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Tablets of 2011: What to Look For

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On March 3, 2011, 1:28 AM

Last year promised to be the year of the tablet, and at least for Apple, it was indeed. The nearly ubiquitous iPad managed not only to outsell every other tablet on the market by a wide margin, it also exceeded Mac sales in the last quarter. But even if Apple is not likely to lose its throne anytime soon, competition is finally making itself present. If Android's gains in the smartphone market serve any indication it should be an interesting year for tablets as well.

We've compiled a comparative table with what we consider are the hottest tablets either currently available or announced so far. Rivals such as Motorola and LG are coming on strong with the first Android "Honeycomb" tablets, while Research In Motion is launching the PlayBook using a completely reworked operating system based on QNX Neutrino. HP will start to see the fruits of its Palm acquisition when it launches the TouchPad, the first webOS-based tablet, this summer.


We'll update this guide as new tablets that catch our attention are announced and approaching their release, but if you are in the market for a tablet now this should definitely serve as a starting point for narrowing down your purchase.

Read the complete guide.

User Comments: 33

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  1. Price going to cause others to go for Gome Flytouch 1 Epads, Maylong M150, PanImage, CVS Tablet Special an etc. Other choices are eLocity A7, A10 or CobyUSA Kryos MID7026 or MID7015 both with HDMI and one has Camera if you need it. Of course those that I just mentioned don't have tablet OS. Xoom is the first one with tablet OS. What's going to happen with Quad or 12-core versions coming out but that won't be until 2015? Right now here you have it Android or Apple. Which one? Windows 8 is being pushed as a Tablet supported OS using Apple iPad like GUI but that not going to appear at the estimated projected date of 2012. So for now we have the above to use. Still printing is an issue if you must print you can create PDF and save on the trees which I do on all platforms.

  2. Guest said:

    You kind of forgot to mention number of cores on each product.

    Comparing A4 to A9 and saying "1GHz", clearly biased.

    Wow....just wow. The apple CPU is called the A4. It uses an ARM cortex A8 core. Do your research before posting.

  3. i went to best buy there was a zoom at $800 and an ipad at $500. nothing else to look at.

    last month and every month before that for the last year there was just the ipad. galaxy missed my best buy store? toshiba tablets never showed up? perhaps i need to buy online without having ever touched the product? i keep hearing there are all these tablets to choose from but where are they? i just picked up the friken ipad as i am tired of waiting. if i wanted that i could have had it a year ago, i dont want an ipad but how much longer should i wait before there is one to compare or how much longer before there are 3-4 i can touch and compare? i will head back around xmass hope to find a selection then.

  4. I may be missing something, why does your chart not display the battery life (at least the manufacturer buttered-up reported life) ?

  5. Early iPad 2 benchmarks: CPU performance remains mostly unchanged

    [link]

  6. What to look for.. nothing. I'll stick with my desktop, laptop and 4.3inch screen smartphone thanks.

  7. Ipad 2 has 512MB of RAM. Just google, "ipad 2 ram 512mb" for proof.

    No wonder they won't publicly reveal how much RAM it has, cause it's only half of what the other tablets have!!

  8. very nice article keep up the good work

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