If you've just bought yourself a new iPad, you're going to want to start downloading the best apps straight away.
It's the Apps that really set iOS apart from other platforms - there are far more apps available for the iPad than any other tablet. So which which ones are worth your cash? And which are the best free apps?
Luckily for you we've tested thousands of the best iPad apps so that you don't have to.
So read on for our best-in-class apps for each major category, followed by some more specific lists of the best free and paid for apps and games.
Best iPad app: Books
App name: Kindle
Developer: AMZN Mobile LLC
Price: Free
Why list a free e-book reader as the top pick when Apple's own iBook is included? Ask anyone who owns a Kindle - with this free Kindle app, you can download every book and magazine you have ever purchased for free and read them on the iPad.
.
Developer: Quickoffice, Inc
Price: £13.99
Apple's iWork apps have been praised for their look and feel, but many actually prefer Quickoffice Pro HD. It dispenses with Pages', Numbers' and Keynote's visual clutter to present a clean, professional interface, while beating Apple to the cut by already fully integrating cloud synchronisation courtesy of Google Docs.
.
Developer: Vito Technology Inc
Price: £1.99
Even if astronomy's not your thing, you can't fail to be impressed by Star Walk. Point it at the sky, and using the iPad's digital compass you'll see a virtual starscape on your screen. It gets even better when you start move around - you'll see that the view pans with you, highlighting what constellations you should be able to make out.
.
Developer: EPLAYWORKS
Price: £1.99
While iOS is packed with useful features, itdoesn't offer native support for many popular video formats, and this is where the AVPlayerHD app comes into play. It supports all the biggies - XVID, AVI, WMV, RMVB, H.264 and MKV - and offers compatibility with external subtitle file formats such as SMI, SRT and TXT.
.
Developer: SVT Software
Price: 69p
Accounts is an easy to use application to replace your paper checkbook. You can schedule transactions, create recurring payees list, transfer funds, reconcile, export data, view reports, graphs, and much more.
.
Developer: PopCap
Price: £4.99
A mob of fun-loving zombies is about to invade your home. Defend it with an arsenal of 49 zombie-zapping plants that will slow down, confuse and mulchify all 26 types of zombies before they reach your door. Plants vs Zombies HD is a TechRadar favourite.
.
Developer: Zolmo
Price: Free (in-app purchases)
Rather than having ahefty one-off price, the new Jamie's Recipes is free, but contains only a 10-recipe sample pack - you have to buy more packs as In-App Purchases of around £1.49. We're loving the attention to detail - for example, ingredients can be added to a shopping list, which you can email to yourself or a loved one to pick up on the way home.
.
Developer: Apple
Price: £2.99
GarageBand turns your iPad into a collection of Touch Instruments and a full-featured recording studio — so you can make music anywhere you go. Use Multi-Touch gestures to play pianos, organs, guitars, drums, and basses on your iPad. They sound and play like their counterparts, but let you do things you could never do on a real instrument.
.
Developer: Geolife Ltd
Price: Free
Navfree turns your iPad into a fill-blown satnav device, offering turn-by-turn directions, voice and on-screen instructions, offline map use and address search and live search via Google and Microsoft Bing, among many other features. And it's completely free.
.
Developer: Silvio Rizzi
Price: £2.99
While some hold up Pulse as the best way to access RSS feeds - stripped-down, automatically refreshed website content that you usually subscribe to for free - it's a little too lightweight for us. It's fine if you only have a dozen or so feeds coming in, but if you follow a lot more than that, Reeder is the app for you.
.
Developer: Tai Shimizu
Price: £2.49
If there's an iOS app that comes close to offering the kind of editing facilities that are available in a Mac OS X or Windows application, then it's this one, Filterstorm. For starters, it can import and process images in raw format. Add to that a host of editing tools, such as curves manipulation, colour correction, noise reduction, sharpening and vignetting, and you can see already that there's plenty here for photographers to get excited about - and it doesn't stop there.
.
Developer: Ramki
Price: £2.99
With Noteshelf you can create multiple notebooks, and stack and arrange them on a shelf. Each notebook has a default paper style - lined, squared, and more - but you can mix paper types in one book; yay! Better still, you can import your own templates. There's no handwriting recognition, and the option to type as well as hand-write would be nice, but even so: superb.
