Benchmark Results: Real-World
Real-World Benchmarks
Early on we discovered how difficult it is to benchmark tablets.
Measuring responsiveness with a camera is the easiest approach. Of course, normal cameras won't cut it, since they only shoot at 29 FPS. That's unacceptable if you're trying to measure precise time differences. Going the stopwatch route is no better due to human-introduced errors. That's why we're using a 1000 FPS high-speed camera to gauge performance. Because we know that one frame equals one millisecond, it’s possible to measure timings with a high degree of accuracy.
All of these tablets employ the same processing hardware (a dual-core Cortex-A9), but the difference in boot-up time suggests that iOS is a fundamentally leaner operating system. Understand that our benchmark captures total performance. Even when we're working with the same CPU, the display panel can impact our results, as we're factoring in response times, too.
When we turn to browser launch times, the Android operating environment's Chrome browser definitely doesn't respond as quickly.
Input lag is the time it takes from pressing a key until text appears on-screen. This tells you how fast a tablet is registering an action. Ideally, you want low input lag so that you don't get the sense the tablet is stuttering as you type or click buttons.
The average college student has a reaction time of 200 milliseconds for visual stimuli, so there's some perceivable lag while you're typing with the Eee Pad Transformer. Considering that other Tegra 2-based tablets offer up lower input lag, Asus' choice of an IPS panel may be a contributing factor, as IPS typically suffers from higher response times.
You can read more about response times on the last page of Three-Way 22" LED LCD Roundup: Dell, LG, And Samsung.
