Can dropping an iPad reduce performance?

Your original quesiton was really asking two things, so I will respond to both. First, yes you can damage the internal components from dropping them. This really leads to my answer to the second question. No, you are not going to degrade your performance in any way from dropping it. Think of it as an all or nothing thing; If you damaged the physical CPU somehow, it's straight up not going to work;there is no real chance it's going to only work at let's say 50% speed as before. If you ever study microelectronics, that's really not how this stuff works. So long story short, don't stress too much about this. If it works, then it works. If you broke your bluetooth module, the bluetooth is not going to work. The only possible far-out way I could ever think of performance being degraded in a computer of any kind is damaging a cooling mechanism that is forcing let's say a CPU to throttle itself (reduce it's clock speed). This is not going to be the case for a compact device like this with no real moving parts (i.e. fan). It generally should be very black and white. As far as resolving your issue, as paulcb recommends, resetting the iPad is probably your best bet to restore the level of performance you were seeing before. hint: it's probably a memory managment issue within the OS. If that doesn't fix your issue you could always restore in iTunes to factory settings as a last ditch effort.

Try what Paul suggested. If you still think you have an issue with your iPad, the next best option is to make an appointment with the Genius Bar at your Apple Store. They'll easily be able to see you dropped your iPad, as scratches and dents are an unmistakable clue. Be super nice, even apologetic. There have been reports of people who were very surprised to get a free replacement for things like broken screens. I have not seen any reports of free replacements for scratched and dented backs. Still, they do offer out of warranty replacements, which are less expensive than the cost of a brand new unit.

of course it can, but the components in an iPad are sturdy and unless you notice a performance issue, you are probably OK.

Try resetting your iPad by pressing the home and sleep buttons until you see the Apple logo, ignoring the slider. Takes about 5-15 secs of button holding and you won't lose any data or settings.

i've been thinking the same way as hippiesrlame.. you might have put too much apps or videos and other stuffs on your ipad. try restoring it and you'll see the difference