Advice on tablets?

IMO size 7 is too small. I found 8 inch tablets good as being light and portable and at the sametime big enough.

 

Sorry to hear that Dave, I hope that your recovery is the fastest possible.
If you only need it for surfing/ watching videos etc. most/all tablets will do, cheap or pricey.
If you want to surf in the web for long periods do not go under 8 inches.

edit: A great android tablet at 8" is the "LG G Pad 8.3".
By the way what is the price limit that you want to spend?

Panagiotis

 

Thanks mate. I am making quite good progress & the doctors discharged me earlier than they expected to. What do you think of Kindles? I may buy one of them first.

 

You have a good point there.

 

Thanks, I am making progress. Ideally I don't want to spend more than about £250 (Sterling). What do you think about Kindles?

 

My next tablet is going to be 11.6" one. I find regular sized tables to be ridiculously small when used for web browsing.

I have a 14" laptop, and for everyday use I would not use a smaller one. Because of this I never use my tablets for web browsing. Maybe a larger tablet will change this.

As has been mentioned in this thread, some of the cheap Chinese tablets are quite decent. Two things to watch for are to make sure it has an IPS screen, for better display quality (some of cheapest tablets, have very poor screen quality or terrible viewing angles), and it has decent battery life. Cheaper tablets often have poor battery life. If you spend more money you can get tablets with higher capacity batteries.

 

IPS is a must. Get better and listen to doctors.

 

Couldn't agree more. I use a Windows Phone and a Win 8 netbook. Now I'm hooked onto Windows. I wouldn't like Android or iOS that much. I want to stay with Windows for both laptops and phones when I get new devices in the near future until Windows devices deteriorate in quality.

Absolutely. And I believe if Dave has read the whole buying guide of CNET that I had linked, he should have a clear idea of what tablet he would want.

 

OK thanks. I think you have point about the bigger size.

 

OK, cheers.

 

Keeping tabs on upcoming tablets

Read here.

 

I might be wrong, this is going back a year ago, Kindles were restricted to using Apps from Amazon's own app store. They had almost every app you'll find in the Google Play store, you might though get frustrated with their approved apps, is what I am saying. This was a big thing for me. You might hear about apps you'd like to try and they'll missing in their app store - that's what I found. There is a hack, to get Google Play on your Kindle ... if you're up for that sort of thing. I think it involves rooting the device - which would have implications for the guarantee.

I have a Samsung Galaxy Note 8, it has only a 1,280 x 800 resolution. boo hoo. In almost every article I have read about these the resolution is supposedly the achilles heel - because it is not HD. Well I honestly don't notice it. All I know is that it never lags. 1.6ghz quad core and 2gb of ram. Honk Honk. Slick operation and power are key! Tablets can be very frustrating.

Check out the Lenovo Yoga. 10'' or 8''. They are very easy to handle and uniquely for a tablet have a kickstand. Plus the battery life is a boasted 18 hours usage. There is a new verison of these coming out soon. Has HD screen and more power. Worth keeping an eye on.

And because there are so many Android tablets ... many differing performances ... hardware and OS ... don't rule out an Ipad. Because one thing no one can question about Ipads, all versions, is the hardware is fast enough, and the OS is slick. Finding the sweetspot with Android Tablets is harder work. The manufacturer implementation of Android & hardware power combined is often hit or miss. IMO.

 

Whats your budget? Just saying you dont want to spend a ton of money doesnt narrow it down for us. A ton of money to me will be different than to anyone in this thread.

That being said Id pick the Lenovo Thinkpad Helix.

 

You're welcome mate, that's nice to hear, and progress is good

I agree what others said about the IPS display.

If you have the possibility, then I would go into a store so you can see and touch them that way it might be easier to figure out how big or small you want your tablet to be. If you don't buy in a store, then at least you know what size to focus on when looking online and you can for example exclude the 7" tablets if you felt they were too small in the store.

 

Your tablet has a 10% higher pixel density than my $80 CY-7805 (Ampe A78/Sanei N79 clone) 7" tablet, and the display quality on my cheap tablet is excellent. So I think too much of a deal is made of screen resolution.

 

OK thanks for the advice, good food for thought.

 

I have seen a couple, including a Kindle up close. The Kindle appealed to me as I tend to read a lot & it seemed quite easy to utilise essentially with one hand.

 

Well, as I stated earlier, I didn't want to spend more than about 250 quid! (£250 Sterling). I don't know what that translates in euros. I tend to get confused if the notes don't have the Queen's head on the back.

 

Kindles are nice. What I do not like about them is that they do not allow to use external memory cards (the main reason that I do not like ipads and nexus devices).
The thing that I do not like in the android devices (both cheap and flagship devices) is that they deliver usually 1 major update and they are not supported anymore by their manufacturers.(only exception are the nexus and the google editions)

ps1. The LG gpad costs £200 at amazon.co.uk.
ps2. Whatever way you decide to go apple, amazon, google or microsoft , you should also decide what market you want to use, especially if you intend to purchase apps, games and books. Because once you spend a bit on one market, in the future you will not want to change to a different device (= different market).

Panagiotis

 

OK thanks for the advice. I shall think about this further.

 

After reading much about the Kindle Fire I'm more likely to go for an Ubuntu tablet or maybe a Google Nexus. Can Maxthon for Android be downloaded to the Nexus?

 

Yes you can install Maxthon for Android on it.

BTW what Ubuntu tablet are you talking about? I don't know of any.

 

OK thanks. I was thinking of these Ubuntu tablets. I don't know much about them though.

 

If you'd like a tablet that has USB2.0 so you can connect an external HDD, can hold a 32/64GB microSD card, can be outfitted with a BT keyboard+mouse and offers Office, you can get a first generation Surface RT 32GB at Amazon.UK for £239.99 link
It's bulky thus not the best as a light e-book reader, nor has it any rich app environment.
Some folks will argue that WinRT8.1 is meager compared to real/x86 Win8.1 and that is true. (But those same folks never complain that iOS isn't offering full Maverick functionality, lol).
As a tablet OS/'light Office use' laptop when paired with a Type-cover, it might just suit your needs, especially if you already use Windows (services).
Buying a tablet largely depends on what you'll use it for/want to be able to use it for and the software environments you're already familiar with.
If you can find one in a store near you, try one for a couple of minutes, you might be surprised

 

When are you planning to buy the tablet because it doesn't look like the Ubuntu ones are available yet.