Even prior to its official debut, the Apple iPad faced criticism over performance compared to rival tablets and other low-cost mobile computing options like netbooks. But now, Gomez, which specializes in Web site and application performance analytics, says that the iPad is proving surprisingly swift when it comes to Web browsing.
In fact, the new Apple tablet often outperforms netbooks — perhaps its closest rival product category — when it comes to interacting with a majority of popular Web sites, according to Gomez. Datamation takes a look at the findings.
Since its release last week, the iPad has gotten plenty of positive coverage as a slick mobile device for viewing all manner of Web content. But now Web performance analysis company Gomez is giving the iPad some unexpected kudos for Web site download times.
In preliminary results covering four days (starting April 1 when only Apple-approved testers had the device), Gomez said that 74 percent of the pages, on what it determined to be the top 50 most visited sites by iPad users, loaded faster on the iPad than on netbook computers in the U.S.