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iPad 2 vs iPad 3 for scanned PDF books

M

mixy

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Apr 9, 2012
8
81
Hello everyone!

I'm buying my first iPad and I'm deciding between the iPad 2 and the new one.

I have a huge collection of scanned books in PDF and that is one of the reasons I'm buying the iPad for.

My question is, which one will be better for that purpose?

I know that the vector text will look crisper on the new iPad, but I'm concerned about the scans, because if they are treated as pictures, it will only make them more blurry - like opening a low-res picture on a high-res display. It will be stretched across 4 times the pixels then on the iPad 2 (at least that's my logic).

So what do you think about that? Or if you have both iPads, can you try to compare it?

:apple:
 
I'm going to say the iPad 3 will look way better. Take magazine scans for example and just using iBooks on an iPad 3 and you can tell it looks so much better. The text is that much more crisp. A scanned book would be the same I'd imagine. Btw, I use GoodReader foe all my reading.
 
I use good reader heavily with scanned PDF books and to be honest they both feel the same for me. Maybe the is a little more crisp but nothing groundbreaking. The speed of flipping pages also feels the same for me
 
You won't go wrong with either or. I'd save the extra cash and go for the 64 GB iPad 2. You can find them right note all over Craigslist for like 500 bucks. :D
 
Navdakilla said:
I use good reader heavily with scanned PDF books and to be honest they both feel the same for me. Maybe the is a little more crisp but nothing groundbreaking. The speed of flipping pages also feels the same for me
Click to expand...

Interesting. Magazine PDFs are definitely better on th iPad 3. Too bad PDF books aren't the same.
 
Navdakilla said:
I use good reader heavily with scanned PDF books and to be honest they both feel the same for me. Maybe the is a little more crisp but nothing groundbreaking. The speed of flipping pages also feels the same for me
Click to expand...

I have to disagree here. Text is noticeably crisper on the new iPad. So much so that I wouldn't want to go back to my iPad 2. Reading is a joy on my new iPad.
 
iPad 3!!!!

never enjoyed reading with my old ipad 2, but now, im addicted to comic books. bought it via comixology.
 
Uh, depends on the quality of the scan. If anybody blindly hollers out "OMG Ipad3" then they are just uh, sorry to say this, ignorant or dumb. You can pick.
 
ipad 3.

i do most of my reading on the ipad, and spend a lot of time with pdf scans of my books. unless the scan is hopelessly bad or out of focus, you are going to see a marked improvement. there is nothing "wrong" with the ipad 2, of course, but it just isn't as crisp and clear.

as for the speed that pages load, i cannot see a difference. it is a little surprising, and i was hoping for something more, but the retina display was worth the upgrade.
 
palpatine said:
ipad 3.

i do most of my reading on the ipad, and spend a lot of time with pdf scans of my books. unless the scan is hopelessly bad or out of focus, you are going to see a marked improvement. there is nothing "wrong" with the ipad 2, of course, but it just isn't as crisp and clear.

as for the speed that pages load, i cannot see a difference. it is a little surprising, and i was hoping for something more, but the retina display was worth the upgrade.
Click to expand...

The chip isn't any faster than the ipad2 so you aren't gonna see the speed increases.
 
Thank you guys for all of the answers! Now I'm more on the iPad 3 side.

And also, here is an example of a scanned book page, so if you're on your iPad 2/3, can you tell me is it readable?

15ee63a.png


http://i40.tinypic.com/15ee63a.png

Or this one: http://www.flickr.com/photos/67397895@N08/7065976365/
http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7090/7065976365_098ae09794_b.jpg

P.S. The image quality is not as good as on the original PDF file, guess it compresses the pic when uploading...
 
Last edited:
Those image sizes aren't big enough to be able to do any kind of decent comparison with, I assume they're screenshots or something, and the original source must be bigger?
 
