mistermumbles: So I may be in the market for a tablet. Do I need one? Nope, but every now and then I do like to indulge myself with some luxury toys. Because of that I spent probably way more time (3-4 hours) than intended comparing a bunch of models at a Best Buy yesterday. Still, with these kind of things a hands-on tryout is always a good thing. I've looked at the bigger sized and 'mini' style variants of tablets and I think the smaller ones are actually a much better fit, especially when considering actually toting one around.

Now the main thing really is whether I should go with an Android one or iPad mini Retina. Sure the Android ones offer a lot of flexibility, but in comparison iOS still provides a ridiculous breadth of products in its closed-off ecosystem. Thing is, I'm not sure I would take enough advantage of Android's flexibility for it to be a worthwhile investment. Yes, I may be curious to run some Dosbox stuff, install a browser of my own choice, and play around with some open source games, but all in all I'm not sure I'll be doing it enough for me to choose Android over iPad.

Even though the Android market is really heavily fragmented it did make for some good comparison shopping yesterday. The top contenders there for me were the Kindle Fire HDX 8.9 and Samsung Galaxy Tab Pro 8.4. Hardware wise their innards are almost exactly the same. Things I didn't like about the Kindle: oh my god it feels so fucking cheap when holding in my hands! It really does. It also kind of looks it, too. I'm also not sure whether I'm a fan of the Fire OS. Seems like sideloading apps (anything not available within Amazon's ecosystem) onto it can be a bit of a chore. It also doesn't have expandable storage unlike Samsung's offering via a microSD slot. In fact, Samsung seems to be the only tablet maker to offer that kind of feature. That said the Tab Pro felt really nice in my hands. That fake leather backing looks quite nice and it allows for a nice grip. Unfortunately, I'm not a big fan of the button placement on that particular tablet; in this case the Kindle's buttons placed on the backside of the Kindle made much more sense as well as have no possibly accidental interference from touch sensitive buttons present on the Tab Pro's front.

Now the downside on both of them seem to be middling to below average battery life on either of those tablets. Here's where the iPad mini comes into play. While considerably more powerful - despite only sporting a fraction of onboard RAM in comparison to Android tablets - it easily beats the former by at least fifty percent, and I dare say battery life is very important for devices that aren't always plugged in. In addition, I expect gaming will be a big part of my use of any tablet I may choose and iOS is likely to remain the best option where that is concerned, although Android may allow for a wealth of (sometimes not so legal) emulation that Apple won't allow on their devices for obvious reasons. Also to consider is the ever-present ridiculous Apple tax. Since the iPads don't come with an option for expandable storage if one wants more than the base 16GB Apple will happily price gouge the hell out of one's wallet. $100 for 16GB more? $200 for 48GB? Fucking ridiculous. Looking at Amazon's Kindle in comparison their upgrade prices in storage is actually reasonable.

So, yeah, it's kind of a tough decisions as none of the above would be my perfect choice, but these are pretty much the best there are at this very moment. Please feel free to chime in with your thoughts, especially from people who have/are considering a tablet purchase themselves and/or those who are tablet owners.

yyahoo: I think the general consensus is that the Nexus 7 (2013 model) is the best Android tablet. While the Amazon tablets are nice, IMHO, you really don't want to have to deal with their version of the app market. Amazon has a habit of charging for apps that are free on google play and charging more for special "kindle tablet" versions of apps that are no different than the non-kindle tablet versions available for cheaper on google play. Regarding Samsung's tablets, while I haven't looked in the past few months, my general experience is that they are overpriced for what they offer. Of course, that's also the case (again, IMHO) with anything Apple.

https://play.google.com/store/devices/details?id=nexus_7_16gb_2013

Starmaker: Android, obviously. The office where I work is full of Apple fans, 2.5 devices per person, and copying an audio file from the iPhone to a PC, or from a PC to the iPad, still takes 2-3 hours per instance. And don't even mention synchronizing contacts - synchronizing has always been a gamble, but it's nothing less than a Russian roulette when you can't fucking make backups because there's no fucking filesystem.

"Okay, forget connecting, what if I just upload the file to skydrive and download it to the iPad?
"....what do you mean iPads CANNOT DOWNLOAD FILES? This shit is basically a browsing device, a multimedia ebook, to watch video, listen to music, read layout-heavy pdfs, and comment on documents, and you're telling me it cannot download media files off the internets?"

With the iPad, you're sold a defective-by-design device and have to invest more money and more time to find ill-matching puzzle pieces to patch glaring functional void such as the lack of an accessible filesystem and everything it entails.

mistermumbles: I did take a gander at one of those, too, but ultimately I wasn't impressed by the hardware itself. *shrug* Although having just the most basic form of Android is probably a plus. The Samsung modified one isn't bad, but it did feel a bit gimmicky. There seems to be talk about a new Nexus coming out in the not so distant future, but it's rumored to be more higher-end, so the expectation is that it price will go up considerably as well.

Hm.

Mnemon: Have a look at the new Lenovo Yoga 10 HD+ tablet, maybe? That one is my current front runner of the android tablets (the HD version not the old 10 inch one!). Not the fastest processor, but has really good battery life, comes with a micro SD slot and a rather well thought through design. I.e. it's not excelling at anything, but a really good package across the board instead. And it's fairly affordable, too.

Andanzas: How about a Windows 8 tablet to play your GOG games on it?

BoxOfSnoo: To me the most important thing is battery life, and Android tablets can't seem to match my iPad Air. Loads of really good tablet-specific games.

pimpmonkey2382: Speaking of tablets, just purchased and downloaded the original robocop movie for mine. x)

mistermumbles: Just out of curiosity, what tablet do you have?