MacSailing.net

Is the iPad viewable in sunlight?

Andy

It's transflective so it is visible in direct sunlight but not as bright as any of my built-in electronics.

We've been using it mainly in our pilothouse. Even on bright days it has been excellent and easily visible. Just a little sun blockage goes a long way to making it colorful and vibrant. I don't think it is ready to be a full chartplotter replacement for use at an outdoor helm in all conditions, even if it is protected from water and moisture.

I think that most people will find the iPad to be a good companion on their boat. Its applications enhance the information and navigation available and provide an excellent backup.

What you have to do, though, is turn off the 'auto' brightness setting and manually crank it up. Prior to that I found my iPad not particularly readable in sunlight, but afterwards it was acceptable, but wouldn't want to read a book that way. Also found (probably known by techies) that the screen is polarized, i.e. with my polarized sunglasses on it was quite bright when turned 'landscape' but almost black when turned 'portrait'. Oh, reading a book in the open shade of the sail or dodger was quite comfortable, just not direct sun.

Scot

Did you have any overheating problems? I have heard from others that the iPad shuts down (by design) in direct sunlight if its internal temp gets too hot. Not an issue if shaded. For not being an outdoor display iPad is much better then a Mac laptop as far as brightness.

No, but we were actually freezing most of the time.... I agree the ipad is much more viewable in daylight than my Macbook, by several magnitudes.

Actually, I found the iPad to be one of the best things I've ever bought for the boat, for reasons I never imagined. When we became becalmed and saw a storm bearing down on us, the iPad is what I used for 'what if' navigation planning. Quick, simple, portable. Only gripe is I couldn't load my gribs on it (an major annoyance - you need to be able to load gribs other than via x-traverse, first because we didn't have wifi other than sailmail, and so I could have greater control over the data/grid/time periods requested).

iPad also was great for planning and prep (shopped at Costco/Walmart with our shopping list in Numbers, along with menu plan and inventory), now have virtually all my manuals organized and quickly available in pdf in GoodReader, entertainment (movies and tv with sound piped through my Bose speakers - wow!), and I love reading books on it, both in ibooks (my favorite but less selection), Kindle reader, and now B&N's reader.

Most of this you could do on a laptop, but the ipad boots SOOOOO much faster and can easily be handed around. Plus (a VERY big plus), it uses a fraction of the power a laptop uses.

Sorry to ramble, but I love my ipad. Fortunately, I also bought my wife one, who hasn't opened her laptop since.

Scot

I read the new iPad 2 has an even brighter screen (when full brightness is selected) then original iPad. Another benefit is the iPad 2 supports mirroring to an external display. Of course getting an iPad 2 could prove to be a challenge.

Yes. Note that keeping it in direct mid-day sunlight will overheat the iPad. This happened while sailing and testing out the chart and instruments of inavx. The screen shows a big red thermometer. I put the sensitive little thing in my beer cooler. It restored itself. So you do want a way of keeping it outnof direct sun for long stretches.

Copasetic

Direct sunlight will not overheat the iPad if there is good air circulation. Our iPad shut down a couple of times because of overheating before we learned to open a window to let a breeze blow on it. If we couldn't do that, I would have to rig up a shade, or a small fan.

The aluminum back is the heat sink. Our iPad sits in a RAM mount, and sometimes I feel that it reduces air circulation a bit, but it would also be an excellent place to attach a sunshade if we ever thought we needed one.

I have a new ipad 2 set up w/ inavx. Used on my sailboat for the first time over the weekend. Nice software, but the device in full sunlight out in the cockpit is not something I'd want to spend that much time looking at, even on a perfect day. That's with auto turned off, backlight maxed, and no sunglasses. You can see it, but it's nothing like my old Raymarine display.

Down in the cabin, it's fine, but like many here are saying, don't expect this to be your primary cockpit display unless you're in an enclosed cockpit or stick to evenings and night time boating.