For scanned PDFs, you want to see if you can keep vector text during the translation process. If your scanner has OCR software, it will pick up the text and then keep it as text so it can appear very crisply on an iPad. If you're just scanning pages in without OCR, you'll just have images. This results in fuzzy text depending on what resolution the scan is done in. For absolute clarity, the iPad 2012 is going to display more lines of resolution than the iPad 2. The catch is if your PDFs are any good. The other thing I would do with an OCRed PDF, is convert it into epub now because iBooks seems to like the format better for reading material. If your data is very important, I would also suggest converting it into an iTunes textbook by using Apple's iBooks author.
 
Yeah, they are screenshots... Here I tried to export it as a JPEG directly from the Preview, is it better now?

2j9iyf.jpg


http://i43.tinypic.com/2j9iyf.jpg

----------
whtrbt7 said:
For scanned PDFs, you want to see if you can keep vector text during the translation process. If your scanner has OCR software, it will pick up the text and then keep it as text so it can appear very crisply on an iPad. If you're just scanning pages in without OCR, you'll just have images. This results in fuzzy text depending on what resolution the scan is done in. For absolute clarity, the iPad 2012 is going to display more lines of resolution than the iPad 2. The catch is if your PDFs are any good. The other thing I would do with an OCRed PDF, is convert it into epub now because iBooks seems to like the format better for reading material. If your data is very important, I would also suggest converting it into an iTunes textbook by using Apple's iBooks author.
Click to expand...

Yes, but the problem is that the most of them are graphic design books, so there are a lot of pictures and graphics besides text, so I think OCR just won't do it...
 
Ouch, yeah, it probably won't OCR correctly from what you're describing. I still recommend the iPad 3 since you'll get more resolution to show the PDF so it will be clearer on a less zoomed PDF page. If you need to zoom, you can then zoom in and then it should be decently clear. Just make sure your PDFs are done in decently high resolution and that should solve your issue.
mixy said:
Yeah, they are screenshots... Here I tried to export it as a JPEG directly from the Preview, is it better now?

Image

http://i43.tinypic.com/2j9iyf.jpg

----------



Yes, but the problem is that the most of them are graphic design books, so there are a lot of pictures and graphics besides text, so I think OCR just won't do it...
Click to expand...
 
agreed, i have a number of scanned textbook pdf's that I used on my old ipad, and it made a world of difference to upgrade to the ipad 3. If you want to do any kind of serious reading whatsoever on your ipad, don't even consider an ipad 2.
 
Derpage said:
The chip isn't any faster than the ipad2 so you aren't gonna see the speed increases.
Click to expand...

it has an x. and, it is supposed to be faster, according to tim's talk. of course, it looks likethat graphics action didn't result in faster page renders.
 
iMacDragon said:
Rendering a pdf is I'm pretty sure more CPU than GPU, and CPU is identical to ipad2.
Click to expand...

Rendering the PDF is likely CPU bound, but the page transitions are certainly done as a 3D OpenGL effect, which would mean the PDF is rendered into RAM where the GPU then does the page turn effect and pushes it out to the frame buffer or something along those lines. It's *possible* the improved GPU could speed up the page turns in some situations, I suppose, though what I find more likely is that properly optimised readers could take advantage of the extra RAM to more prerendered pages in memory for fast access which would help when skimming and turning pages rapidly.

Or I could be wrong. :)
 
If you want to see the visual difference, simply google:

2012 Mercedes Benz PDF brochure - and download one. You can substitute mercedes benz with any auto maker's e-brochures.

They look AMAZING on the new iPad.
 
I compared the ipad with my friend's ipad2, and noticed that while text is clearer on my ipad, the difference is not really that noticeable. Basically, I can still see the individual pixels on the words in the pdfs of the ipad2, while the words on my ipad look more smooth.

Each page does take slightly longer to render though. So when I turn to the next page, the page initially appears blurry, and quickly clears up.
 
I upgraded to the iPad 3 and PDFs are more natural than ever. Even the smallest paragraphs are legible without double tapping or zooming in.
 
Definitely a huge difference, but maybe hard to tell just from the screenshots:
 

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