You may love your new iPad 3, but it’s been commented as a toasty beast.
Per Engadget, thermal imaging of a side-by-side comparison of the third-generation iPad and the iPad 2 found Apple’s latest tablet running 10 degrees (Fahrenheit) hotter than its predecessor.
Dutch site Tweakers.net performed the GLBenchmark test on the two generations of iPads for five minutes to measure a heat difference. Using an infrared camera, the publication discovered that the hottest part of the new iPad was 33.6 degrees Celsius (92.5 Fahrenheit), while the iPad 2 measured 28.3 degrees Celsius (83 Fahrenheit).
Though the new iPad does appear to run warmer than the iPad 2, it should be noted that the temperatures are still well within Apple’s specified operating temperature of 32 to 95 degrees Fahrenheit (0 to 35 Celsius).
The report went on to speculate that the new GPU is the likely cause for the added heat in the third-generation iPad. The new iPad features an A5X chip with quad-core graphics, presumably from the PowerVR SGX543MP4. A teardown of the tablet late last week revealed a new metal heat spreader affixed on top of the A5X.
Anecdotal evidence from iPad users on the Apple Support Communities forum shows that some users have found the new iPad to be warmer than the previous generation. One discussion had generated nearly 19,000 views and 219 replies as of Monday evening.
Stay tuned for additional details as they become available.
2 replies on “Early thermal testing shows iPad 3 running 10 degrees hotter than previous generations”
wow! 10 degrees is a lot… In hotter countrie I don’t know how that would affect the iPad 3.
Maybe 34 deg C is too hot, maybe it isn’t, but “operating temperature” in the datasheet has nothing to do with the temperature of the iPad hardware, that is the range of environmental temperatures (i.e. air temperature) in which Apple promise s you can operate the iPad hardware.