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Consumer Reports Finds New iPad Gets Warm, Can't Charge Under Heavy Loads

With Jobs gone, people will point out potential flaws much more quickly. Why? Because then we get to ask the question, "Would Steve have allowed this to happen?"

The charging thing is a non-issue, at least as far as I understand it. My iPad 2 wouldn't take additional charge while I played Infinity Blade 2!! It's a hardware intensive game, what do you expect? My battery didn't drain noticeably when plugged in and playing, but it certainly didn't charge up like it would unused.

Now with the new iPad, I see the same thing. I would expect nothing less. Some applications use more resources than others. It's reality and there's no escaping it.

As for the heat...I can understand why some people are mentioning it. It's not a problem, but it's a change. Yes, laptops get hotter, but the difference is that your hand isn't holding the laptop right on top of the hottest part.

All in all, it's not a problem. It's a perception issue. If what you want is something that doesn't heat up, then use an iPad 2. If you want something that gives a graphics and image performance that is second to none, tolerate the warmth and get the new iPad.

More powerful components get hotter. The only way around that is installing a fan. Then we would hear complaints about fan noise. The only other option was not releasing a new iPad until cooler components come around. Then we'd hear whining that there wasn't a new one. You can't always win.
 
rmwebs said:
You'd expect the charger that comes with the device to be able to charge it ok. All you've done is told us that your third party car charger isn't as good as the Apple one.
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If you actually read what was said, its not particularly negative:

"During our tests, I held the new iPad in my hands. When it was at its hottest, it felt very warm but not especially uncomfortable if held for a brief period.

We also noticed that the new iPad wasn't charging while the game was running and it was plugged in. In fact, the battery continued to drain. It charged normally, however, when we weren't running a game."

This isn't rocket science. And I suspect we'll have a more complete review of the iPad3 from consumer reports in the near future.
 
wallysb01 said:
If you actually read what was said, its not particularly negative:

"During our tests, I held the new iPad in my hands. When it was at its hottest, it felt very warm but not especially uncomfortable if held for a brief period.

We also noticed that the new iPad wasn't charging while the game was running and it was plugged in. In fact, the battery continued to drain. It charged normally, however, when we weren't running a game."

This isn't rocket science. And I suspect we'll have a more complete review of the iPad3 from consumer reports in the near future.
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Why did you bold a part about the heat when I never mentioned that? I couldn't care less if the iPad is slightly warmer. All I said was that you were trying to compare an iPhone charging from a low-powered cigarette lighter, to an iPad charging on its native, Apple charger.
 
drambuie said:
I thought that the 30 pin connector might also limit increasing the supply current, but on examination, the existing connector only has 6 contacts, so there's room for higher current capability for future iPad models. Maybe they'll use a beefed up 30 pin connector with an MBA power brick.
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Some of the unused pins are from the old firewire connections. The old firewire iPod charger was 12W (12V@1A), but the iPods were specced to handle up to 30V@1A (firewire max power), although I don't think any real world power supplies exceeded 12V.
 
Its doing you a favor by not charging a already hot battery and could be designed that way. Due to excessive heat can diminish battery life and damage, rather then cramming more charge into an already warm battery it just keeps it at a trickle therefor not causing damage to your battery and or charger. I also believe it could be the App game needs an update of some sort that might help with battery drain. I have a little back ground on high performance batteries and peak detection chargers so I do know a little about batteries and chargers.

I have used my iPad for long periods of time and felt a little warmth nothing that would be a problem or I haven't seen before with my first gen.iPad or iPad 2. I have not had any charging problems as of yet. If people really need to have a charge going during playing Infinity Blade, get a charger with more amps but there might be something in the charging software that stops the charge at a certain temp.

CR should know about this, but I don't think their agenda is to be fair to Apple!
 
macdreamer82 said:
I've seen a few people now say that they were using their iPad to watch Netflix, play a game, etc...and their battery percentage remained constant throughout the entire time. You do realize it's still charging though right? If it wasn't, your battery percentage most definitely would not remain constant...it would be much less.
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Thank you Captain Obvious, you mean that when my iPad is plugged in, it is charging?

I was referring to the fact that with my iPad 2, regardless of what I was doing if it was plugged in, it would charge and increase in percentage, rather than remain at the same load level.
 
rmwebs said:
Why did you bold a part about the heat when I never mentioned that? I couldn't care less if the iPad is slightly warmer. All I said was that you were trying to compare an iPhone charging from a low-powered cigarette lighter, to an iPad charging on its native, Apple charger.
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Calm down man. I must of clicked the wrong post to respond to some how. I was attempting to respond to the person wondering if they only commented on the negative stuff....

Oh and BTW, the car charger will be slower because it operates at a lower voltage. Meaning less watts charge per time period. I doubt it has anything to do with Apple or not Apple.
 
taedouni said:
If you wanted the thickness to stay the same then say goodbye to 9-10 hour battery usage. The heat and charge is an issue? Okay say good bye to the Retina display. The iPhone's retina display was much easier to design due to the amount of pixels it had relative to a retina display on the iPad.

People complain when Apple doesn't push new technology and when they do people complain about the tradeoffs.

Apple is an intuitive company. They do not make tradeoffs that hinder their devices, but they do make trade offs to push newer technology that works great. Also you fail to realize that Jobs was highly involved with the current iPad. Mass production started in early January, that means that testing and design refinements were near to an end around December. He may not have been working on it around the time of his death (early October), but you can be assured that he was involved on the project and was the one who urged for the retina display and LTE capability.
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I can't believe there's people complaining about the size. Common! The thickness is just .8mm more, barely noticeable. How much anal can some people get!

The higher temperature is not a concern either. Most laptops go beyond 140ºF.

I love my new iPad as much as I loved my first one, or maybe even more.
I love LTE, more RAM, Retina Display, Quad-Core Graphics, Cameras, etc.

No complains on my end. Those who can't stop complaining should return it and buy an Android P.O.S. Tablet.

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///M5 said:
Apparently so may the iPad.
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Not hot enough to require a fan.
 
Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; CPU iPhone OS 5_0 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/534.46 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.1 Mobile/9A334 Safari/7534.48.3)

I have heard of two consumer reports stories about anything in the last five years.

Consumer reports u b fun e!
 
Potentially more interesting is Consumer Reports' note that their new iPad didn't charge at all when the game was running. In fact, the battery continued to drain slightly under the extremely heavy CPU and GPU load from Infinity Blade II.
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+_2acc5a8841f8752904d37f90a8014829.png
 
Does Apple really have a problem with making products that always run on the hot side or does it just get blown out of proportion?
 
I love my new iPad. However i did find it strange that well plugged in it was drawing power well watching HBO Go. I didn't notice it to be unpleasingly hot.
 
I ordered a Smart Cover in anticipation of buying the new iPad, but now I might just get the iPad 2. I'll wait for a while to see if Apple decides to do something about it.

I'm not concerned with the heat. It's the battery that seems to be annoying.

I also appreciate the "old timers" at CR that objectively and independently tests all of these devices. I've been buying Apple for 20 years and I hope I never become a fanatic.

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FlameofAnor said:
Who rechargers their iPad while playing Infinity Blade? :rolleyes:

It's a handheld device, who uses it plugged in? I recharge it overnight, so it's ready to use the next day. I assume that's how most people use it.

Seems more like typical CR nitpicking than a serious design fault to me.
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Whenever I know I'm going to tax the battery, I want to be plugged in just for peace of mind. When an outlet is available, I'm always plugged in.
 
Not everyone is a boy

Bad news if you are a teenager that plays processor heavy games, but for the other 99% I think will keep their new iPads.
 
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