Slow JavaScript on Apple iPad?

Charlie Wood reports that his MacBook Pro is 26.7 times faster than his iPad at the SunSpider JavaScript benchmark.

I thought it would be interesting to put the iPad up against something more comparable, the Atom-powered Toshiba NB300 Netbook I’ve been using and enjoying for the last few weeks. I installed Safari and ran SunSpider, running on batteries. The result: the Toshiba is 4.52 times faster.

TEST                   COMPARISON            FROM                 TO             DETAILS

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** TOTAL **: 4.52x as fast 10999.0ms +/- 0.7% 2434.6ms +/- 4.7% significant

A lot slower than the MacBook Pro of course. Still, the iPad starts at $499. The NB300 is around $325.00 – though lacking that lovely touch screen. By way of compensation, it has a rather good keyboard, on which I am typing this post.

Note: I do not yet have an iPad so I’m relying on Wood’s test.

4 thoughts on “Slow JavaScript on Apple iPad?”

  1. Tim-

    I’ve updated my post with a link to yours. I’d be very interested in hearing how Chrome performs the benchmark on your netbook. If the iPad is to compete with Chrome OS netbooks (and I think in a sense it will), JavaScript performance (plus of course Flash) will be an important point of differentiation.

    Thanks,
    Charlie

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