I've been reading a lot of reasons why the third-generation iPad has a bad reputation. Is this true? Why? I have mine for almost 3 years, and I love it! I was going to update to the iPad air 2, but I'm not sure right now.
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iPad Why does the iPad 3 have a bad rep?
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Same insides as an iPad 2 but with a retina screen, which slows down the overall experience.
There are reasons but it's not a severe as people make it out to be. Primary reason seems to be that it was replaced quickly by the 4 and had a short life cycle of being the latest and greatest. Some people say it's underpowered but the A5X was pretty good when it was out.
The 3 was a nice tablet for its time. It was the first Retina iPad, first with LTE, first with 1GB of ram, first quad core GPU, first to get Dictation. Big improvements over the 2.
I had one before it was stolen and it was great. I would have been open to buying another to replace it but I went for the 4 for the Lightning cable instead.
The 3 was a nice tablet for its time. It was the first Retina iPad, first with LTE, first with 1GB of ram, first quad core GPU, first to get Dictation. Big improvements over the 2.
I had one before it was stolen and it was great. I would have been open to buying another to replace it but I went for the 4 for the Lightning cable instead.
It still looked and performed better than an iPad2 which it replaced, I know first hand how they were as I had them all up to the 3rd gen, now I'm moving to the Air 2.
I'm just in the process of retiring my iPad 3 for an iPad Air 2. My only snag with it has been the weight, especially when combined with a leather smart cover, and the clincher is I now need more than 64GB storage. Otherwise, it's been great.
The only full size iPad I've ever had is a 64gb iPad 3 and I've never been disappointed with it.
My only gripe I'd say was that it was a bit weighty and meant you tended to prop it up to view things rather than hold it for long periods of time.
I was always hugely impressed with the battery life though, just seemed to go on and on although I'm sure the following models are similarly if not more impressive.
The only complaint I would have now is that since iOS8 it feels like it's struggling. It's not as quick between apps and bombs out of them on ocassion and seems to lag.
I've been happy with it though and I plan on getting an 64gb or 128gb Air 2 nearer Christmas to replace my 3 and my girlfriend will use the 3 alongside her iPad Mini.
My only gripe I'd say was that it was a bit weighty and meant you tended to prop it up to view things rather than hold it for long periods of time.
I was always hugely impressed with the battery life though, just seemed to go on and on although I'm sure the following models are similarly if not more impressive.
The only complaint I would have now is that since iOS8 it feels like it's struggling. It's not as quick between apps and bombs out of them on ocassion and seems to lag.
I've been happy with it though and I plan on getting an 64gb or 128gb Air 2 nearer Christmas to replace my 3 and my girlfriend will use the 3 alongside her iPad Mini.
It is a very fine device. Basically and iPad 2 with better screen and double the RAM ... which was a big step up.
Driving the retina display did require more power (both the display and upgraded graphics compared to an iPad 2) so apple had to make it slightly thicker and heavier than a 2 - and it did heat-up more. But that was never a deal-breaker for me and I though it was a great upgrade from my 2. Didn't upgrade to the iPad 4 as the form factor was similar and the 3 was not old and working well for me (but undeniably the 4 did improve performance quite a bit).
Some people say the 2 was a better buy to justify what they purchased (as one does on online forums), but if today they were given the choice of using either a 2 or a 3 as their only iPad they would all pick the slight extra weight and heat of the 3 as the display just looks much better and the 1GB of ram is more appropriate to run iOS decently.
Driving the retina display did require more power (both the display and upgraded graphics compared to an iPad 2) so apple had to make it slightly thicker and heavier than a 2 - and it did heat-up more. But that was never a deal-breaker for me and I though it was a great upgrade from my 2. Didn't upgrade to the iPad 4 as the form factor was similar and the 3 was not old and working well for me (but undeniably the 4 did improve performance quite a bit).
Some people say the 2 was a better buy to justify what they purchased (as one does on online forums), but if today they were given the choice of using either a 2 or a 3 as their only iPad they would all pick the slight extra weight and heat of the 3 as the display just looks much better and the 1GB of ram is more appropriate to run iOS decently.
