When turned off but charging, the new iPad registered a temperature of 76 degrees Fahrenheit on the back center of the tablet. The temperature at that same spot rose to 86 degrees after the device had been on for 5 to 10 minutes but idle; the maximum-heat spot on the back registered at 92 degrees under these conditions. After playing Riptide GP for 1 hour, the tablet had a maximum temperature reading on its back of 100 degrees Fahrenheit (94 degrees at the back center). Though and other outlets reportedly recorded temperatures as high as 116 degrees, we were unable to push the new iPad's temperature beyond the century mark.

As you can see from the chart above, the new iPad ran between 5 and 7 Fahrenheit degrees hotter than the iPad 2 after playing Riptide GP for an hour while plugged in, and it was as much as 8 degrees hotter than the iPad 2 after playing the game for an hour on battery power alone. That behavior wasn't consistent across the board, however; on some of our tests, the new iPad, when running on battery power, was as little as 2 degrees warmer than the iPad 2. In general, the new iPad tended to run a bit warmer while charging, but not significantly so.

The new iPad's heat profile is comparable to the heat profiles of the two Android tablets we tested: the Asus Eee Pad Transformer Prime (running Android 4.0) and the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 4G LTE from Verizon.