Battery Life, Conclusion
Battery Life
It is Apple that has the on-paper advantage in this area. The iPad 3’s gigantic 42.5 Wh battery dwarfs the 25 Wh battery found in the Prime.
However, this doesn’t mean the iPad 3 is guaranteed a win. A large battery was put in the new iPad because it’s needed. The new Retina display is no doubt a power hog.
Let’s see how endurance shakes out.
Well, that wasn’t even close, was it? At 30% display brightness the iPad 3 nearly doubles the life of the Prime in both of our tests. Increasing brightness to 70% demonstrates the power-hungry nature of the Retina display, but the new iPad still claims victory in both tests.
Conclusion
There is no doubt in my mind which tablet is better among these competitors. Apple’s iPad 3 is more attractive, a bit easier to handle, offers a significantly superior display and far better battery endurance. Using the iPad 3 is simply more enjoyable for all of these reasons.
That’s not to say there aren’t reasons to buy the Prime, but they are few. You might want the Prime if you use your tablet outdoors. Some people might like the Prime’s lighter weight. And the Prime is of course more supportive of customization, so some users will prefer it for that fact alone.
However, these points are ultimately trivial. The new iPad, taken as a whole, is clearly superior to the Transformer Prime. All the areas where the Prime can claim an advantage are only applicable to a niche.
There is a price penalty that you pay for the new iPad’s advantages. You can purchase a 32GB Prime for the price of a 16GB iPad. That difference is worth consideration, but in my opinion the gap in price does not compensate for the Prime’s disadvantages. Not everyone will agree, and you will need to give a bit of thought to your own usage. Anyone who has a lot of media they might wish to store on their tablet may prefer the Prime’s more affordable storage, though in my opinion the availability of cloud storage reduces any advantage provided by additional long-term memory.
Some have called the iPad 3 an incremental upgrade. I disagree. As I think this comparison shows, the new iPad is substantially better than the next-best competitor. When judged relative to the competition the iPad 3 is the best product Apple makes and among the best consumer electronics products available today. Everyone else is still trying to catch up.
I’ll preface this with I have
I’ll preface this with I have used BOTH devices extensively so have hands on experience.
This is an appauling review. As noted in a lot of other comments there are a large number of factual errors, bad methadologies and misses 90% of the points where Transformer has some major advantages such as connectivity and the keyboard. It also downplays some of the iPads shortcommings. All in all it is like reviewing a station wagon and a ute and saying the Ute wins because it can carry 2 tons while ignoring the fact it only has 2 seats.
a) The design comparison is COMPLETLY ARBITRARY, you dont like the design. Many people do. The Prime is a unibody design exactly as the iPad.
b) The Asus lettering IS the Corporate logo…. just saying
c) The “tolerances” that the iPad is built to are identical to the Asus. This is clearly a lack of understanding what this actually means.
d) Given the two tablets have almost identical dimensions how does the display aspect ration make it easier to wrap your hand around the iPad? This is entierly subjective.
e) Both the Transformer Prime and the iPad3 have 8 bit per channel displays so can display EXACTLY the same number of colours. The iPad 3 has an increased colour gamut which is impressive and a great improvement on other displays but this distinction is not made clear. Apple uses dithering in the same way they did on early MacBooks to make up the extra colours for which Apple got sued for misleading advertising at the time.
f)I have no idea of the websites that you are using for the screen shots but I have NEVER had to zoom the text to make it readable on the Prime. Looking at the screen shot of the Prime screen the “Headder” text appears to be between 6 and 12 pixels high which is not a default size and makes this a completely misleading comparison. Even if a website did use this size by default even on the iPad 3 it is not a comfortable size to read.
A full size image of the total display would give context for the text size, this has not been done here.
G) It’s clear that the iPad 3 has better post processing on the images than the Transformer. What is not mentioned here is there are several shooting modes available on the Prime not available on the iPad 3 such as panaoramic photos. There is also evidence of lense flair on the Prime image of the backyard not in the iPad image which could account for the differnce in that image.
I will note the article fails to mention the Prime has a camera flash where the iPad 3 does not. This makes a HUGE difference in the what situations the camera can be used.
H)The performance benchmarks are COMPLETELY USELESS as an indicator of CPU performance. They are BROWSER benchmarks specifically testing HTML5, JavaScript and other functionality such as media playback support. Not all tests in the Peackeeper benchmark are supported by both the Prime and the iPad 3, running the benchmarks on the Prime with different browsers (you actually have the option of alternate browsers on both platforms) gave vastly different results. Additionally the graph grossly distort the difference, the peacekeeper benchmark for example is only a 3% difference in performance which is generally within the margin of error not the 15% different the graph makes it appear to be.
