If you visit Apple’s website today, you will be greeted with a play on words that makes the new iPad into something that is from the future. Resolutionary; The new iPad. Clever marketing, indeed, but is this new iPad any more revolutionary than the second? Will you be looked down upon for having the first edition? Is there enough of a difference between the different models to justify spending another $500? The short answer is no. The long answer is also no.

The new iPad is a fantastic piece of technology, make no mistake. A faster processor and a much higher screen resolution make incremental progress on the previous version. In truth, tweaks and upgrades across the board look to make the iPad 3 all around better than the iPad 2. The problem comes from releasing a slightly improved product a year and a half after the previous version and advertising it as a revolution. If you own an iPad 2, there is absolutely no need to bother with the iPad 3. But this is how Apple functions. They hook you in with wondrous descriptions of products that if you do not have, you will be forgotten and left behind. Then when you finally acquire their miracle technology, a newer model is released five months later.

That is where iPad 2 owners find themselves today. Stuck between the greatest invention in human history and technological obscurity, or so Apple would want you to think. In reality, the two products are virtually identical. By all practical standards, the two tablets do the same thing. 99% of what you are going to do on an iPad is buy apps, browse the internet, watch videos, and play a few games. The iPad 3 might handle these things minutely quicker, but the iPad 2 does them just the same.

But what if you don’t already have an iPad and you are looking for a tablet: is the new iPad 3 the right one? In a word, yes. When you introduce the offerings from companies like Acer or Samsung or anyone else, there is no contest. Apple’s only competition is its own ever advancing self.

Whether or not there is ever a situation in which you can properly justify spending upwards of $800 on such a device, upon using one you cannot put it down. The simple truth is that the iPad works. It turns on, let’s you run your apps and do what you want, and then lets you go about your way. No problems, no complicated systems, just pure user friendliness. Other brands offer similar high quality products that do fun things, but they hiccup, freeze occasionally, and are simply trying to be an iPad. So why not buy what every other tablet is simply hoping to emulate?

The iPad might champion itself as a device to create beautiful content, but that is not what tablets do, they are content consumers.The idea that you are going to be editing your own photos or making business presentations on one is ridiculous. Despite commercials and advertisements showing off the ability to edit HD video, no one buys a device like this to do anything like that. As such, the best tablets are those that deliver content most successfully, and the iPad wins convincingly in that department.

As I said before, justifying the purchase of such a toy is difficult. There is just no practical application that an iPad can do that something else can do, albeit a little less conveniently. Having said that, owning an iPad makes life without one seem almost impossible. Life is not the same without it. Just understand that this ground breaking, change-the-way-we-think-about-the-world device is really nothing revolutionary. The iPad 3 is new and terrific, but so is the iPad 2.

Written by the Marketing department for Los Angeles car accident lawyers, The Consumers’ Law Group.