Apple iPad Apple iPad first look

While our team of researchers didn’t make it to San Francisco for the unveiling of the hotly anticipated Apple iPad, our US colleagues at Consumer Reports were present for the world’s first ‘first look’ - and here are their findings.

The iPad does just about everything you could want from a portable entertainment and media tablet.

While the iPod Touch serves many similar functions, the iPad's 9.7-inch screen makes watching movies, reading ebooks, looking at photos and playing games much more enjoyable. And it’s not too expensive, either.

Apple iPad video first look review

 

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iPad’s look and feel

At around 0.7kg, the iPad is very thin and light, much like its smaller siblings the iPod Touch and the iPhone.

How thin? Well, when laid flat on a table alongside a Motorola Milestone smartphone, the iPad was only a smidge thicker.

The iPad’s casing is thickest at its centre, where the battery and most other internal components are located, but is only half an inch thick there. It tapers off at its edges.

Holding in one hand is almost effortless and, even after several minutes, our US-based researcher's hand wasn't tired. So it should be fairly easy to use the iPad to read an iBook or newspaper, watch a video whilst lying on your back, surf the web, or hold it in one hand and type with the other.

Our researcher felt that the iPad was easy to use even as a lefthander, unlike many other handheld devices.

And it doesn’t matter how you pick up the iPad; the screen will always right itself, so you can use it in portrait or landscape format, and there’s no upside-down or right way up.

It doesn’t even matter where the only button on the iPad’s frame is, as you turn it around – left, right, top or bottom, it will always work as the power switch or as the button to return you to the homescreen.

Gaming on the Apple iPad

The iPad will help develop new uses for touch technology - it's a lot more intuitive to play games using your hands than with a mouse or other remote device.

And among the programs demonstrated at the iPad’s launch were games which let you turn locks with finger motions, or target bad guys by pointing at them with your finger.

The bottom line is that just about everything the iPad does happens with taps, swipes and other multi-touch gestures - and it's likely that new multi-touch gestures will develop as new apps come out.

Already we have the iPad version of Apple's iWorks, a presentation program which lets you move slides around in a slideshow by touching the first slide with one finger, and tapping the other slides until you have a pile that you can move with one swipe.

One downside of the iPad, however, is that you can't multitask. Although the iPad has email, calendar and iWorks, for example, it really doesn't function as a computer. You can't have a browser window open at the same time you're typing a document or working on a spreadsheet.

If you want such productivity, stick to a laptop or netbook.

And you might have expected a webcam – but there isn’t one. This would really open it up to face-to-face communication with business partners, friends and family.

iTunes on the Apple iPad

Also, there are iTunes' limitations – as iTunes doesn’t support all commonly recognised music formats, this could get in the way for some. No-one expects Apple to abandon its music-purchase model now - but we hope that Apple's new iBookstore isn't similarly restrictive.

While launching the iPad, Apple CEO Steve Jobs did address the question of whether there's room in the market for a ‘third device’, something that you'll want in addition to your laptop and smartphone.

As he said, it's more portable than a laptop, as there’s no cumbersome keyboard, and it has a much larger screen than on a smartphone (note that you can’t use the iPad as a mobile phone). If you already pay for a mobile internet tariff for a smartphone or netbook, however, then we’re not sure whether everyone would consider it worth stumping up even more money for this ‘third device’.

Pros: A hugely versatile product that's well-designed and easy to use

Cons: Unable to multi-task and lacks a webcam