Again EPIC FAIL.
I) The graphics benchmark is only a part of the story, the GL Benchmark 2.1 Egypt off screen test is jus that OFF SCREEN. it is run at the same resolution across all platforms (720p). That means that while the iPad 3 has better performance at 720p it cannot maintain that advantage rendering at native resoultion so the second you start playing 3D games either expect worse performance that the Prime or expect the resolution to be around 720P upscaled (which also means a performance hit).
What is also NOT mentioned about the iPad graphics pipe line is that for the games featured in the video it lacks some of the effects available on the Prime Tegra 3 platform. The advantages commented on in the video come down to the display and not the graphic chip set.
G)The browser load comparison was fair although I feel that the fact you can see the Prime has had 8+ apps opened in background prior to this test and both tablets have obviously had the sites opened before would have me question if there is caching involved in the difference of the load times. I agree the iPad is a smoother experience but there was also no mention of the fact that the Prime has FULL flash support which is a significant advantage.
The Prime, or more specifically Android still has a stability issue with the youtube app, I see this on other platforms, however this gets about zero usage in my day to day usage due to the flash support in the browser itself.
J) The Battery life comparison is also deeply flawed. Both the Peacekeeper and Youtube streaming tests are flawed for a bunch of reasons. Firstly the Youtube as a video source is problematic as it is both served and decoded differently for both platforms, most notably flash and mp4 are different video formats that are used. Secondly the a screen brightness of 30% on the prime is and use far more power than 30% on the iPad. This is born out in the different in the iPad results. matched brightness would be a far more even test. There is also no indication of the Primes CPU performance setting used.
As noted previously the peacekeeper test is a browser test and not all the same test are run on both platforms therefore the load will be different.
The biggest complaint I have about the article is it COMPLETELY ignores the keyboard dock, the memory expansion options and connectivity the Prime has over the iPad. The Prime has a microSD slot in the tablet itself so you can cheeply upgrade the storage, it has a full sized SD slot in the dock as well as a USB Host slot that supports USB sticks, USB hdds (RW formatted for FAT32 or NTFS), a mouse and other preferial. The additional battery can recharge the tablets internal battery when connected and more than double the usable time. The keyboard itself makes note taking extremely rapid compared to a virtual keyboard
All in all this is one of the most badly written and inaccurate articles that i have seen written on the subject.
Well said. Glad to see
Well said. Glad to see another Prime/iPad3 owner here. I hate how some reviewers (not this one) dwell on how awesome that the iPad3 has 4 GPU Cores. SO? My Tegra2 Powered G2x has 8, and the Prime has 12. Also, I ran peacekeeper and my Prime absolutely dominates my iPad3. Why? Try running it in Chrome, which is freely available to everyone and should be included in benchmarking.
Also, even after updated for the iPad3, some games still look better on the Prime. Shadowgun is just one of them. Dungeon Defenders may not be as sharp when I press my face against the screen, but from a normal distance they look similar, and the Prime version has much better lighting and was free to boot! Riptide is another game that looks better on the Prime. The water effect alone make the iPad3 version look laughable by comparison.
Another awesome thing that the Prime can do is connect to a 3DTV with the HDMI cable. Playing Riptide and Shadowgun in 3D is pretty darn awesome! Also, it shows the sheer power of the Tegra3, as it’s not only rendering a 3D image on the TV (if the Hit playing Deus EX in 3D on my CFX 5850’s is anything to go by, you NEED a lot of GPU power to do 3D) BUT it renders it on the tablet. Really a nice demonstration of the superiority in processing that the Tegra3 provides over the A5x. Not to mention the lack of lighting and shading provided by they PowerVR chip (which is similar to the built-in Graphics of the Intel Atom I believe) in comparison to the Tegra3 (which has been compared to the 7900GTX). I mean ask yourself, would your rather have Intel integrated graphics or a Geforce 7900GTX?
Well said. Glad to see
Well said. Glad to see another Prime/iPad3 owner here. I hate how some reviewers (not this one) dwell on how awesome that the iPad3 has 4 GPU Cores. SO? My Tegra2 Powered G2x has 8, and the Prime has 12. Also, I ran peacekeeper and my Prime absolutely dominates my iPad3. Why? Try running it in Chrome, which is freely available to everyone and should be included in benchmarking.
