a slightly warmer tint to it. There's a side-by-side image in the slideshow that demonstrates this. In terms of speed, the Air seems to be quite snappy. "Snappy" isn't a good quantitative unit of measure, so I installed Geekbench 3 on all three iPads to get a much better picture of exactly how fast they all are: Geekbench Score Comparison SIngle-Core Score Multi-Core Score iPad Air 1469 2675 iPad (3rd-Gen.) 262 494 iPad mini (1st-Gen.) 259 468 Yes, the iPad Air is FAST. All apps except Geekbench were shut down and the devices were restarted before running the benchmark. The device specs are as follows: Device Specifications Model iPad Air iPad (3rd-Gen.) iPad mini (1st-Gen.) OS Version 7.0.3 7.0.3 7.0.3 Processor A7 @ 1.39 GHz A5X @ 1.00 GHz A5 @ 1.00 GHz RAM 976 MB 988 MB 503 MB Storage 32 GB 32 GB 16 GB All in all, my initial impressions of the iPad Air are very favorable. I hope to do some additional tests in the near future for publication here on TUAW.
iPad Air impressive in early benchmark testing
The reviews of the upcoming iPad Air have been glowing -- so glowing in fact that you'd be forgiven for thinking it was merely a case of Apple fan-boys unable to hide their excitement. Sure, the tech guys are excited, but what are the hard numbers? How does the iPad Air stack up in benchmark testing against previous models? It turns out that the iPad Air stacks up incredibly. Primate Labs tested the iPad Air using the cross-platform Geekbench 3 benchmark tool and the results are impressive: The iPad Air is more than 80 percent faster than the fourth-generation iPad and five times faster than the iPad 2. Given that the iPad Air is only a hundred dollars more than the iPad 2, Apple's decision to keep the older iPad around instead of the iPad 4 is odd. Perhaps they''re hoping customers will look at the specs and price difference, and go for the slightly more expensive, but significantly more powerful, iPad Air. The iPad Air hits stores this Friday.
Geekbench 3 update for iOS and OS X released
Primate Labs has released Geekbench 3 today with new tools for iOS, OS X, Windows and Android. This marks the first major upgrade for Geekbench in six years. The update introduces new benchmark tests modeled after current processor-intensive tasks and covers encryption, image processing, physics simulations and signal processing. Geekbench 3 also features 12 completely rewritten benchmark tests from the previous edition of the program. These tests have been updated to better reflect usage scenarios of real-world applications. To analyze all this information, a reworked scoring system has been added, breaking single-core and mulit-core performance out into two separate categories. Sadly this means that Geekbench 3 scores are no longer comparable to Geekbench 2 scores. iOS users will notice an updated look for the interface that matches the "flat" aesthetic that will be introduced with the upcoming iOS 7. However, the iOS version has improvements beyond just a pretty new coat of paint. Benchmark runs are now automatically archived, and the app has Dropbox integration to make sharing results between machines easier. The iOS version of Geekbench 3 is now available in the App Store for US$1. Pricing for the various Geekbench 3 OS X offerings can be found here.
