Best tablet?
 

With the release of the first tablet to run NVidia's Tegra 3 CPU (Transformer Prime) I am serious considering the moving from my personnal 11" netbook (I also carry a big desktop replacement laptop for work) to a tablet however there are so many of them that it is tough to chose so I would welcome some comments from current users.

I'm not a big fan of Apple's closed architecture (work already supplies me with an Iphone) so while I'm not discounting the Ipad2 just yet, it is definitely not at the front of the pack. This being said, it has a massive amount of application available and 10h battery life.... It is also pricy compared to the Android based alternatives...

A lot of the old Tegra 2 based Android tablets have now become very affordable but I am a bit worried at buying into last's year technology and their battery autonomy doesnt seem that great. I'm also wondering whether you can find as much application choice (games, productivity, travel, etc...) in the Android market than you can in Apple's.

The Transformer Prime would be the obvious choice however it is kind of pricey and it is impossible to find one in the city to try it before buying it. It has also been getting mixed review online, from great to terrible due to GPS and wifi issues which seem to plague certain but not all units. One of the clerks at a large computer store also mentionned a rumor according to which the Prime was being discountinued and being replaced by the recently announced TF700 which will be released.... in April... Not sure how much truth there is to that.

I intent to use the device for games, reading books, web and email as well as watching movies. Basically I am looking for an all around computing device with extended battery life; kinda life my current personnal laptop but more lightweight and in tablet form factor.

Which one should I be getting? Or should I keep my mini laptop a bit longer and wait yet again for another generation of tablet? Its technically doing all that I need but its short on battery life a bit (4-6 hours) a bit bulky compared to a tablet.

Max

There are two milestones in the near future.

The Macworld iWorld, which apple does not participates but speculation of some unofficial official announcement (well Apple is like that :) / Jan 26th) and the World Mobile Congress (Late Feb 28ish~3/1 IIRC).

Therefore I would personally not chose to purchase anything at this time.

With that said, now-a-days tablets are pretty cheap (compared to what laptops costed only several years ago), so if you need one, go for one.

OP, games are the wild-card -- some tablets support some better than others. I'm not a gamer, so I can offer no guidance. For everything else you've mentioned, virtually any Android tablet would work just fine. Get something with 32gb of memory (so you can store a library of movies), and a dual-core CPU will help with both movies and games. I have a couple of HP Touchpads that are ported to cyanogenmod Android, and they're perfect for this.

Yes, better wait to hear what might be coming next...

The iPad 3 is coming out very soon. Wait for it, it is the most functional tablet with many more apps available for it than for any other platform.

Tegra 3 GPU is weak -- strange coming from NVidia.

iPad2 still beats Tegra 3 in some graphics benchmarks.

The rumored Transformer Prime in April is expected to have 1920x1080 resolution.

iPad 3 is expected to have even higher resolution. But Samsung is going to come out with something like a 2500x1600 screen.

If you really want to play games, iPad has better support than any Android tablet.

Quite frankly I'm not too sure about the game part anymore.

In truth what I am more preoccupied is to make sure that the tablet I choose will have enough horsepower. For example, I would hate to have to re-encode hi resolution movies (say 720p) to a lower resolution just so that the device can read them. Would any Android tablet be able to do that problem free?

As for screen resolution, I am not overly preoccupied by that as the existing Android tablet's I've seen (Iconia tab for example) seem to have more than ample resolution for reading ebooks or watching movies.

If I were to go with the current crop of Tegra 2 based Android tablets, which would be the best one?

Lastly, what about the Playbook? RIM is selling them for dirt cheap now and I hear that the new OS has fixed many of the problems (Android app compatibility and email client for instance).

Thanks for the feedback!

Max

I've used the iPad 1, iPad 2, Samsung Galaxy Tab 7" (2010?), Samsung Galaxy 9" (November 2011) for long periods of time.

The iPad is probably still my recommended tablet. The screen size, speed, display, etc. I only use tablets for reading newspapers, websites, fb, twitter, and various apps (i.e. no gaming) and I find it better then the Samsung Galaxy Tabs.

The nice thing re: Galaxy Tab is you can fit it in your jacket pocket since they are quite a bit smaller then the iPad.

You might wait until after a (potential) iPad 3 announcement, if only that the price of older tablets may go down. If you're simply holding off until something better comes out, there always is something better out soon.

I just got a Toshiba Thrive from a woot.com deal (32GB for $320). I'm pretty happy with it.

For me a tablet needs to have WiFi, 3G , SD card slot and good speed ,
I am not a gamer , just email , web surfing , streaming video and playing movies from the memory (or SD card)
an IPad has most of these and you can get an adapter for the SD card (not sure how it works)

I have a 32gb HP Touchpad that I have not used mostly because of no 3G connection ,

But right now I am looking for a used iPad 2 with 3G,

Anything else I should look at in the $300 range ?

RB

For travel, nothing beats the Transformer Prime with its dock.

Personally, whatever I choose (tablet, phone, whatever), I make sure there's an upgrade path.

And, for the long-term, it seems any tablet that can have its bootloader unlocked and be rooted is a sure bet as the Custom ROMs can be used.

I haven't checked recently, but that leaves out the iPad, BB Playbook, Moto Xoom, and a few others.

I've played with the Xoom and playbook, both failures in my mind. iPad has developers and apps which make it work. has 3G built in and 64GB storage enough with services like dropbox, etc available.

Samsung Galaxy note. Small but fantastic for watching movies, does everything and is a world phone and gets Russian gps birds, and the battery lasts forever. I could and, and, and forever. This is the best do it all device available today.

I guess it is all about what you are going to do with it
 

The majority of the Apps available for Ipad or Droid hold no interest to me. What I was looking for was a tablet that could allow me to do many of the things I currently use my notebook for. Things that were important to to me were as follows:
Software Side of things
Ability to use MS office file directly without conversion, preferably with software to do this already supplied not a additional purchase. But more specifically Excel PowerPoint and Word. Including the ability to update these documents.
Ability to interface with MS Exchange and RSA key management.
Ability to view any website in the world without issue.
Hardware side of things
USB port to expand storage options both connecting as a Hard Drive to a PC and being able to read a memory stick as a Hard Drive
SD and micro-SD card slots (like to keep my options open)
Blue tooth
Excellent Battery life
HDMI output
and of course wireless

As most can tell you the Ipad can do most of these things naively and they have developed workarounds for others. And the exchange interface with the Ipad is excellent. But as you can see there are some non-starters on this list also.
So which PAD did I choose the Lenovo Thinkpad Tablet, and trust me when I say it is not a less expensive alternative to the Ipad. If you are looking to save money this unit should not be on your list.
Therefore the answer is find out what things mean the most to you and base your decision on that.