FOR the last couple of months I've been the proud owner of an iPad. It doesn't actually belong to me, the company bought one for “evaluation” purposes because the iPad is supposed to herald a new beginning for the print.

Like any Apple product, at first glance the iPad is a beautiful piece of kit. It feels great to hold, the colour screen is pin-sharp and even the sound it makes is pretty impressive for one so thin.

Reading a newspaper on it is a novel experience (no pun intended) and, in the right conditions, probably better than using an Amazon Kindle.

The iPad's horsepower enables it to do things you could only dream of doing with a Kindle and the touch-pinch interface is genius.

But then a strange thing happened.

After a few days of playing with it, I began to wonder if the iPad wasn't just a load of marketing hype.

Consider this: that beautiful touch screen was, by the end of the first day, covered in greasy fingerprints. Who wants to spend ten minutes with a polishing cloth just to keep their iPad looking good?

And the piano black glossy screen is completely useless on a sunny day – the entire screen becomes on massive reflective mirror.

I lost count of the times my iPad dropped a wi-fi connection (usually requiring a reboot) and having to close apps everytime I wanted to do something else became a real chore.

By the end of the week I'd fallen out of love with the iPad.

Sure it was great for impressing my mates and the “instant on” ability was handy. The screen's pixel density, too, which makes it good for watching movies and reading ebooks (albeit out of the sun), but would I really want to spend so much to read a few classic texts?

And because the screen isn't widescreen most of your movies can't be watched in the correct ratio without compromise.

I could go on - why do I need an adaptor for a USB device, why no HDMI output so I can send video to my (widescreen) TV, why no Flash and why no camera?

The only really addictive app I found was the air hockey game which sure beats the hell out of solitaire as a built-in entertainment freebie.

As for the rest of it, I couldn't help thinking that an iPhone does it all just as well - or better.

Playing music, for instance, just isn't as much fun when you can't drop the iPad in a top pocket when you need to move around.

And that's before you consider the price.

For the cost of a basic iPad (£429 in the UK) you could have a Netbook, an iPod and an Amazon Kindle - three gadgets that all perform their tasks better than an iPad.

Apple's website says the iPad is available at "an unbelievable price". I couldn't have put it better myself.

As an e-book reader and an electronic distribution medium for papers and magazines the iPad makes sense – it's a good size, doesn't weigh too much and brings some genuinely new features to the party – but as a method of gaming, playing music or running apps I'm still to be convinced.