14Mar2011

Baig reviews Apple iPad 2: Second to none

“The headline additions to iPad 2 are front- and rear-facing cameras, the absence of which was my biggest disappointment with version one,” Edward C. Baig reports for USA Today. “Now you can plunge into FaceTime, Apple’s nifty video chat program previously available only on the iPhone 4, iPod Touch and some Macintosh computers. With a brand new Apple A5 dual-core processor, the iPad 2 is snappier, too, though it’s not as if the first-generation model was a laggard. Apple claims the graphics in the new machine have nine times the horsepower of the original. That’s difficult to measure, but Epic Citadel, a stunning, graphics-rich game, played smoothly in my tests.”

“Apple sells a $39 accessory that lets you plug the iPad into an HDTV with an HDMI cable. You can then ‘mirror’ whatever is on the iPad display on the larger TV screen,” Baig reports. “Though I wish I had a longer HDMI cable — you supply your own — I used the iPad 2 to browse, read e-mail, play EA’s Need for Speed Hot Pursuit and watch the movie 127 Hours on an HDTV. Everything rendered properly on the TV screen.”

Baig concludes, “When it comes to the ever-evolving state of the art, iPad 2 is second to none.”

View the original article here