Also, even after updated for the iPad3, some games still look better on the Prime. Shadowgun is just one of them. Dungeon Defenders may not be as sharp when I press my face against the screen, but from a normal distance they look similar, and the Prime version has much better lighting and was free to boot! Riptide is another game that looks better on the Prime. The water effect alone make the iPad3 version look laughable by comparison.
Another awesome thing that the Prime can do is connect to a 3DTV with the HDMI cable. Playing Riptide and Shadowgun in 3D is pretty darn awesome! Also, it shows the sheer power of the Tegra3, as it’s not only rendering a 3D image on the TV (if the Hit playing Deus EX in 3D on my CFX 5850’s is anything to go by, you NEED a lot of GPU power to do 3D) BUT it renders it on the tablet. Really a nice demonstration of the superiority in processing that the Tegra3 provides over the A5x. Not to mention the lack of lighting and shading provided by they PowerVR chip (which is similar to the built-in Graphics of the Intel Atom I believe) in comparison to the Tegra3 (which has been compared to the 7900GTX). I mean ask yourself, would your rather have Intel integrated graphics or a Geforce 7900GTX?
I own both a 32GB Prime and a
I own both a 32GB Prime and a 32GB iPad3. Love them both, but I find the Prime more fun to play with, while the iPad3 is a reliable little toy. With the Prime I can check/download torrents, stream video/audio from my media server, edit or create word documents, change keyboards, try new cameras, root and overclock, tool around with.
In all reality, the Prime is for someone who visits this site, while the iPad3 is great for a Mom. I like having both because the iPad is awesome, stable fast, and the gesturing is so awesome, I barely ever use the home button, especially since I have a case that unlocks it when I open it.
The iPad is like the Accord/Camry of Tablet, a solid reliable tablet. The Prime is like a tuner car, like a Lancer Evolution or Camaro. You don’t want to tool around with it, then get a Camry/iPad, you really wanna have fun with your device get the Camaro/Prime. Both have a place in my heart.
As an iPad 3 owner I have to
As an iPad 3 owner I have to say that I also think this comparison has issues in several regards.
Measuring brightness by percentage (rather than by actually measuring the brightness) is deeply flawed when attempting to gauge battery performance. The comparison also failed to mention a major annoyance of the iPad 3, which is that it takes approx 7 hours to charge from zero to 100%, and 100% doesn’t actually mean 100% either (it can charge for another hour after reaching “100%”). Oh, and don’t even think about charging it from standard USB ports, otherwise you can increase those times significantly.
When measuring webpage loading time care must be taken not to use a page which has flash elements (or that the flash is disabled on the Android side) otherwise the iPad is going to be faster purely because it’s not loading the flash elements.
YouTube comparisons are also flawed for similar reasons. You may well be comparing a different video codec, bit rate, and resolution. Though, if Android is performing worse, it does still point to worse software performance in one way or another.
Pretty much all movie and TV content also expects a 16:9 display format. The iPads display is much better with both resolution and colour accuracy, but the tiny letterbox renders 16:9 content almost unwatchable without zooming in, which cuts off the edges. Otherwise it’s tiny and the resolution does not make up for that! The resolution has set the standard in terms of web page reading and standard book reading which is why I bought one. But, if you’re mostly watching video content, I would have no hesitation in saying the iPad is NOT a good solution due to the 4:3 format and tiny letter boxes.
Design wise the iPad has sharp edges which are NOT comfortable to hold for long periods. The back is also extremely poor in terms of grip. Basically I will HAVE to use a case on the back of the iPad whether I want to or not. Why people take the looks over basic ergonomics such as holding comfort I’ll never know, but they do and Apple deliver!
The requirement to buy extremely overpriced accessories just to connect USB devices or an external display is also a major negative for Apple, and it won’t send a 720 or 1080 signal either, meaning most content played from iPad to TV scales extremely poorly.
One thing in defence of Apple is I have to say my WIFI performance has been good. The iPad 3 gets a strong signal in places where my Dell laptop, with intel 5300 wireless, struggles. However the speed does seem to top out at 2MB per second, where the laptop is about 10x as fast.
Overall, other than the screen, it came down to software for me. iOS just has more apps of better quality. Someone mentioned iMovie and iPhoto in the comments, and how Android cannot compete. Both of these apps are a joke for content producers. To call them limited would be a massive understatement. But he’s right, in that Android usually cannot compete even with pretty pathetic apps like these. It says more about the sorry state of competition than anything.
But the better quality does not come cheap either. Its already cost me a good $50 just to bring the iPad up to the level of my Android phone. Generally things which are available for free on Android cost money on iOS, and the same apps are often double the price or more on iOS, especially when talking about iPad specific versions.
