Download Atomic Web Browser for the iPhone and iPad here.

Okay, so now you’ve got a shiny new iPad and the first thing you know it’s good for is surfing the web. The glorious resolution and clarity of loading a webpage for some reason, looks even better on an iPad than it does a computer. The sheer novelty of browsing the web without having to squint or perpetually tap, swipe, pinch to zoom in and out clearly sets the iPad apart from its smaller cousins. But after the novelty of loading your first webpage on the iPad in Safari, what next? You want to open another site, but you don’t want to let go of the one you just opened so … that gets pretty annoying fast and your shiny new toy looks like a raw deal to you, over time.

I was pleasantly surprised to find that Atomic Web (a universal app) is a lot better than Safari for the iPad or iPhone, and in a short period of time, earned its place on my iPad dock. Loading is blazingly fast and painless, and tabbed browsing is pretty much what we know and are used to on a regular computer web browser. It’s also highly customizable, from touch screen gestures to built-in themes, to reloading all your tabs and pages opened from a previous session. In many ways, you can use it as like a desktop browser (whether as Safari, Firefox or IE) which offers you a fully-featured regular browser experience.

Ironically, Safari cannot recognize some of the fonts I use on appSIZED – considering that appSIZED is built on Apple’s iWeb/Mobile Me but on Atomic Web, it looks the way it should. Another plus one for Atomic Web!

It’s a browser that makes you feel like you’re surfing the web without the mobile limitations. One tiny complaint is that I have to continuously retype passwords – a save password function is a must in the next update.

Overall, this is an app that you normally take for granted when you’re using your desktop/laptop web browser, but on the iPad, it makes a huge difference. Oh and it’s a steal at $0.99. Until Safari comes up with something better, I’m sticking to Atomic Web. It’s an absolute must for your iPad web browsing experience.

Verdict: A blazingly fast, powerful and customizable web browser that Safari for the iDevice should be.
Rating:      5/5
Dev:          Rich Tech
Ver:           2.9
Copy:        Purchased
Category:  Productivity
Price:         $0.99