(Piggy-backing on the phone thread.) I’m thinking about getting a tablet for the house. Looking for suggestions on models, and whether or not to bother attaching it to a cell account.
Primarily would be for pulling up tabs and sheet music for my wife and I. I’m sure it would see other uses, but I doubt heavy use. We’ve got laptops and cell phones.
Don’t know if we want to spend to get it on a cell plan or not. I don’t know how likely it is to get used where we don’t have WiFi. Almost certainly will be used primarily around the house to pull up online tabs. If taking it out, it will probably go to other houses or maybe at coffee shops where there is usually wifi.
We are planning to get new phones and update our cell plan soon, so this might be a good opportunity to get a tablet as part of a package, but I don’t know.
I’m not opposed to Apple, but not a big fan. My experience is that they end up being more expensive and not higher quality than business-grade competition. And that Apple is terrible about expensive proprietary add-ons and making things prohibitive to repair or upgrade.
iPad is king. No one even come close for performance, especially if you are an iOS user. I snatched a 10th gen at the last Amazon day for $249 but I think now it’s $299. Such a great price.
If not the latest Amazon Fire tablet and install the Google play store would be my choice. I always buy one every year on Amazon day and buy the warranty as I have 3 young kids.
@Al1885 - I made the mistake of buying a really good (and expensive) Samsung tablet. It’s great … except for the stuff I want to do (music, video editing).
I love Samsung phones, I like Android a lot … but for a tablet there is only the iPad (with M-SoC)!
EDIT and Amazon fire really s#cks!
EDIT2 - I would not get a Bionic iPad though. They are more or less the same as the higher end Androids…
The closest competitor is Surface and they are not cheap. Forget Samsung it’s not even close. When it comes to bangs for the bucks value it’s either Amazon fire tablets or 10th generation iPad.
Pure performance at any price tablets nothing comes close to M4 iPad, nothing.
I would not use a Windows Tablet, except maybe the very newest (= expensive) generation. And I am a Windows “fan” and use a convertible laptop (laptop & tablet) for “on the road”…
But still I would prefer an M1/2/3/4 tablet over any other tablet any day!
That really s#cks!
I bought the Fire 11 max and spent 10 minutes installing the google play store. It’s far better than any Samsung I bought and tried and I paid $120 for it.
No it can’t do video or music production but as a daily driver it’s a solid performer.
In tablet form, you can get a M1 or M2 iPad Pro refurbished or used and do it all. I have all 3 iPads pros M1, M2 and M4. All of my cover video are done on the M1 iPad with Final Cut Pro iPad app. I have M2 desktop with Final Cut Pro X installed and haven’t used them since iPad version was available.
For $5 a month, you can literally edit a motion picture quality on an iPad Pro. That’s saying something. You can do the same on the music production with Logic Pro and another 5 bucks.
This is an example of my cover. Mind you, I’m a pretty slow learner when it comes to editing software and I whipped this up in no time.
The letter M designates Apple-made processors. They are SoC (system on chip) that are faster and more efficient than chips from other manufacturers that Apple has used in their products previously.
If you don’t need all that stuff, get a Samsung A9 (latest generation). It’s a great simple tablet for “daily” stuff. Also, you can expand the memory with an SD card.
For me expandable memory is must, as I always carry quite a lot of music with me.
I would not get a 64GB model … rather a 128GB, no matter if you use an SD card or not.
It’s going to spend the vast majority of its time running: UltimateGuitar, Songsterr, YouTube, and Spotify. After that, web browser and DoorDash; very likely low resource games like Crossword Puzzles and Sudoku.
Would like good enough video and audio recording abilities that I can take a raw video with a single device and share it on this forum for feedback on my playing - do not need to post glamor quality edited videos on YouTube.
Your point about the ability to upgrade storage is an important capability for me.
All this should run fine on an A9. I had an ooooooooooold model of the A10 and it was OK for exactly those tasks…
Audio will be good.
The issue with most android tablets - also Samsung - is the lack of great video recording capabilities. Video is cool on Samsung phones, and often “meh” on Samsung tablets, especially in low light settings…
You need to test this!
