How much quicker is the iPad 4 compard to iPad 1?

Davidkoh · Feb 19, 2013

Hey.

Back when the iPad 1 was released I got it since I thought it would substitute much of my laptop usage. Since it was really slow to use compared to a laptop it has mostly been sitting at my couch being used as a remote desktop client.

I am now thinking that maybe technology have come far enough for them not to be 5 times slower while web browsing and so on. I can see my iPad is most likely really dated due to Apples own apps like the App Store runs really slow on my iPad (which was blazing fast when I got it) but the question is how is the browsing?

Not too many people seem to post videos comparing iPad 1 with iPad 4 so it is hard to get any idea of it from watching videos, I therefore ask the community here if anyone have had both and can shed some light on it?

Just a note, I will most likely not buy the iPad 4 but will instead wait for the iPad 5, mainly because I hope they will add LTE support for Sweden.

Night Spring · Feb 19, 2013

I've had iPads from 1 to 3, plus now I have a mini.

I've never thought that web browsing on the iPad 1 was particularly slow. The speed difference I felt going from the 1 to 2 was mostly with things like opening up big pdf files and faster search in large ebooks. The 3 doesn't feel noticably faster than the 2, but it does keep tabs in Safari open longer. My guess is that if you go from the 1 to 4, or to 5, you would really feel the speed difference.

That said, I have no idea why web browsing was so slow for you on the 1. So even though I know that the latest iPads are in fact faster than the 1, I can't tell if their speed would be satisfactory for you.

Macman45 · Feb 19, 2013

My old ipad1 is still in use with a buddy...It certainly isn't what I'd call slow when web browsing...It feels it's age in apps though. If you are suffering slow browsing speeds it might be an idea to look at your wifi / router and modem setups...I have an iPad 4, but used the one last weekend when at my buddies...It was fine in safari, and I can't say I noticed any real speed difference...Youtube etc? Yes, there is a slow down there, but standard pages load and display fine.

Davidkoh · Feb 19, 2013

Night Spring said:
I've had iPads from 1 to 3, plus now I have a mini.

I've never thought that web browsing on the iPad 1 was particularly slow. The speed difference I felt going from the 1 to 2 was mostly with things like opening up big pdf files and faster search in large ebooks. The 3 doesn't feel noticably faster than the 2, but it does keep tabs in Safari open longer. My guess is that if you go from the 1 to 4, or to 5, you would really feel the speed difference.

That said, I have no idea why web browsing was so slow for you on the 1. So even though I know that the latest iPads are in fact faster than the 1, I can't tell if their speed would be satisfactory for you.

Thanks for your answer, one of the gripes I have with the iPad 1 is the memory and such so it is good to hear Safari can keep tabs open longer!

Macman45 said:
My old ipad1 is still in use with a buddy...It certainly isn't what I'd call slow when web browsing...It feels it's age in apps though. If you are suffering slow browsing speeds it might be an idea to look at your wifi / router and modem setups...I have an iPad 4, but used the one last weekend when at my buddies...It was fine in safari, and I can't say I noticed any real speed difference...Youtube etc? Yes, there is a slow down there, but standard pages load and display fine.

My wifi setup pushes 120 Mbit WAN to LAN to my computers over wifi, so the wifi speed for the iPad is limited by the wireless card in the iPad.

Problem I have with the iPad is that any site load in around 1-2 seconds on my laptops/desktops which means that when the ipad takes a few seconds longer it is a world of difference.

Check this video at around 30 seconds: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=og6OtdBTft0

That is what I am seeing, loading times around 10 seconds for pages with pictures/ads and whatnot, these load almost instant on my computers and it is things like that I would like to get rid off. I can see from the comparisons that the iPad 2 was a big improvement over iPad 1, but I was hoping to see if the iPad 4 was nearing the computers in browsing speed because right now I rather pick up my MacBook Air if I am going to do some browsing as it loads each page a lot quicker.

Macman45 · Feb 19, 2013

Davidkoh said:
Thanks for your answer, one of the gripes I have with the iPad 1 is the memory and such so it is good to hear Safari can keep tabs open longer!

My wifi setup pushes 120 Mbit WAN to LAN to my computers over wifi, so the wifi speed for the iPad is limited by the wireless card in the iPad.

Problem I have with the iPad is that any site load in around 1-2 seconds on my laptops/desktops which means that when the ipad takes a few seconds longer it is a world of difference.