To sum up, it’s a much more mixed bag than this comparison suggests, and once Android adds a screen with equivalent resolution it will once again come back to the issue of software quality and whats available on a devices marketplace. I actually have more faith in Microsoft delivering an OS which can drive the hardware better than Android, though whether that will translate to software support on the ARM side of things for them is another matter..
Yep, a horrible review. I
Yep, a horrible review. I like the iPad but, for reasons already stated by others, opted for the TF201. It has its faults and there are some iPad features I would love to have, but docking keyboard, extra space, cheaper accessories, (fewer but) cheaper apps and more… I’ll stick with Prime for now and await developments.
What I’m finding a bit odd
What I’m finding a bit odd with this review on the camera area is that the photos were not taken at the same angles. You’d be very surprised what a few degrees will do for glare and color saturation capability. Both devices should have been put on a tripod with holder for each device to ensure proper alignment between shots.
The color space shot is also misleading. I’m having a hard time believing that the TP can’t display purple (the colored bands on the right side of the satellite photo were almost all blue on the TP in the pic vs. blue transitioning into purple on the iPad 3, leading me to believe that again, it’s apples to oranges as the color band obviously was a moving/changing background. It also does no justice that the pictuers were not taken dead on like just about any credible reviewer would do (not calling you uncredible, but this is a glaring gaff).
I’d like to have seen more info on the quality of audio. Not audio measured through the tiny thimble sized paper speakers, but through the headphone jack. What is the stereo separation? What is the S/NR, with a line level connection to A/V equipment and headphones attached? Granted I’d be using the HDMI out of the TP into my Yamaha RX-A3000 for audio streaming at home and not bluetooth (I hate BT audio with a passion) so my Mac Pro could have WoW running on it and I could have music from whatever I want without dealing with iTunes (yes, I use a Mac Pro and OS X, but hate iTunes, and hate it even more now that the security question additions have gotten insanely stupid for the iTunes store).
As others have noted, 30% on one display != 30% on another display. You should have measured the battery life using cd/m^3 where both displays had the same brightness output. I suspect that with that measurement, the iPad 3 loses a lot of its vaunted battery life advantage.
The browser tests are also unfortunately not idea. Safary is highly optimized for the iPad. An equal comparison would have been Chrome, as it is Android’s “highly optimized” browser, especially in ICS. Both the default browser and FireFox (a.k.a. Slowdown Salad) have the issue you mention regarding the browser becoming unresponsive for seconds at a time, especially when loading. I get that even on my Epic 4G using FF (I only use FF because it handles flash better than the default browser). I’ve seen FF even stop responding when trying to scroll on a fully loaded page, whereas Chrome I’ve not seen do this yet.
Website fonts looking bad are the fault of the *website*, not either of the displays. As long as the displays are operating at their native resolutions, text in any browser should be crisp and clean, and if it’s not then the site is using a font that likely looks horrible on desktop displays, since, you know, LCD TVs and desktop monitors use the exact same type of technology as the LCD displays on the tablets, only on a larger scale. One thing to note: from the looks of it, since the iPad 3 and TF displays are showing the same page dimensions in the comparison photo, and text is the same size roughly, the iPad is using scaling to show the webpages. That’s what gives the appearance of darker, thicker text. You have the same phenominon when viewing a webpage on say a 1920×1080 HDTV at native resolution vs. scaled resolution. I know this because I use 1600×900 for my web viewing even though I have a 32″ HDTV as my monitor due to eyesight. Text is crisper at native resolution, but smaller when not scaled like the iPad 3 is doing.
Both can tout as many cores as they’d like. If none of the software leverages it, it then comes down to optimized code and top clock speed of the cores in use. iOS will likely win here because of the sandbox control Apple has over all of its developers and what it allows to be used for development (the SDK). Android has more options, but fewer developers know how to properly delve into those options and push the envelope yet. Unfortunately for the user experience that’s about the only advantage the sandbox approach has.
I have a huge music collection. I use WinAmp (the older version, not the currently bugtastic 1.12 Android version), and having access to a good, simple, non-bloated music player and up to 96/128 GB of space makes a difference. The TP wins there (it should have no problem reading an MSDXC card of 64 GB in either Honeycomb or ICS).
