New iPad Reviews and Thoughts on iPad number 3

Many professional news agencies, gadget blogs, and general public are starting to come out with hands on review of the new iPad (iPad 3, iPad HD, or whatever its called).

Apple must have made a good choice adding the Retina display to the iPad's arsenal. David Pogue with New York Times said, "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." and with 3.1 million pixels now which is 1 million more than the iPad 2, the screen should have much better picture quality.

In regard to download speeds, Walt Mossberg of Wall Street Journal was able to achieve 17 megabits per second over Verizon's 4G LTE network. That speed is faster than my premier Cox cable internet package that I subscribe to with a docsis 3.0 cable modem.

The new 5 megapixel camera is a huge upgrade over last year's 0.7 megapixel but Edward Baig over at USA Today stated, "Shooting with camera can be awkward," due to overall size of the new iPad. I was a little disappointed to see that Apple did not add a flash again this year. I know of many realtors and professionals who plan on using this device in low light situations, so I think Apple really needs to consider adding flash to the iPad 4.

For battery life, many of the reviews this week were able to average 10 hours or close to of usage. David Pogue of New York Times was able to get 9 hours out of the new iPad with continuous usage throughout the day but notes, "Interestingly, you can turn off the LTE antenna in the Settings app. Without that power hog, you’ll probably get even better battery life.".

I ordered my iPad last week, and have an expected delivery date of March 16th, 2012. Hopefully I'll be able to add some test video and pictures up if I get it tomorrow.

Did you order the new iPad? Are you upgrading from your old iPad 2 or iPad 1?

By the way, here's a handson video of the new iPad on YouTube: