Today, the Washington Post released its free application for the iPad to the iTunes Store — in what will surely be annoying news for iPhone/iPod Touch users who paid $1.99 for the less feature-heavy version of the same application. Currently, free access to content is being sponsored, but beginning in February 2011, dead tree subscribers will pay 99 cents per month and non-subscribers will pay $3.99 per month for full access to content.

We took the new application for a test drive, comparing it against apps for the New York Times and USA Today. The first thing we noticed was the lack of reading space. Approximately 20 percent of the screen is constantly occupied by a banner advertisement, while another 10 percent is occupied by a “latest news” module. To add to the cramped feel, an annoying recent tweets module pops up with no apparent way to hide it. Another design oddity is the serif-ed font, which may well be the Post’s branded font, but which gave reading on such a modern device an old and somewhat spidery look and feel.