It's spending season this fortnight, that time of the year when you're most likely to be splurging your money on a gadget. In this series, our crew of gadget-obsessed boffins pick the best deal in each category, from entry-level dual-SIMs to superphones, tablets, ultraportables and luxury laptops. We've spent plenty of time deliberating on our choices, saving you the trouble of poring through a sea of specs sheets, reviews and benchmarks. Today we're gonna tell you why we think the iPad 4G is the best tablet you can buy. Feel free to debate your choices and suggest alternatives in the comments below.


OverviewLaunched less than a month ago, the new iPad 4G no longer has the highest viewing resolution on a tablet - those bragging rights belong to the Nexus 10. However, the 4’th Generation iPad is the tablet we’d buy, for all the reasons we voted the iPad 2 as the ‘Must Have’ tablet last year, in addition to all the improvements made over two hardware revisions – the onboard cameras are improved, the A6X processor is at the top of the performance charts, with twice the graphics performance over the 3G Retina iPad.

Core specsOS: iOS 6
Display: 9.7" Retina Display 2048x1536 Resolution @264 ppi
Chipset: Dual Core A6x processor, 
GPU:  PowerVR SGX 554
Storage: 16/32/64GB options. 
RAM: 1GB
Camera: 5 MP iSight Camera, 1.3 MP front camera
Connectivity: LTE, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 4.0, Lightning connector 
Battery:  42.5 Wh, 10 hours, 30 days idle.
Weight: 660g
Size: 9.5 x 7.31 x 0.37 in
Prices: 16GB Wi-Fi @$499/Rs. 30,500

Pros and Cons(+) 5-megapixel camera with 1080p video recording
(+) 2x graphics performance over the iPad 3.
(+) Has a larger ecosystem of apps at present

(-) No ports for expandable storage.
(-) Requires accessories to connect camera, do HDMI mirroring. 
(-) Lack of 4G in India might dampen interest for cellular option.

 
Verdict: Improved graphics performance makes this more than just a minor update over the third generation iPad. Most Apple stores are still sporting the old ‘new iPad’ and we’d stay clear of those, unless you have a bunch of accessories based on the old 30-pin connector and don't care much for gaming.