.
Developer: Wolfram Alpha LLC
Price: £1.49
Find out how much vitamin C is in a bowl of ice cream. Learn what European country has the fourth largest population of children. Compute solutions to difficult trig and calculus problems. Balance complex chemical equations. Discover what is overhead as you gaze up at the stars. Finally crack that crossword puzzle. Whoever you are and whatever you do, Wolfram Alpha delivers insight and understanding into any facet of your life.
.
Developer: Facebook, Inc
Price: Free
It may sound like stating the obvious, but this Facebook app is clearly designed for the iPad from the ground up. It does more than just take advantage of the big screen and gesture recognition: other iPad features including the cameras and location services have been thoughtfully integrated as well.
.
Developer: BSKYB
Price: Free (subscriptions apply)
There's only one way to watch Sky Sports on your iOS device, and that's using the brand new Sky Go app. It replaces the much-maligned Mobile TV app, which had the cheek to demand you pay money for it, even if you were already paying a monthly fee for Sky TV and Sky Player. Providing you're a Sky Sports subscriber, you have access to all 4 Sky Sports channels, as well as ESPN, Sky One and more.
.
Developer: Google
Price: Free
If, like us, you were amazed by the desktop version of Google Earth when you first used it, you'll love the iOS version. The iPad's Multi-Touch interface is the perfect way to navigate the planet, allowing you to fluidly roll from one place to the next, pinching and swiping your way from one amazing place to the next.
.
Developer: MoboTap Inc
Price: Free
Dolphin has a tough task to prove that it has enough killer features to persuade users to switch from Safari. It covers the basics well, but where Apple's browser leaves gaping holes, Dolphin dives straight in with a wealth of extras
It's the Apps that really set iOS apart from other platforms - there are far more apps available for the iPad than any other tablet. So which which ones are worth your cash? And which are the best free apps?
Luckily for you we've tested thousands of the best iPad apps so that you don't have to.
So read on for our best-in-class apps for each major category, followed by some more specific lists of the best free and paid for apps and games.
Best iPad app: Books
App name: Kindle
Developer: AMZN Mobile LLC
Price: Free
Why list a free e-book reader as the top pick when Apple's own iBook is included? Ask anyone who owns a Kindle - with this free Kindle app, you can download every book and magazine you have ever purchased for free and read them on the iPad.
.
Best iPad app: Business
App name: QuickOffice Pro HDDeveloper: Quickoffice, Inc
Price: £13.99
Apple's iWork apps have been praised for their look and feel, but many actually prefer Quickoffice Pro HD. It dispenses with Pages', Numbers' and Keynote's visual clutter to present a clean, professional interface, while beating Apple to the cut by already fully integrating cloud synchronisation courtesy of Google Docs.
.
Best iPad app: Education
App name: Star Walk - 5 Stars Astronomy GuideDeveloper: Vito Technology Inc
Price: £1.99
Even if astronomy's not your thing, you can't fail to be impressed by Star Walk. Point it at the sky, and using the iPad's digital compass you'll see a virtual starscape on your screen. It gets even better when you start move around - you'll see that the view pans with you, highlighting what constellations you should be able to make out.
.
Best iPad app: Entertainment
App name: AVPlayerHDDeveloper: EPLAYWORKS
Price: £1.99
While iOS is packed with useful features, itdoesn't offer native support for many popular video formats, and this is where the AVPlayerHD app comes into play. It supports all the biggies - XVID, AVI, WMV, RMVB, H.264 and MKV - and offers compatibility with external subtitle file formats such as SMI, SRT and TXT.
.
Best iPad app: Finance
App name: AccountsDeveloper: SVT Software
Price: 69p
Accounts is an easy to use application to replace your paper checkbook. You can schedule transactions, create recurring payees list, transfer funds, reconcile, export data, view reports, graphs, and much more.
.
Best iPad app: Games
App name: Plants vs. Zombies HDDeveloper: PopCap
Price: £4.99
A mob of fun-loving zombies is about to invade your home. Defend it with an arsenal of 49 zombie-zapping plants that will slow down, confuse and mulchify all 26 types of zombies before they reach your door. Plants vs Zombies HD is a TechRadar favourite.
.
