Not So Hot: New iPad Heat Levels Comparable to Android Tablets
PCWorld Labs tests show heat dissipation is a universal tablet problem. — So much for “heatgate.” We've all seen the reports this week indicating that the new iPad runs hotter than its predecessor, the iPad 2.
Context & Ripple Effects
A week after Consumer Reports measured the new iPad hitting 116 degrees while running games, PCWorld Labs is reframing the story: its tests put the new iPad's heat output in line with Android tablets, making dissipation a category-wide problem rather than an Apple defect. That matters because "heatgate" only had teeth if the iPad was an outlier.
The pickup was broad for a lab-notebook story — paidContent, CNET, TechCrunch, Engadget, Geek.com, GadgeTell, TechPinions, and the Los Angeles Times all ran it on or about March 27 — reflecting how much oxygen the heat question was consuming in launch-week coverage. It also echoes an older irony: back in December 2010 the Kindle was said to be feeling iPad's heat figuratively; now the metaphor has gone literal, just not in Apple's disfavor.
First-order effects
- Apple gains a same-week counterweight to Consumer Reports' 116-degree finding: with PCWorld Labs showing Android tablets running at comparable temperatures, the new iPad is no longer positioned as uniquely hot versus the competition.
- Samsung and other Android tablet makers lose the talking point before they could fully deploy it — their own hardware now sits inside the same thermal envelope the controversy was built around.
Second-order effects
- Review outlets are pushed toward standardized cross-platform thermal measurement, since a single-device reading like Consumer Reports' game-loop test proved easy to read out of context once comparison data arrived.
- The episode raises the cost of component-level criticism for every vendor: any tablet maker attacking a rival's thermals invites the same lab-to-lab scrutiny of its own chassis.
Third-order effects
- If thermal limits keep binding as displays and processors draw more power in thin slates, heat dissipation becomes a shared engineering constraint across the industry rather than a differentiator — and a recurring axis along which buyers judge every new generation.
The trend: Tablet coverage is maturing from single-device scare findings toward standardized lab comparisons that deflate platform-specific controversies within days.