In reply to a post by hk11:

I guess you are right about the iPad. Always been happy with mine, but wouldn't buy another due to Apple's continually making old hardware redundant. I'd love something with a bigger screen than my iPhone though. Are the £80 tablets worth looking at?

In what way do you imagine that Apple is making old iPad hardware redundant ? Is it that they stop releasing new OS updates after a few years ?

If so, I've got some bad news for you if you venture into the Android tablet market...

We have no idea what the speed of your wifi connection actully is, you've never to my knowledge tested it.

To that you need an iPerf3 server on an Ethernet connected machine:

https://formulae.brew.sh/formula/iperf3 - Mac via homebrew
https://iperf.fr/iperf-download.php - Windows

and an iPerf3 app on the iPad:

https://github.com/ndfred/iperf-ios

Then you'll be able to test how fast the wifi actually is.

Edited by andynormancx (Sat 12-Aug-23 12:42:56)

You don't know that the wifi is performing at 1/45th of the headline speed. All you know is that the combination of your iPad, your router, your neighbours radio emissions and your ISP are only allowing that speed.

Unless you test the speed of the wifi independently, you are just guessing at where the bottleneck is.

Very rare to get actual realistic power consumption figures published for many devices. Basically because of the variability of doing so on different usage scenarios, so you may get a worst case figure or look at the power supply wattage or VA rating, again worst case and usually hugely over what the device will consume long term in steady state operation.

I’m tempted to dig out an old iPad 2 from the cupboard and test it to see what it will do on WiFi throughput - as mentioned several times though, that won’t necessarily mean you will achieve similar rates due to the wide factors / variability of WiFi based on the specific user setup and locale etc.

In reply to a post by Pheasant:

Very rare to get actual realistic power consumption figures published for many devices. Basically because of the variability of doing so on different usage scenarios, so you may get a worst case figure or look at the power supply wattage or VA rating, again worst case

For someone prepared/determined to change the kit if the usage is unnecessarily high then its worth them knowing but for most folk they are still going to use the kit regardless so what is the point. The router from both these ISPs is going to be basic so I wouldn't expect a massive different.

If people really want to know then one of those plug in display things that shows the usage is a good investment. I have no doubt you already have one of these

It's strange that electrical appliances don't have figures, even if they vary. Car manufacturers publish figures and they have similar wide variables, but manage to constrain them to @56mph, for example.

Please do get yer iPad out; if only to throw yet more variables into the mix. One of mine has decided it won't do anything but try and contact Apple now to register itself, despite this having been done when new years ago!

ISP change Tues, so that will eliminate one variable, then another when I swap the router over. Wifi interference and my iPad will remain unchanged, unless of course another neigbour changes their setup at the same time.

In reply to a post by hk11:

Please do get yer iPad out

A few tbb tests for interest... I'm on a (nominal) 80/20 FTTC connection, but too far from the (crowded) cabinet to achieve those speeds.

iMac (wired) for reference: 64.4 down, 16.4 up.

iPhone 12: 63.6 down, 15.8 up.

iPad 2 mini: 56.0 down, 16.7 up. (Better than I expected, it always "feels" a lot slower than the other two)

All tests HTTPx6, IPv6, taken within about 10 minutes of each other with iPad and iPhone on 5GHz less than a metre from the router. iMac uses Chrome, other two use Safari.

Edited by billford (Sun 13-Aug-23 09:50:45)

In reply to a post by hk11:

Please do get yer iPad out; if only to throw yet more variables into the mix.

Ok, if you have more modern hardware this is what you can get.

Internet = Virgin Media 250 Mbps / 20 Mbps.
PC = desktop PC (12th Gen Intel i7) with 1 Gigabit Ethernet connection to router
Router = ASUS WiFi 6 with 4 physical antennas for 4 stream MIMO, 160 MHz channel on 5 GHz, 20 MHz on 2.4 as Apple devices won't use any more than 20MHz on 2.4 GHz

iPerf running on the PC, using iPad Pro 11" (about 3 years old) I get a speed range between 480 Mbps and 590 Mbps for both upload and download. Theoretical speed not stated on Apple tech specs page. At sale was "over 1 Gigabit"

iCloud Private Relay disabled to avoid any redirection.

Thinkbroadband (in Safari) and speedtest.net (app) tests on the iPad show the same WAN speeds as the desktop PC, 270 Mbps download and 25 Mbps upload.

When I can find my USB-C adaptor I will try my personal laptop on an Ethernet link with iPerf just to confirm the switch can handle the full gigabit speed (940 expected).

Edited by jchamier (Sun 13-Aug-23 10:07:15)

In reply to a post by hk11:

It's strange that electrical appliances don't have figures, even if they vary. Car manufacturers publish figures and they have similar wide variables, but manage to constrain them to @56mph, for example.

Please do get yer iPad out; if only to throw yet more variables into the mix. One of mine has decided it won't do anything but try and contact Apple now to register itself, despite this having been done when new years ago!

It’ll be a couple of weeks before I get near that iPad again, and I’ve no idea if the battery has completely crapped out…so other folks will doubtless post up their own experiences if they have one handy and running.

In any event, if it’s going to run modern apps and you really want to maximise performance then running an ancient (relatively speaking tablet) is not the best way of going about it. For a start the operating system on these things is about seven versions behind the current release of iOS (well, well beyond support) and the hardware was out of support about a decade ago.

For all intents they are now museum pieces, and you can’t expect them to be performant like a device that is up to 5 years old, so within the current support envelope of hardware and iOS versions. It’s well and truly a sweated asset. But I’m sure you know that.