Web surfing on the iPad 3G using its cell connection is really pretty good, especially if you get away from congested urban areas.
Using the iPad over the weekend, I’ve been pretty impressed by the speed of the iPad 3G for routine Web surfing. Video, however, is another matter — it’s a disappointment.
Get outside of San Francisco, and 3G web surfing is positively fast. Up in Santa Rosa, Calif., I used the fantastic Atom Web Browser to load a whole bunch of pages in different tabs. The pages loaded almost instantaneously, and browsing seemed as quick as a fast Wi-Fi connection. In fact, it was so fast, I had to double check I was actually using 3G and not some magic Wi-Fi connection.
Be warned, though, the iPad eats data fast. I signed up for AT&T’s 250-Mbyte plan and burned through 99-Mbytes of it in just two days. True, my usage wasn’t routine. I was testing out different web browsers and opening multiple tabs, but I didn’t think I used that much data. It wasn’t like I was watching a bunch of video.
Check out these two very short clips showing what it’s like to surf the web on the iPad 3G over Wi-Fi and a cell connection:
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s_5-u6I_8lA&feature=youtube_gdata
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bx21H3wLC3k
And here’s my data usage for just two days:
