Apple's new iPad gets unboxed, benchmarked early

Apple's new iPad doesn't hit stores until Friday, but that hasn't kept it from ending up out in the wild first. 

Vietnamese site Tinhte.vn today posted photos and a video of the new iPad for the first time outside of Apple's unveiling event last week, and ahead of reviews from CNET and other news outlets. 

While there aren't any surprises to be found in the packaging or packing materials, the site did run the device through its paces in the popular Geekbench software by Primate Labs where it scored a 756. As MacRumors notes, that's very close to what the iPad 2 pulls in (751), however the test is not set up to evaluate graphical performance, which is where the new model surpasses the old one. 

Also noteworthy: the test confirmed the new iPad has 1GB of RAM, up from 512 in the iPad 2. A report from The Verge following the new device's introduction last week claimed as much, however that's not a spec Apple lists. 

This is the latest in a series of early Apple product grabs for Tinhte. It's the same outlet that got a hold of the iPhone 4 ahead of its official announcement, as well as a 64GB iPhone 4 model last April ahead of such a model arriving with the iPhone 4S. 

The new iPad goes on sale this Friday at Apple's store as well as a handful of retail partners, including RadioShack and U.S. carriers AT&T and Verizon. Apple has already shipped out units to many who preordered the device last week, however those packages are being held until release day.

In case you're itching for more unboxing, Tinhte has posted an unboxing video, which is embedded below:

http://news.cnet.com

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