The One 'Do I Buy This', 'What Do I Buy', 'I'm Looking For' Thread

[Traveller]

Being an assignments board, is ease of visibility a factor here? You can get tablets up to 10.1" in screen size, though only tablets with screens smaller than 10" can actually edit files in mobile Excel. If however ease of visibility is a factor, for example if multiple people need to view the same data at the same time, a tablet may not be best here. Instead, buy a Chromecast from Google - and an inexpensive TV if you need one - to display on the TV the spreadsheet, using Microsoft Excel Mobile.

 

[snow jhon]

i would try recommending Cube iwork10 ultimate 10.1"
it get an intel atom processor, and a big screen, also dual boot windows and android, and the ram is quite big, 4gb ram with 64gb internal storage.

 

[Emma Francis]

Evening all,

I need some help choosing a 'for now' tablet.

Long term I will be getting a surface pro or a high spec 2in1, but that won't be until next year when I am looking to start the new business.

So, for now, I am looking for a budget tablet, with a larger screen, that will do a half decent job. I am not expecting the performance of a high end tablet, but don't want something juddery or that I have to wait to load up a page for five minutes.

I have seen recommendations for Fire HD 10, Lenovo M10, Huawei MediaPad T5 and others and am super open to you guys as the experts!!

I will be using it for surfing, streaming on the odd occasion, but not so worried about sound as I have portable Bluetooth speakers. I would also like to be able to scribble on it with a non linked stylus (for notes / thoughts etc).

I would be open to a refurbished option or older model if it would be better for me.

Your thoughts and opinions would be gratefully received.

I have already read / watched a few reviews, been on Which, but now looking to the experts and trialers out there

Thank you,
Emma

 

[yanksno1]

Hi all, just found this great community!

I'm also looking for a new tablet. My current Samsung Galaxy Tab A 10.1 (2016) is really starting to feel sluggish at times. I also have a light bleeding problem in the top right corner issue that's visible when watching videos. If I'm doing other things, I don't see it. I mainly use this to check feeds on in the morning which is the main thing that's gotten sluggish on. I also then use it to keep tabs on games I'm "paying attention to" and watch videos on when I'm traveling. I just tried a Amazon Fire HD 8 Plus tablet which I ended up not liking and is going back. I also noticed it was a def step down (in size, but still doable) from the 10.1 I have now.

So now I'm looking at different options. I see the Samsung Galaxy Tab A 10.1 (2019) 32GB on sale at Best Buy for right now at $170. That's really enticing. But the 2GB of RAM scare me haha (esp since it's the same on my current one). Would that be enough for the tasks that I do? I do see they have the 128GB which has 3GB of RAM for $250. I haven't really been keeping tabs on these deals, is that a good price for the 128GB? I then also see they have a Galaxy Tab A 8.4 (2020) for $255 with AT&T. Is a Wifi only option coming soon? The specs on that look pretty good and should be enough for me.

Are there any other tablets I should be looking at?

 

[TechnoMax]

Finally I want to try to go wireless with my music (512 GB microSD card). At least partly. I do not want to have another Bluetooth headphone (I have some on ear and IEMs) but this time I want to try a Bluetooth receiver to feed my wired IEMs or over ear headphones. My favourite so far is the Shanling UP4 as it has a dedicated volume wheel and supports better Bluetooth codecs als LDAC and LHDC / HWA.

I read a few times that since Android 8.0 every device has LDAC support and some even LHDC. No, this is not true, at least for me:
Neither my Huawei Mate 10 that was billed as the first to support LHDC does offer this for me nor my Samsung tablet S6 which only has SBC! (I enabled developer options on all my Android devices.) The best device I have regarding Bluetooth is my newly bought backup smartphone, a super cheap Xiaomi Poco M3: This has every better codec activated, aptX HD, LDAC and LHDC. But i like to have a nice "big" screen of 10 inch or so for decent album art and therefore I am searching for a tablet with LTE as the only device to take on a ride to the park.

Is there a decent modern tablet (that supports 512 GB microSD cards ) that actually supports these codecs? (Perhaps the Huawei MediaPad M5? The faster Huawei MatePad Pro has LHDC but accepts only the proprietary smaller NM cards)

 

[TechnoMax]

I finally had success: After Chris advised buying the Lenovo P11 Pro directly from China as XiaoXin Pad Pro I bought one for online reading. After two weeks it arrived.

And to my surprise it has all current Bluetooth-Audio-Codecs: SBC, AAC, aptX, aptX HD, aptX Adaptive-Audio, aptX TWS+Audio, LDAC. And it connected without any problems to my Sony Blueetooth headphone mit LDAC. Stable connection in all rooms of our flat. The only feature it is missing is LTE. But for music listening from the SD card with a big screen for the covers in good wireless quality this is perfect.

