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Is 16GB enough?

J

joltaxt

macrumors regular
Original poster
Mar 4, 2011
109
0
Let me be clear:

I'm an average joe that uses his computer for music/web browsing/photos/movies and nothing fancy. I have a Macbook Pro which has all of my stuff on it that I'm perfectly happy with. I'm buying an iPad simply for web browsing, maybe an app or 2, and that's it. I will not be putting my music/photos/movies on it. Is 16GB enough for me? If I do end up liking the apps will it quickly fill up the GB or do those not take up a lot of space? I'm not sure if I should go with the 32GB or the 16GB. Perhaps some iPad 1 users could give me some advice? Thank you.
 
joltaxt said:
Let me be clear:

I'm an average joe that uses his computer for music/web browsing/photos/movies and nothing fancy. I have a Macbook Pro which has all of my stuff on it that I'm perfectly happy with. I'm buying an iPad simply for web browsing, maybe an app or 2, and that's it. I will not be putting my music/photos/movies on it. Is 16GB enough for me? If I do end up liking the apps will it quickly fill up the GB or do those not take up a lot of space? I'm not sure if I should go with the 32GB or the 16GB. Perhaps some iPad 1 users could give me some advice? Thank you.
Click to expand...

I've got a 16 gig iPad 1 and I think it's more than enough room. I use it for pretty much the same uses you've described; reading a couple of news apps and browsing the internet and watching the occasional Netflix/ movie/ video.

I've got a couple hundred pictures (1.13 gigs) on it and about 18 apps and I've still got 12.1 of 14.03 gigs free.
 
I am a 16gb owner and for me it's fine. I keep all my docs on MobileMe, so I can always have them wherever(i have a 3G model).

I use tons of Netflix, iDisk, Pandora, gaming, in fact games and a few news paper apps are most of the 30 apps I have on my iPad.

I've never been a big storage kind of guy anyway, I dont mind shuffling around whats on my iDevices, keeps them fresh!
 
joltaxt said:
I'm buying an iPad simply for web browsing, maybe an app or 2, and that's it. I will not be putting my music/photos/movies on it. Is 16GB enough for me? If I do end up liking the apps will it quickly fill up the GB or do those not take up a lot of space? I'm not sure if I should go with the 32GB or the 16GB. Perhaps some iPad 1 users could give me some advice? Thank you.
Click to expand...
I have a 16GB WiFi model and started out like you. Within days of buying it I got "app happy" and now have 118 third party apps on it including 3 huge dictionaries (one with audio pronunciations), some very graphical games, iBooks, Kindle and Stanza which all have quite a few ebooks loaded, and one big map application with an entire offline street map for the greater London area. Basically I have a lot of apps. Even after all that lot, I still had over 7GB free.

I still have no music or photos but I recently discovered iTunes University and have been downloading videos of university lectures. I probably have about 6 hours of video stored on my device now as well as all my apps but I still have 3.9GB available. (With iOS 4.3 I hope to be able to kick those videos off my iPad and stream them from my iTunes PC over my WiFi when I want to watch them so that I can build up a decent sized library without needing to worry about on-device capacity since that was the only thing worrying me regarding device capacity and not something I anticipated with my existing purchase but it looks like the new iOS 4.3 stream-from-iTunes feature will get round this issue.)

If I was you I wouldn't be the slightest bit concerned about going for a 16GB model.

- Julian
 
I had a 32GB iPad (just sold it) and I always felt like it was a bit much, this is what my 16GB iPhone looks like.

screenshot20110304at414.png

For video I have 3-2hr movies, 3-45min tv shows and 13-20min tv shows.

I sold my 32GB iPad and this time around I think I will be going with the 16GB (between my 16gb iPhone and 16GB iPad, I believe I will have enough media for when I travel)
 
I had the 16gig ipad and used about 2 gig for apps about 6 pages worth, my music is on my iphone, I downloaded a few books at times but still had around 14 gig left. I will buy another 16gig next friday, but it just depends what you are going to install on it.
 
It sure seems like 16 gig will be plenty for your uses. I have the 16 gig, and have maybe 40 apps, some downloaded books, and some pictures and still have 10 gig free. I stream music via Pandora over wifi if I want to listen and my iPhone or iPod isn't handy. I can access my documents via Dropbox, so I've never felt like I didn't have access to something I needed.
 
My 1st iPad was 32gb, was cool because I filled it up with digital copies from my blu ray collection. But... Once I got netflix & than the Xfinity app came out, no more need to have so many movies taking up space.

I plan on getting 16gb next time around! Plenty of space for all my music and photo's.
 
