Let’s Get Digital! iPad 2 review

Friday was the launch of Apple’s iPad 2 and I was lucky enough to become the owner of one thanks to the Herculean efforts of my wife. While I was at work she found out where in Bristol had stock and then queued to get me one!

So now that I actually have one what do I have to say? I’m not going to do a general review as the Internet is full of those. Instead I’ll focus on my views on comics via the iPad 2.

One of the first things I noted was the quality of the display. Having used an iPhone 4 for a while now and getting used to the retina display and its ultra high pixel density I was really worried that the screen would be a let down. The iPad 2 wields the same screen as the original with a resolution of 1024×768…and it’s really very good. Yes you can tell the difference particularly when looking at really smal text like app names, but in general I’m impressed. The inevitable iPad 3 or 2+ (whatever they call it) with higher res screen will no doubt look incredible when it arrives.

Moving across to the iPad was quite easy, I was able to save a backup of my phone and use that as a restoration point for the iPad. This meant at I was able to get a lot of settings and apps straight across. I did notice however that most of the comic apps didn’t install, as far as I can tell this is because they have a separate iPad app which needs to be downloaded.

In the space of 15 mins I’d downloaded Comixology, Marvel, DC, IDW, iVerse. Although given that Marvel & DC apps are based on Comixology and IDW is based on iVerse I could have saved myself some time.

Firing up the market leader (Comixology) I noticed immediately that performance of the app was far better than on the iPhone (which uses an under clock version of the iPad 1 processor) and better than the iPad 1. Not surprising as the iPad 2 has a dual core processor clocked to a higher speed and also double the RAM.

I also noticed that I had no link to “my comics” and having bought a whole bunch of books in anticipation of the iPad I was a bit worried. And then the awesome power of the Internet took over…I tweeted my problem @comixology and within minutes had a reply which pointed out a setti which by default means that comics which you haven’t downloaded on the device are hidden. I can see that making sense as an option but having that switched on by default is a bit of a mistake in my opinion, particularly for existing users.

Having fixed this problem my comics immediately appeared for download. Downloading a comic over my 50Mbps broadband at home took about 50 seconds.

Using iTunes I loaded PKD Media’s Mercury and the Murd vol 1 into iBooks as a PDF. The reading experience here is far more simplified than in the specialist apps but still a very pleasant reading experience.

Not much else, if anything, about the experience of iPad comics has changed. It’s faster and the iPad 2 being lighter and thinner than the previous version it’s less of a handful. I must admit though that the angled edge of chassis makes it a little sharp and it pushes into the hand making it an uncomfortable single-handed read.