Apple announced the new iPad on Wednesday, it goes on sale on 16 March. (Reuters)
A new 2D platformer game called “Sword of Xolan” might be fun to play on your Apple iPad. Reuters

Ending months of rumors and anticipation, Apple has unveiled its New iPad. The company has perhaps done its best to improve the existing features, processor by introducing stunning Retina Display with easy-to-use interface, super fast A5X processor, rock-solid stability and a better camera filled with some revolutionary technology. Apple tried to pack in the New iPad all that you wanted to see. But are they really enough?

For every good feature that Apple introduced in the iPad, the company left out another feature that was expected to be changed. While Apple introduced a revolutionary HD display in the new tablet, it failed to include features like microSD card slot for expanding memory of the device. Absence of an 8MP camera and keyboard, which are to be found in most of its Android competitors, will also bother Apple in the coming days, believe experts.

Apple's arch rivals Asus and Samsung are known for their feature-packed devices. Asus, which is expected to launch its Transformer Prime Infinity tablet within few months, gives a great deal of competition to Apple with its old (yet perhaps that best Android tablet), Asus Transformer Prime.

The Asus Eee Pad Transformer Prime, which packs Nvidia's latest quad-core Tegra 3 processor, is a clear winner against the New iPad when it comes to its ability to dock into a slick keyboard accessory that turns the Asus tablet into an absolute laptop. Although a keyboard case can be added with your iPad, yet Transformer Prime's tablet-cum-laptop feel is still incomparable.

Without offending the Apple lovers, let's check out at least five reasons why an Asus owner should still stick to his Android tablet.

Weight and Size and the Asus Key Board: The New iPad is 9.5-inch tall, 7.31-inch wide and 0.37-inch thick, and it weighs 1.44 pounds. The Asus tablet is 10.3-inch tall, 7.1-inch wide and 0.32-inch thick, and it weighs 1.32 pounds. The Asus tablet, therefore, comes with a bigger screen, but it weighs less than the New iPad. Moreover, the tablet is known for being the thinnest tablet beating both the New iPad and Samsung Galaxy 10.1.

Camera: Apple has done a great job when it comes to improving the camera of the New iPad. While iPad 2 cameras (0.7 MP backside and VGA front side) have always been at the center of criticism, the latest pad sports a 5 MP rear camera that comes with welcome features like iSight and CMOS sensor setup, auto-detection, flash, HDR and face detection and a host of other improvements and with video capabilities of 1080p at 30fps and video stabilization. A front-facing secondary VGA camera is also available.

The Transformer Prime, on the other hand, sports an 8 megapixel primary camera at 3264x2448 pixels with an LED flash, autofocus, geo-tagging and 1080p video recording. There's also a 1.2-megapixel secondary camera on the front, which is of course better than the VGA camera of the iPad. A user more interested in performance of a straightforward and no-nonsense camera should prefer this camera which has more functionality.

Processor and RAM: Apple, as promised, has packed in a much faster processor in the latest iPad than its predecessors. The New iPad runs on a dual-core 1 GHz Cortex-A9 CPU and Apple A5X chipset. A PowerVR SGX543MP4 GPU has been added to give some extra boost in the performance.

Asus Transformer Prime comes with a quad core ARM Cortex-A9 processor on Nvidia's Tegra 3 chipset and clocked at 1.3GHz. As a result of its powerful processor and the Ice Cream Sandwich OS, the tablet's performance appears zippy and smooth.

Moreover, the 1GB RAM of the Prime gives it an edge over the New iPad which has only a 512 MB RAM.

MicroSD Card Slot: Transformer Prime comes with 16GB or 32GB internal storage variants, with either option also giving you microSD capability for a further boost of up to 32GB. This is a feature which all iPad lovers wanted to see in the latest device, but Apple disappointed its fans once again.

Price: Even if the New iPad is coming with the 4G LTE connectivity, the price of the device is set exorbitantly even for the diehard Apple lovers. To add that feature to your existing iPad, you need to shell out $130 to the price of any iPad model, plus the expense of the data plan. The 4G iPad model prices range from $629 for 16GB, $729 for 32GB, or $829 for 64GB units. And, AT&T will be offering monthly data plans of 250MB for $14.99, 3GB for $30, and 5GB for $50. Verizon will be selling monthly plans of 1GB for $20, 2GB for $30, and 5GB for $50. The Verge reported that Verizon can also offer a monthly data plan of 10GB for $80, but that is not listed on Apple's site.

Transformer Prime, on the other hand, comes with a price tag of $499 for 32GB, $599 for 64GB. Though it lack 4G connectivity, yet Asus is always a better option since the 4G-enabled iPad is almost unreachable for most of the tablet lovers.