I rarely comment on reviews, but this one is quite flawed indeed. But I’ll say this: For simplicity/ease of use, the iPad 3 will win hands down. That’s what it was designed for: the LCD (least common denominator). That isn’t to say you can’t do anything with the iPad 3, but you have to work a lot harder to get great utility with anything “outside the box” on it to the point of jailbreaking it for some of the nicer things. The TP (and every Android tablet out there) offers more overall utility capability, should the developers make use of it, and in this case, the TP wins hands down for both utility and expandability. You’ve got the following expansion options for the TP: Dock w/ keyboard that has up to 128 GB of its own storage via SDXC card, full size keyboard, and extended battery life, plus easy plug and play output via the MHDMI connection. On the iPad 3 you have a dock connector and BT, and the need to by proprietary dongles/hardware to connect to it, and it can’t be used as a host device (nor properly accept a host device as a slave).
So which is the winner? Other than display resolution, it boils down to what you will use it for. For all the technical aspects of it, either one could win depending on who’s using it. Unfortunately the method of measurement in this review is too skewed to properly show the true strengths and weaknesses of both tablets, and that’s a shame.
Just an edit to the above – I
Just an edit to the above – I can’t believe Safary got by me….should have put it in TextEdit and spellchecked first. Grr.
What about the known and/or
What about the known and/or previous issue with the gps and wifi signal of the TFP? For those who own one, has this issue been resolved or at least improved? I have enjoyed reading everyone’s comments, especially those who own both the iPad and the TFP. I am considering purchasing a TFP over the iPad 3 but would like some clarity regarding the previous issues with wifi.
GPS is still a problem,
GPS is still a problem, though anybody that gets a TFP can contact ASUS for a free GPS dongle should they feel unhappy with the way the satellites are detected. I know I’ll be getting the dongle, for when I need to use navigation in my car.
The wifi on my TFP is pretty good. I should be getting a full four arcs at all times with both a Netgear N900 router and a Netgear WN2500RP wifi range extender in my house, but the aluminum casing makes the signal shift between full and three arcs lit up. I still maintain good performance however. I’ll be able to test it more fully this Friday when I go bowling, since I can see how well (or if at all) it picks up the public wifi in the bowling alley. I say “if” because even my Epic 4G can’t get a good signal there and it has no aluminum case to deal with. If the TFP gets a useable signal, then I’d say wifi isn’t an issue.
Oh, and one thing the review
Oh, and one thing the review did NOT cover is that the TFP cannot be properly charged via USB. USB outputs at a max of 5v @ 0.5A whereas the TFP requires its wall wart to charge properly, since it requires the 15v @ 1.2A output by said wall wart.
You’d be surprised how many people plug the TFP into USB ports thinking it is charging only to see (like I did) a “Battery: 46% (Discharging)” indicator.
The wall wart plug charges the TFP at approximately 35% per hour, and a USB connection with the TFP completely turned off charges at a pathetic 3% per hour.
This isn’t a bash on the TFP – I own one. I’m just putting out the info so others can see it to be aware that when on the road, make sure you bring your wall plug adapter with you or you cannot charge your TFP.
Also, the site devs really need to move to UBB encoding for comment areas. Having to use these cumbersome and very limited HTML tags is so 1995.
tf – better graphics, more
tf – better graphics, more powerful, more costumizable, more expandable, more versatile
ipad – better ui, better screen, better camera
battery life – more capacity on the ipad, although battery life is pretty relative as the test is pretty flawed, all reviews of real life usage so far give pretty much the same amount of battery life to both, ipad winning by slight margins.
And then ipad is considered the superior device because all of the better stuff that the TF has are all just niches.
I don’t want to sound impolite or anything but, did you guys kept the ipad and returned tf? If you know what i mean.
Apart from the review which I
Apart from the review which I found was a good read, could you please contemplate for a while on the following question:
What is the purpose of a bar graph?
Now, think about the following:
What information does a bar graph containing values in the range 0-380 but only showing 320-380 on the axis provide?
Misinformation. (I hope it’s not disinformation)
Eyeballing the bar graph of e.g. your Peacekeeper benchmark (which should be a visual representation of the ratio between the values – I sincerely hope you managed to come to that conclusion by contemplating on my first question) tells me the iPad is about 20-25% faster than the Transformer. The values, however, show a difference of ~4%. Similar for SunSpider etc.
How does that affect credibility?
iknow Placing the ASUSIconia PC tablet dengan Windows 8 on my web
iknow Placing the ASUS Transformer Prime and the iPad 3 side-by-side proves that there is some room for differentiation among tablets. Though they are both flat slabs, they are different in their size, weight and materials. like
Thanks , I’ve recently been
Thanks , I’ve recently been looking for information approximately this topic for ages
and yours is the greatest I’ve came upon so far. However,
what about the conclusion? Are you positive in regards to the source?
Come on! Lets get a real
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