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Want to see how the iPad Air benchmarks translate to real-life use? Here’s the video

If you want to see how those impressive benchmark scores translate into real-life usage, this brief Mashable video compares start-up, shut-down, web-browsing and video on all five generations of iPad.

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Comments

  1. Shahab 21 (@Shahab_21) - 11 years ago

    Use iPad Air and you can’t shift to Samsung or anything else. You can’t even go back to iPad4. New Standards.

  2. Travis Cohen - 11 years ago

    i was Rooting for IPAD 2

  3. bloggerblogg - 11 years ago

    I don’t know, the browser tests obviously loaded pages faster on the iPad 4 than the Air. I don’t know why the commentator was rushing to conclusions saying “it popped on the iPad Air”

    • Lizard - 11 years ago

      I thought this too. The video shows the 4th gen iPad loading web pages faster. The only test where the Air seemed to have significant advantage was the YouTube test.

      • Chris Sanders - 11 years ago

        No it didnt load the 4 the fastest. There were still items that weren’t totally rendered. Look at it again. The iPad 4 spit something out to the screen first but the iPad Air was the first one that finished loading everything.

  4. I would love to see the same test (and more) with the iPad Air vs. a couple of the top Android tablets (and maybe a Surface 2). Video tests doing common things we all do every day if we use our tablets often.

  5. Hi Ben,

    Thanks for taking the time to run these tests. If you look at this video in a more scientific manner, I think you’ll find it doesn’t support all of the claims suggested by your earlier benchmark tests.

    Test 1 – Start Up

    iPad Air started up 5.73 seconds faster than the iPad 1 which came out 3 years and 6 months ago. (19.13 vs. 24.86). That’s 23% faster, yet Geekbench 3 suggests the iPad Air should be over 500% faster than an iPad 2.

    Test 2 – Web Page Load Times
    MIMO antennas aren’t new in mobile devices. They were in the Kindle HD two generations ago. And they apparently don’t help page load times because if you freeze frame your video just before 1:00, you’ll see the iPad 4 clearly loaded all of the text on the page BEFORE the iPad Air. All of the images on the webpage load on the iPad 4 and iPad Air at exactly the same time! Yet all of the browser-based benchmarks would suggest the iPad Air should be much faster.

    Test 3 – Video Playback
    On the video playback test, the iPad Air was no more than 15.3% faster than the iPad 4 (3.65 vs. 4.31)
    Reality: At best, the iPad Air is 15-25% faster than the iPad 4, and is some cases it is no faster.

    – Rick

    • Ben Lovejoy - 11 years ago

      You have to bear in mind the video was relying on five different people pressing buttons at the same time. :-) It’s never going to be a precise test, merely to give a visual feel.

      • Jack Bear Hsiung - 11 years ago

        and Visually, ipad air is not much faster than ipad 1. even less when compared to 2,3,4…

        NOT worth the extra money and silicon.

Author

Avatar for Ben Lovejoy Ben Lovejoy

Ben Lovejoy is a British technology writer and EU Editor for 9to5Mac. He’s known for his op-eds and diary pieces, exploring his experience of Apple products over time, for a more rounded review. He also writes fiction, with two technothriller novels, a couple of SF shorts and a rom-com!


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