Best iPad app: Lifestyle
App name: Jamie's RecipesDeveloper: Zolmo
Price: Free (in-app purchases)
Rather than having ahefty one-off price, the new Jamie's Recipes is free, but contains only a 10-recipe sample pack - you have to buy more packs as In-App Purchases of around £1.49. We're loving the attention to detail - for example, ingredients can be added to a shopping list, which you can email to yourself or a loved one to pick up on the way home.
.
Best iPad app: Music
App name: GaragebandDeveloper: Apple
Price: £2.99
GarageBand turns your iPad into a collection of Touch Instruments and a full-featured recording studio — so you can make music anywhere you go. Use Multi-Touch gestures to play pianos, organs, guitars, drums, and basses on your iPad. They sound and play like their counterparts, but let you do things you could never do on a real instrument.
.
Best iPad app: Navigation
App name: Navfree GPS UK & ROIDeveloper: Geolife Ltd
Price: Free
Navfree turns your iPad into a fill-blown satnav device, offering turn-by-turn directions, voice and on-screen instructions, offline map use and address search and live search via Google and Microsoft Bing, among many other features. And it's completely free.
.
Best iPad app: News
App name: Reeder for iPadDeveloper: Silvio Rizzi
Price: £2.99
While some hold up Pulse as the best way to access RSS feeds - stripped-down, automatically refreshed website content that you usually subscribe to for free - it's a little too lightweight for us. It's fine if you only have a dozen or so feeds coming in, but if you follow a lot more than that, Reeder is the app for you.
.
Best iPad app: Photo & Video
App name: FilterstormDeveloper: Tai Shimizu
Price: £2.49
If there's an iOS app that comes close to offering the kind of editing facilities that are available in a Mac OS X or Windows application, then it's this one, Filterstorm. For starters, it can import and process images in raw format. Add to that a host of editing tools, such as curves manipulation, colour correction, noise reduction, sharpening and vignetting, and you can see already that there's plenty here for photographers to get excited about - and it doesn't stop there.
.
Best iPad app: Productivity
App name: NoteshelfDeveloper: Ramki
Price: £2.99
With Noteshelf you can create multiple notebooks, and stack and arrange them on a shelf. Each notebook has a default paper style - lined, squared, and more - but you can mix paper types in one book; yay! Better still, you can import your own templates. There's no handwriting recognition, and the option to type as well as hand-write would be nice, but even so: superb.
.
Best iPad app: Reference
App name: WolframAlphaDeveloper: Wolfram Alpha LLC
Price: £1.49
Find out how much vitamin C is in a bowl of ice cream. Learn what European country has the fourth largest population of children. Compute solutions to difficult trig and calculus problems. Balance complex chemical equations. Discover what is overhead as you gaze up at the stars. Finally crack that crossword puzzle. Whoever you are and whatever you do, Wolfram Alpha delivers insight and understanding into any facet of your life.
.
Best iPad app: Social Networking
App name: FacebookDeveloper: Facebook, Inc
Price: Free
It may sound like stating the obvious, but this Facebook app is clearly designed for the iPad from the ground up. It does more than just take advantage of the big screen and gesture recognition: other iPad features including the cameras and location services have been thoughtfully integrated as well.
.
Best iPad app: Sport
App name: Sky GoDeveloper: BSKYB
Price: Free (subscriptions apply)
There's only one way to watch Sky Sports on your iOS device, and that's using the brand new Sky Go app. It replaces the much-maligned Mobile TV app, which had the cheek to demand you pay money for it, even if you were already paying a monthly fee for Sky TV and Sky Player. Providing you're a Sky Sports subscriber, you have access to all 4 Sky Sports channels, as well as ESPN, Sky One and more.
.
Best iPad app: Travel
App name: Google EarthDeveloper: Google
Price: Free
If, like us, you were amazed by the desktop version of Google Earth when you first used it, you'll love the iOS version. The iPad's Multi-Touch interface is the perfect way to navigate the planet, allowing you to fluidly roll from one place to the next, pinching and swiping your way from one amazing place to the next.
.
Best iPad app: Utilities
App name: Dolphin Browser HDDeveloper: MoboTap Inc
Price: Free
Dolphin has a tough task to prove that it has enough killer features to persuade users to switch from Safari. It covers the basics well, but where Apple's browser leaves gaping holes, Dolphin dives straight in with a wealth of extras
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