Should I Buy the New iPad?

The new Retina display is one of the headline features of the new iPad. It's not a very descriptive name is it?

Basically, this means that the screen is very high resolution. The lastest iPhones have Retina displays but producing a large Retina display is expensive and this is the first iPad to feature this technology. 

It means that you'll see smoother graphics and fewer jagged edges on images and videos. 

The new iPad display has a resolution of 2048 x 1536 which higher than HD resolution. 

The new iPad camera has a 5-megapixel iSight camera (this is a big improvement) and can take 1080p HD video. Having a reasonable quality camera on a device that also offers image editing and movie editing software is useful combination. 

It's not going to replace a professional camera, but for travel snaps and quick videos of the kids doing something cute, it's a nice feature. 

The new iPad range includes 4G LTE options. 4G LTE is the latest mobile network standard with higher bandwidth and therefore much faster download speeds. 

You'll need a network carrier for this feature and Apple have partnered with carriers in several countries for the initial lauch.

You also have the option of switching to a local SIM card when you are traveling. You also get Wifi support on the iPad 4G tablets. 

You can choose a cheaper new iPad model with Wifi but no 4G support if you prefer. This is a tricky decision for me. I work from home and don't often need 4G, but it's handy when I do need it. I think I'd just cope with the Wifi version. 

The new iPad has an A5X chip with quad-core graphics. This means that although it has all those new pixels in the display, they can still be updated quickly. 

This gives interesting options for new games, and games were one of the main features demoed at the press launch for the new iPad.

Now this is interesting to a lapsed gamer like me. I find it hard to fit gaming in to my life. Sure we have all the consoles, but often my partner will be watching TV when I would play, or I'm in a different room in the house, or I actually have time when we're on vacation - but no console with me. 

The new iPad also offers voice dictation and has a microphone. I'm not sure how popular this feature will be, but it's an intriguing one for me. I've been trying to find a practical voice dictation solution for a while. 

If the new iPad offers accurate voice dictation then this might actually be the killer app for me. 

So, should I buy the new iPad? If I already had an iPad 2 I probably wouldn't rush to upgrade, there's nothing really earth-shattering here. (I've still got my iPhone 3GS and it's serving me well.) 

But I don't have an iPad or other large tablet (just a small 7" tablet that I share with the kids and use to read books.) I'm still thinking about it. The new $499 16GB iPad is a lot of kit for quite a reasonable price. 

The other important factor to consider is the price drop in the iPad 2. The iPad 2 is still a very well specified tablet. And it's prices have dropped by $100 with the release of the new iPad. 

And of course there will be people selling their iPad 2's because they must have the absolute latest iPad. This should lead to lower prices for used iPad 2 tablets on eBay. 

So it's worth checking the price of a used iPad 2 or refurbished iPad 2 on eBay.