Check this video at around 30 seconds: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=og6OtdBTft0

That is what I am seeing, loading times around 10 seconds for pages with pictures/ads and whatnot, these load almost instant on my computers and it is things like that I would like to get rid off. I can see from the comparisons that the iPad 2 was a big improvement over iPad 1, but I was hoping to see if the iPad 4 was nearing the computers in browsing speed because right now I rather pick up my MacBook Air if I am going to do some browsing as it loads each page a lot quicker.

That really isn't too bad...It's not like it's lagging like mad or anything...I'd say that's about as good as you'll get with the 1.

Davidkoh · Feb 19, 2013

Macman45 said:
That really isn't too bad...It's not like it's lagging like mad or anything...I'd say that's about as good as you'll get with the 1.

Yeah I agree it is most likely as good as the 1 will offer and that was the problem, the gap between my laptops 1-2 seconds load time and the iPads 10 seconds were too big. Which brought me to the question today, what are people noticing today with different kind of pages (many pictures, no pictures, text and so on) compared to what they noticed on the iPad 1? Can the iPad 4 close the gap that was between computers and iPad 1 when it comes to browser speed?

I would already be sacrificing multitasking by using an iPad instead of a computer so I would rather not have every page load take significant longer time.

I am very thankfull for the answers I've gotten as they help me

.

Macman45 · Feb 19, 2013

Davidkoh said:
Yeah I agree it is most likely as good as the 1 will offer and that was the problem, the gap between my laptops 1-2 seconds load time and the iPads 10 seconds were too big. Which brought me to the question today, what are people noticing today with different kind of pages (many pictures, no pictures, text and so on) compared to what they noticed on the iPad 1? Can the iPad 4 close the gap that was between computers and iPad 1 when it comes to browser speed?

I would already be sacrificing multitasking by using an iPad instead of a computer so I would rather not have every page load take significant longer time.

I am very thankfull for the answers I've gotten as they help me .

Well, It's so long since I used the 1 that I can't really remember. The 3 is one to avoid as the 4 is what it should have been...I guess you choose between the ipad 4 or the mini...Never saw the attraction there...I bought a 32GB Nexus7 to see what Android was all about, but the 7 inch screen just isn't big enough for these old eyes. I have the 64GB 4 and it really is a very capable device indeed...I guess you could wait for the refresh where it will get yet another speed bump.

Night Spring · Feb 19, 2013

Davidkoh said:
Yeah I agree it is most likely as good as the 1 will offer and that was the problem, the gap between my laptops 1-2 seconds load time and the iPads 10 seconds were too big.

If you can post a link to a page that takes 10 seconds to load on the iPad 1, I can test it on my iPad 3, and maybe someone who has a 4 might see this thread and test it on theirs.

Davidkoh · Feb 19, 2013

Night Spring said:
If you can post a link to a page that takes 10 seconds to load on the iPad 1, I can test it on my iPad 3, and maybe someone who has a 4 might see this thread and test it on theirs.

Great idea, although there can be some variations depending on network load and such it will give some kind of idea. I will check a good page to test once I get home from work tonight.

Night Spring · Feb 19, 2013

Davidkoh said:
Great idea, although there can be some variations depending on network load and such it will give some kind of idea. I will check a good page to test once I get home from work tonight.

I also still have an iPad 1, I can dig it out and compare with my 3, so we have them under the same network conditions.

Davidkoh · Feb 19, 2013

Night Spring said:
I also still have an iPad 1, I can dig it out and compare with my 3, so we have them under the same network conditions.

Nice. Try loading CNN.com or something like that, my CNN loaded in like 9-10 seconds on my iPad 1.

Night Spring · Feb 19, 2013

Davidkoh said:
Nice. Try loading CNN.com or something like that, my CNN loaded in like 9-10 seconds on my iPad 1.

Ok, at work now, will try on my iPad 1 when I get home.

However... how did you measure this? I just tried on my iPad mini, and my stopwatch indicated it took around 8-10 seconds (it's not exact because I couldn't manage to start the watch and hit the "go" button in Safari at the same time), but the thing is, the 8-10 seconds didn't feel problematic to me. I also tried on my laptop, and it took maybe about 5 seconds. So the mini is definitely slower than my laptop, but the difference isn't big enough to bother *me*. Will that bit of a difference bother you?

Davidkoh · Feb 19, 2013

Night Spring said:
Ok, at work now, will try on my iPad 1 when I get home.

