90 JULY2020|COMPUTER SHOPPER|ISSUE389
TABLETS
EVENWITHOUTCONSIDERINGthe
moreexpensiveiPadProseries,standard
consumer-grade iPads have been able to
turn intodecent 2-in-1s forsome time now.
The latest 10.2in iPad takes things even
further: it can still naturally be used as alone
slate, but it now has aSmart Connector
socket on the side,granting compatibility with
the Pro series’ Smart Keyboard attachment.
If you’d rather stick with standalone use,
there’s good news elsewhere.This iPad
remains wonderfully slim and light, weighing
just 483g (or 493g forthe cellular model),
and measuring 7.5mm thick. The broad
black bezels give it arelatively staid look
at atimeofedge-to-edge smartphone
displays, although at least there’s room for
aTouch ID fingerprint reader on the front,
as well as awebcam.
The Smart Connector,which sits on the
leftside of the tablet (or the bottom, in
landscape view), provides both power and
data connectivity foradd-on keyboards. All
the rest of the buttons and features are in thee
same places as theyhavebeen foryears: the
power and volume keys are on the edges at
the topright corner,with the Lightning
connector and speaker grilles on the bottom,
and the rear camera in the topleft corner.
Incidentally,thiscamera is still the same
8-megapixel unit as foundonthe previous
model, and the front-facing camera hasn’t
changed, either: it’s still afairly
underwhelming 1.2-megapixel shooter.
EYEBALL IT
The displayisaRetina class 2,160x1,620
screen, which means when it’s held at
normal viewing distances most people
won’t be able to see the pixels.
Unlike Apple’s Pro tablets, the touchscreen
is not laminated to the LCD beneath it, which
means there’s asmall gapbetween the two
layers. Youcan see this foryourself if you
look at the edges from an oblique angle.
This can have an adverse effect on perceived
contrast in bright ambient light.
Still, the screen on this iPad is as good as
it gets at this price.It’s very bright, peaking
at 492cd/m^2 in our testing –that’seven
brighter than the (much more expensive)
Samsung Galaxy TabS6’s screen. The iPad’s
contrast ratio is adecent 1,060:1 and, as
ever with Apple’s devices, it’s fully calibrated
in the factory and colour accurate. When
tested against the sRGB colour space,we
measured an average delta-E of 1.01, which
is very good indeed.
APPLE iPad10.2in
★★★★★
£349•From http://www.apple.com//uk
VERDICT
ThelatestiPadfocusesonbecomingabetterr
laptopalternative,becomingmuchmore
usableintheprocess
IIttssdduuaall-ccoorreeAA 1100 FFuussiioonnSSooCCwwaassfifirrsstt
seeninthe 2016 iPhone7(Shopper346),
though performance stands up surprisingly
well. We neverfelt the iPad was lacking in
responsiveness, and its 769 single-core test
result in Geekbench 5–anewer,tougher
updatetothe Geekbench 4benchmark
–edges ahead of the Galaxy TabS6. Only its
multicore test result of 1,412issignificantly
lower than that of the pricier Samsung tablet.
The Galaxy TabS6alsohas theadvantage
on battery life, although theiPadisstill pretty
good in this regard. It lasted 12h 29m, avast
improvement on its predecessor.
TRANSFERWINDOW
Best of all is the new iPadOS software.Our
favouritechanges come to the Files app,
which now allows you to connect to an
external hard disk (or even anetwork drive)
and transfer files back and forth.
There’s also full desktop web browser
capability in iPadOS, where previously it was
amore limited mobile browser.For most
browsing tasks, you probably won’t notice
much of adifference,but if you use websites
forworkthat involve online forms –maybe
awebsiteCMS or an antiquated admin tool
that hasn’t been designed with mobile use in
mind –thiswillmake ahuge difference to
your ability to use an iPad forwork.
Other welcome additions include
the ability forapps to open in multiple
iinnssttaanncceess,,aannddwweelliikkeetthheeffaacctttthhaattMMaaccBBooookk,,
iMacandMacMiniownerscanalsonow
use the iPad as asecond screen using the
Sidecar feature.This only works with
MacBooks and Mac Minis running on the
latest MacOS Catalina, however.
MARRIEDTOTHE JOB
Forall these big steps towards making the
humble iPad agenuine laptop alternative,
however,there is stillthe odd irritation. For
instance,ifyou’re using aweb form to upload
images to awebsite, it’s only possible to select
one file at atime.There is aworkaround to
this, but only if you’re uploading multiple
images. In this case,you have to save them
intoPhotosand upload from there instead.
What’s more,ifyou only want atablet –
not a2-in-1 –then most of these
improvements won’t really affect you, and
in truth there isn’t much new and exciting
about the new iPad that specifically relates
to how it works as astandalone slate.
At the very least, it would have been nice
to have anewer processor; just because
there are already slower rivals doesn’t
mean there’s no reason to sit back and
coast on last year’s performance.
However,it’s impossible to deny the
quality of the 10.2in iPad. It’s absolutely
the finest tablet to be had at this price,and
with the addition of akeyboard, its hybrid
abilities are stronger than ever.
