Top 200 best iPad apps 2012

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.

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Best iPad app: Business

App name: QuickOffice Pro HD
Developer: Quickoffice, Inc
Price: £13.99
Link: http://itunes.apple.com/gb/app/quickoffice-pro-hd/id376212724

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.

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Best iPad app: Education

App name: Star Walk - 5 Stars Astronomy Guide
Developer: Vito Technology Inc
Price: £1.99
Link: http://itunes.apple.com/gb/app/star-walk-5-stars-astronomy/id295430577

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.

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Best iPad app: Entertainment

App name: AVPlayerHD
Developer: EPLAYWORKS
Price: £1.99
Link: http://itunes.apple.com/gb/app/avplayerhd/id407976815

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.

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Best iPad app: Finance

App name: Accounts
Developer: SVT Software
Price: 69p
Link: http://itunes.apple.com/gb/app/accounts-checkbook/id289261493

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.

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Best iPad app: Games

App name: Plants vs. Zombies HD
Developer: PopCap
Price: £4.99
Link: http://itunes.apple.com/gb/app/plants-vs.-zombies-hd/id363282253

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.

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Best iPad app: Lifestyle

App name: Jamie's Recipes
Developer: Zolmo
Price: Free (in-app purchases)
Link: http://itunes.apple.com/gb/app/jamies-recipes/id398011800

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.

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Best iPad app: Music

App name: Garageband
Developer: Apple
Price: £2.99
Link: http://itunes.apple.com/gb/app/garageband/id408709785

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.

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Best iPad app: Navigation

App name: Navfree GPS UK & ROI
Developer: Geolife Ltd
Price: Free
Link: http://itunes.apple.com/gb/app/navfree-gps-uk-roi/id391334793

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.

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Best iPad app: News

App name: Reeder for iPad
Developer: Silvio Rizzi
Price: £2.99
Link: http://itunes.apple.com/gb/app/reeder-for-ipad/id375661689

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.

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Best iPad app: Photo & Video

App name: Filterstorm
Developer: Tai Shimizu
Price: £2.49
Link: http://itunes.apple.com/gb/app/filterstorm/id363449020

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.

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Best iPad app: Productivity

App name: Noteshelf
Developer: Ramki
Price: £2.99
Link: http://itunes.apple.com/gb/app/noteshelf/id392188745

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.

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Best iPad app: Reference

App name: WolframAlpha
Developer: Wolfram Alpha LLC
Price: £1.49
Link: http://itunes.apple.com/gb/app/wolframalpha/id334989259

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.

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Best iPad app: Social Networking

App name: Facebook
Developer: Facebook, Inc
Price: Free
Link: http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/facebook/id284882215

It may sound like stating the obvious, but this 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.

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Best iPad app: Sport

App name: Sky Go
Developer: BSKYB
Price: Free (subscriptions apply)
Link: http://itunes.apple.com/gb/app/sky-go/id446086440

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.

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Best iPad app: Travel

App name: Google Earth
Developer: Google
Price: Free
Link: http://itunes.apple.com/gb/app/google-earth/id293622097

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.

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Best iPad app: Utilities

App name: Dolphin Browser HD
Developer: MoboTap Inc
Price: Free
Link: http://itunes.apple.com/gb/app/dolphin-browser-hd/id460812023

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.

Want more app ideas for your iPad? Take a look at 5 of the best free apps for your Apple device:

Top 50 best free iPad apps

Many great free iPhone apps cost 59p or more in their iPad incarnations, and the quality level of what's still free is often ropey. But among the dross lie rare gems - iPad apps that are so good you can't believe they're still free. Of those we unearthed, here are our favourites.

Read: Top 50 best free iPad apps

Top 40 best paid-for iPad apps

We worked our way through the App Store and furiously tested a huge (digital) pile of apps, before coming up with our 40 best paid-for iPad apps.

Read: Top 40 best paid-for iPad apps

Top 40 best free iPad games

The App Store offers plenty of iPad gaming goodness for the (unintentional or otherwise) skinflint. Our pick of the 30 best free iPad games are below.

Read: Top 30 best free iPad games

30 best iPad games worth paying for

With the iPad, the larger screen and extra clout from Apple's A4 chip creates a gaming experience markedly superior compared to that on the iPhone, and already there are plenty of fantastic titles for the system. Here are our current top 30 paid-for iPad games.

Read: 30 best iPad games worth paying for

20 best iPad 2 apps

If you've been fortunate enough to get your hands on a new iPad 2, you'll know that it's a very powerful piece of kit. But what apps should you get to show it at its best?

Read: 20 best iPad 2 apps

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Liked this? Then check out Tap! magazine for more apps, games and kit reviews for iPhone, iPad and iPod touch.

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