The iPad reviews are out, and — surprise, surprise — they’re positive. Even less surprising, the super high-res 2048×1536 pixel display was highly praised. I was able to get a look at the new iPad’s screen late last week, and there isn’t anything more impressive than its screen at the moment. It is beyond crisp, and colors look fantastic. Honestly, you have to see it to believe it.
Joshua Topolsky, The Verge
You literally can’t see pixels on the iPad’s display when you hold it at a regular distance, and even up close you have to really inspect the thing to see dots. For rendered text or high resolution images, it just looks otherworldly; like a glowing piece of paper.
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When you compare the old iPad to the new one, or to any other tablet for that matter, you’ll start to wonder how you were ever able to look at anything else. I’m not saying that the screen alone is reason enough to buy this product, especially if you’ve got a tablet you’re happy with right now, but I do think the quality of this display could make you a sudden convert. It’s just really, really good.
Jason Snell, Macworld
Users of the iPad 2 shouldn’t fret: Their iPad investment is certainly good for another year. But they might not want to look too closely at the new iPad’s screen. Once you get a load of that Retina display, it’s hard to go back to anything else.
David Phelan, Pocket-Lint
Suddenly, even if you completely prefer reading books to ebooks – and who wouldn’t? – the new iPad becomes a much more tempting prospect. Of course, it is still a backlit screen rather than restful-on-the-eyes paper, but this is the first iPad to be a better e-reader than the Kindle in terms of sharpness. Though in bright sunlight Amazon’s e-ink screen still wins out.
Vincent Nguyen, Slashgear
The new iPad’s Retina Display does to the tablet segment what the iPhone 4′s Retina Display did to smartphones: in short, shakes it up entirely. Where the iPad 2 runs at 1024 x 768 resolution, the new iPad comes in at 2048 x 1536, meaning four times more pixels in the same 9.7-inch space. In fact, at 3.1m pixels, that’s 1m more than a Full HD television.
MG Siegler, TechCrunch
Even if you have perfect vision, indulge me here for a second. You know when you go in for an eye exam and you’re asked to look at a combination of letters and numbers on a chart against a far wall? You read the first few lines, then realize you actually can’t go any further. Then you get prescribed glasses (or contacts) and you can all of a sudden read every letter and number. And even the ones you could read before are now so much clearer.
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Web pages look almost as if they’re being displayed in a high-quality glossy magazine. Photos look like photos — the printed out kind. Text is razor sharp and crisp, just like print.
Walt Mossberg, All Things D
It has the most spectacular display I have ever seen in a mobile device. The company squeezed four times the pixels into the same physical space as on the iPad 2 and claims the new iPad’s screen has a million more pixels than an HDTV. All I know is that text is much sharper, and photos look richer.
Edward C. Baig, USA Today
Examine the new screen side-by-side with one of its near-10-inch predecessors, and you’ll swear you just had Lasik surgery. Text on Web pages or in books is so crisp and sharp that you don’t want to go back to reading on an older iPad. Movies and photographs reveal rich detail.
David Pogue, New York Times
The biggest new feature is what Apple calls the Retina display: like the one on the iPhone 4S, it’s a very, very sharp screen. It’s four times as sharp as the iPad 2 — in fact, it’s the sharpest ever on a mobile device. This screen has 3.1 million pixels, which is 1 million pixels more than on a high-definition TV set. (At least Apple says that that’s how many pixels it has; I quit counting after three days.)
In principle, that avalanche of pixels (and their increased color saturation) means that photos, videos, maps and text should look jaw-droppingly good — and, in apps that have been rewritten for the new screen, they do. Apple’s own apps, like Photos, Maps and iBooks, are just incredibly sharp and clear.
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