Tablet Buying Guide 2021: An Ever Evolving and Affordable Form of Computing

Wish I could post a pic of the pallets of chromebooks our school system bought for the town schools. My second job is being a maintenance worker and we they have the top end line of chromebooks for distance learning.

Also yes that dude always brags and for every story on this site he is one of the first to comment, but I do like/agree with most of his comments lol.

My business is "office products"...the amount of tablets/chromebooks we sell is just nuts!
Not to mention 70" message boards, which are replacing chalkboards/whiteboards.
But, schools aren't getting enough money.
Kids don't know how to write, can't spell etc without "googling" it.
 
As always what you want to do with a computer defines whether it is good for you or not. For me a tablet is always a consumption device, I never 'create' on tiny screens. I don't need GSM only WiFi, and mainly need to browse the web for information, view movies (stream or on memory stick) and read books. My Samsung A5 does great for all those things and costs less than a quarter of what friends paid for their ipads. Most don't do any more than I do with their expensive tablets.
Of course some friends use ipad pro for music and other performance needs and they are the best for those tasks.
 
Used desktop computers for most of my life since Radio Shacks' Tandy TRS-80. Didn't get my first laptop until 2013.
 
I did end up buying an ewriter in the end, I got the Supernote A5X. I'm actually really happy with it.
I've been following what is going on in this area and so far it amounts to not a lot. Sony are about to re-enter the field with some new devices including a colour screen model. Their e-readers were good and are still sought after second hand. As they do have more expertise than the Chinese companies it's going to be interesting to see how they push things forward. Sony are reportedly at the stage of looking for manufacturers to produce the necessary hardware. The existing devices are expensive and not great so there is an opening for Sony who also like to charge premium prices but can develop a quality product.
 
I use tablets very much, Samsung is great but for the price go Lenovo. I hate Apple because the apps stink; Android is much more and better.

A friend has Amazon Fire and loves it, but I did not try one.
 
The problem is that e-ink displays are still a weak point so when an android device features one it isn't up to doing much else. With lcd screens there is a great choice of devices.
 
I've been following what is going on in this area and so far it amounts to not a lot. Sony are about to re-enter the field with some new devices including a colour screen model. Their e-readers were good and are still sought after second hand. As they do have more expertise than the Chinese companies it's going to be interesting to see how they push things forward. Sony are reportedly at the stage of looking for manufacturers to produce the necessary hardware. The existing devices are expensive and not great so there is an opening for Sony who also like to charge premium prices but can develop a quality product.
I think if you were to look to anyone to change the playing field then Kindle would probably be the obvious choice. For writing I like the 13" format of my A5X, features are fairly decent and the quality is very good but the price is more than I wanted to pay. If Kindle could produce a 13" format ewriter, provide a good PDF reading experience, a list management app for scribbled lists and perhaps a simple diagram/drawing tool and do this for an acceptable price then I'm in. Kobo has produced an ewriter but it isn't that different to my A5X. Whispernet would be great. Allowing for 3rd party apps would be interesting too. In all honesty I'm not bothered by colour as I'm using my device to take the place of dozens of notepads and 1000's of sheets of scribbled paper. Obviously YMMV.
 
Amazon and Kobo would probably respond quickly if something interesting emerged to challenge them Let's hope it does.
 
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My business is "office products"...the amount of tablets/chromebooks we sell is just nuts!
Not to mention 70" message boards, which are replacing chalkboards/whiteboards.
But, schools aren't getting enough money.
Kids don't know how to write, can't spell etc without "googling" it.

It blows my mind how the schools spend money. The main office workers have racing leather chairs and from the amount they spent around $4K if not more. They all leave their pc's on and monitors and I had a few that didn't like the idea so matter what even weekends THEY HAVE STAY ON!

Good news is that the schools do care a lot with cleaning spray spraying literally everything since the virus out break. They look like water guns and you gotta mix the chemicals. It ruins LCD/LED screens and spoke about it but they don't care lol! Spend spend spend.
 
I use tablets very much, Samsung is great but for the price go Lenovo. I hate Apple because the apps stink; Android is much more and better.

A friend has Amazon Fire and loves it, but I did not try one.

Same here most of the new stuff is Lenovo. I forgot my estimate but Lenovo won the contract for our schools. About $500K-$800K our school spent on them months back.
 
Seriously? "On paper, Samsung's device is more than a match for the iPad Pros, partly thanks to its 12.4-inch (2800 x 1752, 266ppi) 120Hz, 16:10 display". Properly comparing to the 12.9 iPad Pro "2732-by-2048-pixel resolution at 264 pixels per inch (ppi)", how does the Samsung beat the iPad Pro? seems the other way around, unless you want to directly compare two different size models, but that makes no sense.

Super AMOLED screens are still subject to color drift and burn in, or did they fix it. worth discussing

I have yet to see burn-in on an OLED panel, and I had at least 15 devices with OLED (3 TVs, 2 tablets and 10+ phones) so far. I think the risk is insanely low and LCD has more issues than this anyway (crappy backlight, smearing, halo effect, corner glow, bad uniformity, changing colors when backlight ages, can't do proper black and HDR, low contrast and I could go on)

There's a reason why OLED pretty much replaced LCD in high end stuff by now. LCD is entry to mid-end - PC monitors are 5 years behind on image quality compared to TVs, phones and tablets but atleast we still have speed / refresh rate, however 120 Hz on OLED is closer to 150-160 Hz LCD in terms of smoothness and pixel transitioning.
 
Imho the fold3 should be on this list, sure it's silly expensive but it is a small very powerful tablet....and phone that can just fold up and go in your pocket.

my issue with tablets was I always had a top notch phone so getting a tablet seemed pointless, but a tablet gives you a bigger screen yet its annoying to carry anywhere and needs wifi, my fold solved all that.
 
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