Thermal Imaging Illustrates Heat Difference Between iPads

There've been a few complaints that the new iPad gets too hot. We had to expect an increase in heat output with a faster processor and a bigger battery pack inside the new iPad compared to the iPad 2. Apparently, website tweakers.net decided to see exactly how much hotter Apple's new iPad was than the iPad 2 under load using thermal imaging.

The two tablets were placed next each other while running GLBenchmark and hit with a Flir thermal imager. In image above the new iPad is on the left with the iPad 2 on the right. The thermal images were taken after 5 minutes loops of each tablet running the benchmark.

Imaging showed that the temperature on the lower right corner of the new iPad was 33.6°C. The same place on the iPad 2 was 28.3°C for difference of 5.3°. The higher operating temperature for the new iPad is presumably in part due to the more powerful GPU packing more shader cores. Users would certainly feel 33.6°C as warm, but that is definitely not too hot to touch.

[via Tweakers]