I'm still using my 3 since launch week, but the Air 2 will be in my hands soon. It was time. With the reduction in weight, thickness, width, no more 30 pin connector, the increase in CPU, GPU, ram, laminated display, Touch ID.
All those factors and I want to start using it more for photo editing make it the right time to upgrade from the 3 for me.
All those factors and I want to start using it more for photo editing make it the right time to upgrade from the 3 for me.
No offence, but that is ridiculous. It never even gets warm when just using the browser. Performance is fine for a 3 year old device.
For many reasons. The minimal upgrades to the hardware were consumed by the Retina display. The 3 actually benchmarks lower than the 2 as a result. Also the battery which was made much larger to cope with the Retina display took much longer to charge and drained quickly. The form factor was a downgrade as the iPad 3 and 4 were both thicker and heavier than the iPad 2. Also the 4G support was botched in some places. Then to top it off, it was replaced early with the far superior iPad 4.
Its not a terrible tablet, but considering how solid the iPad 2 was, it was a let down.
Its not a terrible tablet, but considering how solid the iPad 2 was, it was a let down.
I know for a FACT that my iPad 3 performs just as snappy as an iPad air (1st gen). Its a lot more snappy that the air running iOS 8. But I'm running iOS 6 on it.
The iPad 3 was my first iPad and my first Apple product. It's great, I've left it running IOS 6.x so it's as speedy as it ever was and I rarely miss new OS features for what I use it for. The things that surpised me the most on it was the battery life, it's amazing.
I'm finally updating to the iPad Air 2, the biggest advantage for me will be the weight. The iPad 3 seems very heavy now too me, especially when I pick up the HDX 8.9. I also liked the iPad Mini 2, but I gave that away to someone I though could use it more since I had a few devices... but I like the mini too and I think they should put full cellular in it and make it the biggest phablet out there.
I'm concerned about reduced battery life in the iPad Air 2, but I guess I'll adapt, I wish they would have left it a little thicker and included the bigger battery.
Oh back to iPad 3... did I mention it's fantastic!!
I'm finally updating to the iPad Air 2, the biggest advantage for me will be the weight. The iPad 3 seems very heavy now too me, especially when I pick up the HDX 8.9. I also liked the iPad Mini 2, but I gave that away to someone I though could use it more since I had a few devices... but I like the mini too and I think they should put full cellular in it and make it the biggest phablet out there.
I'm concerned about reduced battery life in the iPad Air 2, but I guess I'll adapt, I wish they would have left it a little thicker and included the bigger battery.
Oh back to iPad 3... did I mention it's fantastic!!
I think people needed a reason to justify upgrading from the 3 to 4 in a six month period. Personally, the only problem I had w/ the 3 was the weight and the 4 did not fix that so I stayed w/ the 3 until the Air came out.
Ultimately the iPad 3 was really pushing what could be done with the technology and, as a result, was more compromised that we're used to from Apple. It grew in size and weight, had a very large battery which subsequently took a long time to charge and the A5X remains an utterly ridiculous piece of engineering.
It was built on a 45nm process and was absolutely enormous. Add on some of the design choices Apple made to enable the Retina display and you ended up with something similar to PC manufacturers sticking desktop CPU's into 'gaming' laptops before Intel managed to produce chips that were both powerful and efficient. As a result the A5X running flat out consumed more power than an entire iPhone 4S doing, say, web browsing.
The problem was all of that extra power, memory bandwidth etc was needed to handle the Retina display. The A6, Apple's first SOC with custom built CPU's, was a huge jump forward but simply wasn't ready (and nor was the 32nm process to build it) so Apple produced something that... honestly, I don't think we'd have seen from any other company. The A5X must have been horribly expensive to manufacture, maybe the closest we've got to it recently is Nvidia's Titan range.
With the iPad 4 launching seven months after and, at least in part, solving some of the compromises the iPad 3 was seen by some as massively inferior and problematic. Now I've owned the 3 and support several 4's and, while the 3 was clearly slower, it was never as bad as is claimed today. Indeed my 3 is currently still going strong with my parents who are more than happy with the performance. It was a device you bought for the display knowing full well that the performance would likely increase substantially in the next version but willing to make that trade off.
