iPad 3 Will Have a Retina Display: Confirmed!

With the March 7 release of the iPad 3 approaching rapidly, many pictures of the iPad 3's display have showed up on the web. They were claimed to be a 2048x1536 retina display, but none of the pictures could confirm their resolution, until now.

MacRumors recently examined an iPad 3 display under a microscope and compared it to an iPad 2. The displays looked the same to the naked eye, but the results they got confirmed that the iPad 3 will have a retina display.

Since we only had a raw iPad 3 display with no method to power it, taking high quality photos of the pixels was difficult. Still, even with the relatively poor lighting, you can easily make out the pixels on each display (made up of red, green and blue elements). We highlighted a cluster of 4 pixels (2x2) from the iPad 2 to compare it to the same area on the iPad 3. On the iPad 3, the same cluster was occupied by 16 pixels (4x4) -- exactly twice the resolution in each direction.