Apple’s New iPad ‘3’ offers customers the most detail and the most accurate colours that Consumer Reports has seen on a tablet so far. The 4G version, which costs $630, tops the magazine’s tablet ratings. Apple enhanced the camera to 5MP, and the broadband version offers 4G Internet access which proved to be dependable and fast in casual tests. The New iPad 3’s battery life is also the best on the market.
New iPad 3 best but Android alternatives not bad either (Consumer Reports)
Consumer Reports also rated several new Android tablets very highly. The Toshiba 10LE (16GB, Wi-Fi) at $530 is the lightest 10.1” tablet reviewed so far, weighing just over 1lb. It’s also a very slender 0.31” thick (or thin).
Samsung recently added a new stable mate to its Galaxy tab range, the Galaxy Tab 7.7 (Wi-Fi, 16GB, 4G). At $700 the Tab 7.7 has an OLED display that gives deeper blacks and a wide viewing angle.
If you worry about taking the tablet to the beach, pool, or the UK, have a look at the Pantech Element (Wi-Fi, 16GB, 4G) at $450. It’s supposed to be waterproof, and its 10-hour battery life is the best among the smaller tablets looked at. However, it’s not easily readable in bright light.
If you like e-books but hanker after the feel of a real paperback, there’s the Sony Tablet P (Wi-Fi, 4GB, 4G) at $550. It’s got dual 5” screens and you can hold it just like a book, although these dual screens only work with books bought from Sony’s market. When you’re playing certain games, the lower screen acts as a controller. The downside is that the split screen is a nuisance for web-browsing.
If you’re after a 7-8” screen, then the best buys are the Amazon Kindle Fire (Wi-Fi, 8GB) for $200 and the Barnes & Noble Nook Tablet (Wi-Fi, 16GB) at $250.
So while the New iPad 3 is the ultimate winner on the tablet market, Consumer Reports pointed out a couple of Android tablets that stand above the sea of tablets on the market worthy of purchase.