However... how did you measure this? I just tried on my iPad mini, and my stopwatch indicated it took around 8-10 seconds (it's not exact because I couldn't manage to start the watch and hit the "go" button in Safari at the same time), but the thing is, the 8-10 seconds didn't feel problematic to me. I also tried on my laptop, and it took maybe about 5 seconds. So the mini is definitely slower than my laptop, but the difference isn't big enough to bother *me*. Will that bit of a difference bother you?

Thanks for testing! I had a digital watch with seconds on it and pressed load at a certain point and noted how long it took until it was completely loaded. My laptop loaded the site in 1.5 seconds so if the iPad does it in close to 10 seconds it most likely be quite a big problem as I'll be losing minutes every time I browse for a bit.

Night Spring · Feb 19, 2013

Davidkoh said:
Thanks for testing! I had a digital watch with seconds on it and pressed load at a certain point and noted how long it took until it was completely loaded. My laptop loaded the site in 1.5 seconds so if the iPad does it in close to 10 seconds it most likely be quite a big problem as I'll be losing minutes every time I browse for a bit.

Um, seriously? Minutes out of what? Every time I open a webpage, I spend at least a few minutes on it, so say, 3 minutes. 1 second out of 3 minutes vs 10 seconds out of 3 minutes -- I'm too lazy to do the math, but it's not that significant a difference.

I'm guessing you weren't around for dial-up modem connections?

EDIT:
Ok, just got home, tried cnn.com on my iPad 1, iPad 3, and mini. What we have is a virtual tie -- they all took about 6-9 seconds, without a means of somehow starting the stopwatch and page loading at precisely the same time, there is no way to tell which is faster than the other.

My desktop did load in under 2 seconds. It's also on the same wifi network as the iPads.

BTW, I'm measuring until the page finishes loading completely. Viewable content, especially text, starts showing up within 2-3 seconds.

Davidkoh · Feb 19, 2013

Night Spring said:
Um, seriously? Minutes out of what? Every time I open a webpage, I spend at least a few minutes on it, so say, 3 minutes. 1 second out of 3 minutes vs 10 seconds out of 3 minutes -- I'm too lazy to do the math, but it's not that significant a difference.

I'm guessing you weren't around for dial-up modem connections?

Minutes out of a surfing session, in 20 minutes I am at least clicking like 15 links which would give me 15 loads (not counting the ones where not the whole site reloads), if every site takes 8 seconds longer to load that's an extra 2 minutes spent just waiting for loading. And yes I was around for the 28.8k modems, but I don't want to go back to that loading speed.

Night Spring said:
EDIT:
Ok, just got home, tried cnn.com on my iPad 1, iPad 3, and mini. What we have is a virtual tie -- they all took about 6-9 seconds, without a means of somehow starting the stopwatch and page loading at precisely the same time, there is no way to tell which is faster than the other.

My desktop did load in under 2 seconds. It's also on the same wifi network as the iPads.

BTW, I'm measuring until the page finishes loading completely. Viewable content, especially text, starts showing up within 2-3 seconds.

That is bad news I guess, I was hoping to have the newer iPads do it in like 4 seconds or something like that.

By chance I just now (after writing the above) happened to see this video test where the guy at 2:00 loads cnn.com on an iPad 4 and it seems to do it in around 5 seconds: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sRUqJ4OsPQA so maybe the 4 is a bit quicker? Hard to tell since he is not loading it on an iPad 1 next to it.

Thanks for testing either way, as it seems that the iPad mini/3 does not give significant speed gains over the iPad 1 when it comes to page loads at least.

matneh · Feb 19, 2013

I don't have any hard numbers to give you, but I had an iPad 1 and got an iPad 4 at Christmas time. The difference is night and day. The iPad 4 is LEAPS and and bounds faster than the 1.

Davidkoh · Feb 21, 2013

Bought a iPad 4 today, loads CNN.com in <5 seconds compared to the 9-10 on my old iPad so im satisfied wtith it

.

More importantly most of the site i visit loads in just 2 seconds and I can click links/browse while it's loading without any delay.

iAll · Feb 23, 2013

My ip4 loaded cnn.com in about 3-4 seconds complete on wifi and Atomic Web browser.. I haven't tried 4G yet and LTE is not yet available here. I upgraded from an ip1 and am blown away by the hi-res screen. The slim case is a plus as well.

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How much quicker is the iPad 4 compard to iPad 1?

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