"The reviews are in: New iPad the ‘best money can buy’"

The new iPad has finally reached the waiting hands of a lucky few, and the previews are all over the interwebs. The verdict in short: the retina display screen is amazing, the upgraded camera and video allows you to do a lot more with the device, and performance with 4G networks is satisfactory. (Though this is largely irrelevant to an Indian audience)

However one criticism is that apps that have not been optimised for the retina display (A million pixels more than a HD tv – or so Apple tells us) look shoddy. Further compounding this problem is the fact that one optimized, apps are going to get a

whole lot bigger.

The iPad goes on sale worldwide on Friday.

We do a quick round up of the major tech reviews on the iPad so far:

1. Wall Street Journal, Walt Mossberg

The upgrades are massive. Using the new display is like getting a new eyeglasses prescription — you suddenly realize what you thought looked sharp before wasn’t nearly as sharp as it could be.

Boosting those particular features — the screen and the cellular speed — usually has a negative impact on battery life in a digital device. But Apple has managed to crank them up them while maintaining the long battery life between charges that has helped give the iPad such an edge over other tablets.

I’ve been testing the new iPad, and despite these trade-offs, its key improvements strengthen its position as the best tablet on the market

2. The Guardian, Charles Arthur

The iPad 3 puts Apple a mile ahead of anything we’ve seen from Android tablets. The interface is unchanged. But all sorts of incremental details – especially the screen, but also the camera capability and so the graphics heft, and the mobile broadband capability – have been ratcheted up.

Of course, if you don’t think you’ll be able to tell the difference in the screen, and if you think LTE is not going to happen in time, good news: the iPad 2 is now cheaper than before. Win-win.

3. New York Times, David Pogue

Really, the new iPad should have been called the iPad 2S. In the past, Apple added the letter S to iPhone models that weren’t exactly new but had been tastefully enhanced (iPhone 3GS, iPhone 4S). That’s exactly what’s going on with the new iPad.

This screen has 3.1 million pixels, which is 1 million pixels more than on a high-definition TV set. (At least Apple says that that’s how many pixels it has; I quit counting after three days.)

But apps that haven’t been rewritten don’t benefit as much. In most apps, text is automatically sharpened, but not in all of them. After enjoying the freakishly sharp text in Mail and Safari, you’ll be disappointed in the relatively crude type in, for example, the non-updated Amazon Kindle app. (Amazon says that a Retina-ready update is in the works.)

4. The Telegraph, Shane Richmond

It’s hard to overstate the significance of the new screen. Apple has packed four times as many pixels into the same space and the improvement has to be seen to be believed. The display is extraordinarily sharp. Text and photos look beautiful.

There are other changes too, of course, particularly in performance. The upgrade is apparent already in some of Apple’s apps but it will become clearer still once new apps are released that take advantage of the graphics capabilities of the new A5X processor.

If you have been holding off getting a tablet then this is the one to go for. In my view, it’s the best that money can buy. Existing iPad owners who are thinking of upgrading should take a look at this new device. You’ll see the difference very, very clearly indeed.

5. Josh Lohwenson, CNet

This is a review of all the reviews are out there, existing more to tell us that the reviews are predictable and similar. Definitely worth a read.