Retina Display iPad addresses two 'major weak points' of iPad 2 screen - report
Dr. Raymond Soneira, display expert and president of DisplayMate, put the new iPad's display through its paces and agreed with Apple that it is the "best display ever on a mobile device." He also noted that the new iPad's picture quality, color accuracy and gray scale are even better than most HDTVs, laptops and monitors.
Soneira found Apple's own definition of a "Retina Display" to apply to the new iPad, assuming the device is held 15-18 inches away from the eyes. He did, however, take issue with Apple's use of the term "Retina," as he has in the past, because the "true acuity" of the retina would require at least 458 pixels per inch for them to be indistinguishable at that distance.
According to the report, the new iPad "decisively beats (blows away)" all of the other tablets DisplayMate has tested.
"As expected, all of the images, especially the text and graphics, were incredibly and impressively razor sharp. In some photographs, that extra sharpness made a significant difference, especially in close-ups and when fine detail like text was photographed," Soneira said.
Credit: DisplayMate.
The analysis discovered that the new iPad has "a virtually perfect 99 percent of the Standard Color Gamut." By comparison, the iPad 2 has just 61 percent of the gamut.
"The colors are beautiful and accurate due to very good factory calibration â they are also âmore vibrantâ but not excessively so or gaudy like some existing OLED displays," he said.
The new iPad is so accurate that Soneira believes that it could function as a studio reference monitor with some "minor calibration tweaks." The device's very accurate colors and picture quality make it "really shine," he noted.
One area the new iPad was not as strong in was screen reflectance. Reflecting 7.7 percent of the light from all directions on average, the iPad was listed as in "the middle of the range" seen for tablets and smartphones.
The tablet is also not as efficient as its predecessor. According to Soneira, the new iPad "uses 2.5 times the Backlight power of the iPad 2 for the same screen Brightness."
Soneira was, however, impressed by how Apple managed to preserve the 10-hour battery life of the first- and second-generation iPads without significantly adding to the device's weight and thickness. The new iPad's battery has a 42.5 watt-hour capacity, 70 percent more than the iPad 2. At full brightness, the third-generation iPad had a running time of 5.8 hours, compared to the iPad 2's 7.2 hours, but at medium brightness, the new iPad lasted for 11.6 hours, nearly identical to the iPad 2.
"Apple has taken the very good display on the iPad 2 and dramatically improved two of its major weak points: sharpness and color saturation â they are now state-of-the-art," Soneira concluded.
He awarded the new iPad the Best Mobile Display award for his company's video hardware guide and also gave the device the Best Mobile Picture Quality award. Soneira said the new iPad is now "qualified" for professional level applications, such as professional photography, medical imaging and field service technicians.
Alongside the high praise heaped upon the iPad, the report listed some areas where the Apple and other manufacturers could see further improvement. Screen reflectance, ambient light sensor, automatic brightness, display user interface, RGB LED backlights, OLED displays and size were all mentioned.
Apple's new iPad was released last Friday and quickly became a hit with three million units sold in its first weekend on the market. In just a few days, the device has already been subjected to teardowns and infrared heat tests.
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Soneira found Apple's own definition of a "Retina Display" to apply to the new iPad, assuming the device is held 15-18 inches away from the eyes. He did, however, take issue with Apple's use of the term "Retina," as he has in the past, because the "true acuity" of the
This sounds like a lame definition to me.
Do we measure the normal gait based on the longest recorded gait? Do we measure the normal height of a person based on the tallest record height? Do we measure the average IQ by the highest recorded IQ? No, no and no. So why would Apple take the maximum presumed acuity on the Snellen test in order to define marketing term for normal vision? The idiom isn't "hindsight is 20/10" it's "20/20" so why market a term to a scale that means nothing to your consumer base? Is the point to show vision can be better than 20/20 or just to be pedantic for pedantic's sake?
PS: When I read something that seems mathematical and scientific I get turned off by the use of "lots of people" as the foundation for a definition.
I am totally loving the new iPad - the screen is incredible to say the least. But one thing I'd like to mention in the hope of saving anybody else the hassle - the high resolution is not very friendly to anti-glare screen protectors at all, pretty much negating the upgrade to retina. I assume it's because of the way that anti-glare protectors use a microscopic surface of raised dots to bounce light off in all directions. I'm guessing on the older iPads the screen pixels could each fit a whole bunch of these micro dots, so it averaged out and still made a white pixel look white, for example. The new screen has such tiny pixels it looks like each micro dot is now magnifying a whole pixel - all the white areas on the screen are now a "red, green and blue snow" to continue my example. So much so that I'd say if you need to use an anti glare protector for whatever your personal iPad use case is, don't bother getting the new iPad, stick with the old iPad 2. That all said, I would love to hear if anybody finds an anti glare screen protector that works on the new iPad and proves me totally wrong.
I am totally loving the new iPad - the screen is incredible to say the least. But one thing I'd like to mention in the hope of saving anybody else the hassle - the high resolution is not very friendly to anti-glare screen protectors at all, pretty much negating the upgrade to retina. I assume it's because of the way that anti-glare protectors use a microscopic surface of raised dots to bounce light off in all directions. I'm guessing on the older iPads the screen pixels could each fit a whole bunch of these micro dots, so it averaged out and still made a white pixel look white, for example. The new screen has such tiny pixels it looks like each micro dot is now magnifying a whole pixel - all the white areas on the screen are now a "red, green and blue snow" to continue my example. So much so that I'd say if you need to use an anti glare protector for whatever your personal iPad use case is, don't bother getting the new iPad, stick with the old iPad 2. That all said, I would love to hear if anybody finds an anti glare screen protector that works on the new iPad and proves me totally wrong.
I can see how that would be the case. You should try other brands though, or look up recommendations for other brands as they are added.
This sounds like a lame definition to me.
I wish Apple had just picked another word to call their higher-resolution displays... or at least not brought all this math and science into it.
Then again... it's only a handful of people on internet forums who even discuss this topic... compared to the millions of Apple's other customers.
Dell calls some of their monitors UltraSharp? and it's simply a brand name. Dell didn't try to explain what "ultra" means.
Apple uses the term "iSight" for some of their cameras. That seems simple enough.
Why not "iDisplay" for these high-resolution screens?
Some good news... in a few years Apple won't be making low-resolution screens anymore. So the "Retina display" can simply be called "the display"
This sounds like a lame definition to me.
Do we measure the normal gait based on the longest recorded gait? Do we measure the normal height of a person based on the tallest record height? Do we measure the average IQ by the highest recorded IQ? No, no and no. So why would Apple take the maximum presumed acuity on the Snellen test in order to define marketing term for normal vision? The idiom isn't "hindsight is 20/10" it's "20/20" so why market a term to a scale that means nothing to your consumer base? Is the point to show vision can be better than 20/20 or just to be pedantic for pedantic's sake?
PS: When I read something that seems mathematical and scientific I get turned off by the use of "lots of people" as the foundation for a definition.
I think the point being made is clear. If you are going to define/market a devices capabilities relative to the capabilities of the user based on the overall limits of human abilities then the retina display is simply "normal" in it's capabilities.
It would be like Nike marketing a shoe for marathon running realizing that "normal" people usually just run in 5ks therefor making the shoe capable of just simple 5k races comfortably.
So yes, Apple defined their screens to match the capabilities of the human retina but the true capabilities of the screen fail to match the highest extreme. Is it nit picking considering how many people have 20/10 and would notice? Yes, but it doesn't invalidate the point either. It just sets a higher benchmark for the Apple TV to hit.