 

[jolinemelina]

Why need a tablet else you can have a portable mobile phone and a laptop and sync all your data.Tablets are over rated many phones out there with better performance

 

[TechnoMax]

It may astonish you, but i *have* several smartphones, I *have* several notebooks and I have several cloud accounts. And I even have several good sounding Digital Audio Players that could even play DSD if I cared for, which i do not. But a smartphone has a very tiny display compared to anything else. And to find one that accepts big SD cards, has NFC for paying in the shops these days and has Bluetooth-Audio-Codecs as aptX HD and LDAC is not easy. At the start I wanted to stick to Windows, that I know for decades now and where there are far better programs or "aps" than from the Android camp. I even rebought an iPad for a short time and did not like the handling, I never did. And finally I sold my Windows tablets as they simply are to heavy for on the road usage.

 

[Traveller]

It may astonish you, but i *have* several smartphones, I *have* several notebooks and I have several cloud accounts. And I even have several good sounding Digital Audio Players that could even play DSD if I cared for, which i do not. But a smartphone has a very tiny display compared to anything else. And to find one that accepts big SD cards, has NFC for paying in the shops these days and has Bluetooth-Audio-Codecs as aptX HD and LDAC is not easy. At the start I wanted to stick to Windows, that I know for decades now and where there are far better programs or "aps" than from the Android camp. I even rebought an iPad for a short time and did not like the handling, I never did. And finally I sold my Windows tablets as they simply are to heavy for on the road usage.

It doesn't surprise me. I have half a dozen smartphones of my own, but I don't often use them for media playback as their DACs simply aren't great, not to mention in a lot of cases needing a dongle just to plug in a headset if not using bluetooth. Instead I use an audiophile-grade - though still entry level - DAP.

For me, a DAP is a better option for music playback than a smartphone or tablet, but my requirements are not yours and there is absolutely nothing wrong with what you're doing. There are specific reasons as to why people want tablets. In your case, you want it for audio but also want to see the album art. Totally understandable, especially if you are a fan of album art. In my case, it's for media consumption when I don't want to be sitting at my computer, though more often than not you'll find me playing pinball on it, which is something that is painful to do on a 6" screen with a 21:9 ratio.

While @jolinemelina is correct that most smartphones have better performance than a tablet, there are specific uses for a tablet that a smartphone may not adequately cover. For this person to say "why use a tablet when a smartphone is better" shows a complete lack of understanding of what this site is about.

 

[TechnoMax]

While it is true as an average rule, that smartphone DACs are not very good, there are a few better devices: For years now I have used LG phones. The last one was a G5, the last better phone with replacable battery. LG even offered a somewhat better add on dac branded B&O (ES9028C2M + Sabre9602C) to be attached to the phone.
Dongles are not that bad either. At least when using cabled headphones. I have several and some of them have a dedicated volume control albeit no wheels but buttons.
The best device for musical playback depends on the location for me: At home I mostly listen literally at my desk with a DAC plus an amp (which I really do not need as my headphones are easy to drive. The worst was a TinFi P1 which was unusable for me without decent amplification.) Sometimes in a chair where I must use a portable device, I hate that long cables across a room. But even then I mostly read parallel to my music consumption. Which leads to a tablet, practically never to a notebook as the device used for music. Outdoors I gave up on listening to music in the subway or on a bus. Even with ANC this does quality music no good. But in a park where it is silent (despite the spring birds and a few dogs of course) it is perfect for concentrated music listening. Either with a DAP or with a phone as a USB transport and a portable DAC/Amp. Or with Bluetooth without cables. Yesterday I tested my devices and could listen per LDAC even in a distance of some 20 m from our bench!
Better or newer smartphones are not only faster than tablets (they are dying away anyway, I am afraid, at least with Android) but have a far better performance than entry or mid level DAPs: My DX160 has benchmark results of 105/430. My current phone, an older Mate 10 of 360/1580 and my Samsung S6 tablet 710/2530. Even my new cheapy backup smartphone, a Xiaomi Poco M3, has 310/1365!

 

[Traveller]

Oh I know, and with apps like Viper4Android it's possible to improve the sound quality of the average DAC in a smartphone. As for the G5, I'm well aware of the B&O DAC; it was a difficult add-on to get for the G5 as it was only available in limited numbers, and for the most part was only available in Europe. I won't get into the issues LG had with the G5; there is a reason that the media tend to view the G5 rather poorly, and a lot of that has to do with the modules and their pricing.

Android tablets have been dying for years now, and yet people still buy them because for certain use cases they are better. For true productivity however, they haven't got a chance against a Surface tablet. The Pixel C proved that.

 

[Socal2]

I have a MS Surface Book, Samsung Note 10, and a Samsung S6 tablet, and find them all very useful in their own way and purpose.

Sent from my SM-N970U using Tapatalk

 

[nikgare]

I'm looking for a replacement for an old galaxy tab s. It's for my mother who is partially sighted, and uses 2 accessablity options. She uses triple tap to zoom the screen, and she pushes the physical button to invert colours. She needs only these 2 accessablity options, but she needs them at the same time.
All the modern tablets that I've seen, can do one or the other, but not both at the same time, and not without an extra step of clicking the accessibility icon to choose what she wants.
Are there any relatively modern android tablets that allow these 2 options to be easily selected and selected at the same time?
Thanks in advance for any suggestions

 

[Timothy Love]

I think battery life is key.