My iPad1 is 64GB... looking to go 32 or 16 this time around. The most I used was around 10 GB. I tend to stream more and more now as well.
 
posted on an earlier thread asking this question and I also had a 32GB 3G and this time Im going with a 16GB 3G.

It was just wasted space, I have an iPhone for music and I mostly stream video.

The only time I see me needing space for videos is on an airplane and even then I can get multiple movies/tv shows on the 14GB that's available.
 
From what you said for your type of use it seems like the 16 GB would work great. Very few app's are large in file size. You can easily store some cd's, 1-2 movies, all the podcasts/books you want. Like you said, don't need to store every movie and song on the device.
 
Loves2spoon said:
My 1st iPad was 32gb, was cool because I filled it up with digital copies from my blu ray collection. But... Once I got netflix & than the Xfinity app came out, no more need to have so many movies taking up space.

I plan on getting 16gb next time around! Plenty of space for all my music and photo's.
Click to expand...

Good point, I completely forgot that in addition to streaming apps that you mentioned (Netflicks and XFinity, as well as other services like Pandora), Apple has introduced iTunes Home Sharing in iOS 4.3, giving me even less of a reason to add/need so much media to my devices.
 
saving107 said:
I had a 32GB iPad (just sold it) and I always felt like it was a bit much, this is what my 16GB iPhone looks like.

screenshot20110304at414.png

For video I have 3-2hr movies, 3-45min tv shows and 13-20min tv shows.

I sold my 32GB iPad and this time around I think I will be going with the 16GB (between my 16gb iPhone and 16GB iPad, I believe I will have enough media for when I travel)
Click to expand...
They say a picture is worth a 1000 words, and Savings picture shows that at 16g you will be able have dozens of app, books and other documents, and games with plenty of room for modest amount of audio, video, and pictures. I have the 16g and usually keep a few unwatched movies and classical music to listen to while I read. More space is always nice, but if you are already thinking that Ipad is a bit of stretch, buy the 16g and spend your extra $$ on fun apps -which is really where the product shines.
 
I got a 16 gig ipad and never once did i need more space. I do delete a lot of apps and games tho but thats cause they just sit there unused
 
iPadLad said:
I got a 16 gig ipad and never once did i need more space. I do delete a lot of apps and games tho but thats cause they just sit there unused
Click to expand...

I do to, I only keep the essential apps/games that I know I use on a regular basis. Same goes for music and other media, if its not something that I am going to listen to or watch anytime soon, it doesn't belong on my device.

The image I posted above was just to show as an example of how much I can utilize my 16GB (14GB) iPhone, but on a regular basis I always have like 3-5gb free.
 
With cloud-access "coming", I think 16gb should suffice just fine unless you are an HD movie-er.
 
saving107 said:
I had a 32GB iPad (just sold it) and I always felt like it was a bit much, this is what my 16GB iPhone looks like.
*snip snip*
Click to expand...

All those photos (935) and you don't even have a gig used... what kind of camera are you using??

EDIT: Dangit! That's my second double-post fail in 2 days! Ban me now. :(
 
iMJustAGuy said:
All those photos (935) and you don't even have a gig used... what kind of camera are you using??

EDIT: Dangit! That's my second double-post fail in 2 days! Ban me now. :(
Click to expand...

iPhone 4 and a Kodak 12 MP point-and-shoot camera.

What I've done is made copies of all my most recent photos that I would like to show off when people ask to see my iPhone/iPad (i get that a lot) and I reduced the resolution down by 50-75% in Preview.

I figured if the iPad only has a resolution screen of 1024x768, their is no reason why I need the full 5-12MP image taking up so much space.

So Photos taken with my iPhone 4 at a 2592x1936 resolution have been reduced down to 1296x968, and this has been a space saver, those 935 photos only take up 0.65GB.
 
16gb is good enough

If you are going apps only 16gb is more than enough room. It's rare to see an app bigger than 100mb, and that's the fancy game apps. You would get 200+ apps easy on 16gb...
 
I haver a 16 gig ipad and it's more than enough for me. I have a 32 gig iphone 4 which has alot of my stuff too.

I don't listen to music on my ipad so that isn't on there and all of the games I own I play on the iphone. With movies I just put whatever movies I want to watch on the go, and take them off when I want to watch something else. Still end up with enough space to download the apps I want.

I'm sure it will be plenty for me with the ipad 2 as well.
 
With the iPad 2's specs (2x CPU, 9x GPU) Games and Apps will be MUCH bigger than the original..

We will probably see most games hit the 1GB range, and even more powerful games max out to 1.5GB.

If I were to get the 16GB iPad 2, I would only be able to fit all of my music (4GB)
and 5-10 GOOD quality iPad 2 games..
 
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