COMPARE IT: A man checking out the new iPad (left) against the iPad 2 at a store in Mumbai. - Reuters
By TAN KIT HOONG
bytz@thestar.com.my
Some users upgrading from the older iPad to the 3rd generation iPad are saying that the new iPad has a yellowish hue.
Well, you're not imagining things - the new iPad certainly looks like it has a different colour balance compared with the original iPad and the iPad 2.
But which model has the most accurate colour balance? We got a couple of 3rd generation iPads together with a couple of iPad 1 and iPad 2 models and made a comparison test with a colour calibrated monitor to find out.
A different hue
First things first - we decided to visually compare the two iPad 3 (let's call it that) models against the iPad 2 and the original iPad.
First off, the two iPad 3 models have very slight differences in colour balance, but we would say that they were close enough as to be negligible. Then we compared the iPad 3 with the iPad 2 by flipping through a few screens and neither displayed white backgrounds any less white than the other.
However, we noticed a difference in colour balance, especially obvious when looking at the "bookshelf" screen in iBooks and in photos and videos.
Indeed, the bookshelf in iBooks certainly looks yellower than the iPad 2, while the iPad 2 seems to be biased towards a more magenta hue.
However, since the bookshelf screen in iBooks is purely an Apple created graphic, we had no way of knowing whether this yellow hue on the iPad 3 or the slightly more magenta hue of the iPad 2 was the correct colour.
The test
The only way to do an empirical test is to compare the iPad 3 and the previous generation iPads when viewing photos.
As such, we loaded up a set of photos we've previously worked with on our colour calibrated monitor as well as on the various iPads.
Our conclusion? The two iPad 3 models we had showed the most neutral colour balance and the closest to our colour calibrated monitor, while the iPad1 and iPad 2 exhibited a slightly more magenta to yellow cast in images compared with the iPad 3.
Surprised? We were as well - our findings generally show that the iPad 3 exhibited more accurate colour which means that it's the iPad 1 and iPad 2 that displayed slightly innacurate colours.
That is not to say that all iPad 3s are the same - but the ones we tested exhibited practically the same colour balance.
Don't believe us?
Well then check out articles from sites like DisplayMate (goo.gl/X5YPp) and Anandtech (goo.gl/nn92l) who have extensive tests and explanations of the iPad 3 screen technology.
So if you think your iPad 3 is more yellow by simply looking at the toolbars in Pages, or the bookshelf in iBooks, try instead loading up identical photos and compare.
If you have a photographer friend with a monitor calibrated using a tool like the Spyder4 from Datacolor (spyder.datacolor.com) try comparing pictures against that and decide for yourself.