It was built on a 45nm process and was absolutely enormous. Add on some of the design choices Apple made to enable the Retina display and you ended up with something similar to PC manufacturers sticking desktop CPU's into 'gaming' laptops before Intel managed to produce chips that were both powerful and efficient. As a result the A5X running flat out consumed more power than an entire iPhone 4S doing, say, web browsing.
The problem was all of that extra power, memory bandwidth etc was needed to handle the Retina display. The A6, Apple's first SOC with custom built CPU's, was a huge jump forward but simply wasn't ready (and nor was the 32nm process to build it) so Apple produced something that... honestly, I don't think we'd have seen from any other company. The A5X must have been horribly expensive to manufacture, maybe the closest we've got to it recently is Nvidia's Titan range.
With the iPad 4 launching seven months after and, at least in part, solving some of the compromises the iPad 3 was seen by some as massively inferior and problematic. Now I've owned the 3 and support several 4's and, while the 3 was clearly slower, it was never as bad as is claimed today. Indeed my 3 is currently still going strong with my parents who are more than happy with the performance. It was a device you bought for the display knowing full well that the performance would likely increase substantially in the next version but willing to make that trade off.
I've had mine for 2.5 years and it was great under iOS 5/6, okay in iOS 7 (required fir Office), and terrible in iOS 8. I wanted the features if iOS 8 and assumed performance would be the same from the same UI, but every animation lags now. Opening apps, closing apps, scrolling in Safari, Control Cemter. I still love my iPad 3, but since I use it for school I'm considering upgrading to the iPad Air 2.
I'm an iPad 3 owner and I've gotten good use out of mine. iOS 7 and 8 do lag on it, but I've found that disabling transparency helped out quite a bit. I'm tempted to jump on an iPad Air 2 but i'm reconsidering with the light usage I do on it. Just mainly forums, and youtube which it still handles fine. I don't do any heavy 3d gaming, maybe a little clash of clans but even that I find myself using my iPhone 6 Plus more.
A lot of it is perception. Pretty much every iPad has been on sale for at least one year, but the iPad 3 was discontinued in seven months (first on sale March 2012, discontinued October 2012). That's highly unusual for an Apple product.
While there are a number of theories as to why Apple did that, the most popular theory states that Apple felt that there was something wrong with the iPad 3 and sought to rectify it. Alternate theories - that Apple wanted to aggressively push the Lightning connector, or that Apple wanted to switch from a March release cycle to an October release cycle to catch holiday sales - seem more likely, but didn't catch on the way that talk of performance did.
The iPad 3rd gen was the only iPad to keep the same processor from year to year. The iPad 2 had an A5 and the iPad 3 had an A5X. They are nearly identical in performance, with the iPad 2 scoring 494 and the iPad 3 scoring 492 in Geekbench compared to 1402 in the 4th gen. But the X chip had a more advanced graphics chip which could barely handle the retina display. The people I know who got one said that it was laggy when scrolling in Safari and stuff like that. Generally not very fluid and would get pretty warm. The fact that it was replaced so quickly doesn't help it out either.
I was thrilled when Apple announced the iPad 3. I was in love, I ordered it so that I could receive it on day one...that was the last time that I ordered an iPad one day one.
The damn thing was heavy and thick. Not to mention that it would get extremely warm (I had the iPad 2 for 2-3 months until I sold it for 90% of what I paid for it) compared to the iPad 2. It was sluggish (not just gaming), like opening safari was noticeably sluggish. It was a mistake, Apple realized that it had created a monster and decided to end its fate by releasing the iPad 4 less than 7 months later.
It's the Vista of iPads
The damn thing was heavy and thick. Not to mention that it would get extremely warm (I had the iPad 2 for 2-3 months until I sold it for 90% of what I paid for it) compared to the iPad 2. It was sluggish (not just gaming), like opening safari was noticeably sluggish. It was a mistake, Apple realized that it had created a monster and decided to end its fate by releasing the iPad 4 less than 7 months later.
It's the Vista of iPads