Honestly, I’m baffled by the tablet market. Everyone puts out underpowered devices. Even Google! How can you, in good faith, justify a tablet having a slower processor and less memory than a phone while trying to advertise it as the superior device, perfect for editing and whatnot?
Wasn’t the tablet market eaten up by iPads and 2 in 1 laptops?
Tablets are worse laptops unless you’re a kid at a restaurant watching Bluey.
My next tablet is going to be an x64 or ARM device that runs straight linux. Android is dead now that they are closing the software ecosystem.
I keep looking at the Starlite, it’s recently upgraded to an N350. But every time I’m about to pull the trigger, I can’t come up with enough use case.
Thank you for bringing this to my attention! That page made it look like an Android device but when you go to configure one, it’s Ubuntu.
Last I checked, they’ll pre-install any number of distros. I just… I don’t know what I’d use it for that justified a separate device from a laptop. Maybe once I get home assistant setup in my new place, but even then… what I’m really wanting is a Linux phone that I can use on Verizon’s network. But even there, I’m tending towards moving to my cell phone sitting on the charger 95% of the time, and using kdeconnect.
Yes, the Star Lite is still probably too big for my ideal use cases, where I’m really just looking for a libre pocket-sized device.
What I really want is an Atari Portfolio or a Blackberry
I really wish Sony would come back to the US market. I’m tempted to get an older Xperia device to run Sailfish, but it would be like 4-5 years old, and it’s time on the Verizon network would be limited.
I notice that while they give stats on their processor and most other components, they don’t seem to say anything at all about the GPU
It’s on the N350, and is going to be pretty limited, though well supported in mainline.
Oh, I didn’t know what that was. Thanks.
Probably better off with a Framework 12, cheaper with a i3-1315U
That’s definitely one way I’ve been looking, the hinge makes it enough tablet for me probably. Though the Starlite is passively cooled, which I really like. Right now I just have two laptops, a Thinkpad P14s and an M1 Macbook Air running Asahi. My ideal would probably be to go back to a desktop, and then have something like a passively cooled ARM or RISC V (obviously anticipating the future on both of those) Framework 12. Or even an N350 in a passive Framework 12, like in the Starlite. This would be more of a writing/browsing/video machine for when I’m lazing around or out at a coffee shop or whatever.
Ah well, the P14s is fine for now, and RAM is too damned expensive to buy anything right now anyway.
That is what I’m looking for. A tablet that can use both for content consumption, via a full desktop browser experience, and for gaming, via steam, gog and epic. Also that can be used as a makeshift laptop on a pinch.
I’d love to be able to repurpose my old kindles. I have 3 of them that have been gifted over the years and another two that I could probably just ask for since family members have newer ones.
Ideally I just want to have a simple ebook reader and nothing else for at least two of them.
The only issue is from the (admittedly small) searching I’ve done, they aren’t easy to root or install custom roms due to the software version or how new they are. I’ll admit I don’t exactly know what I’m even looking for.
I’d rather reuse things I already have than buy a new tablet just to read books on, especially since it seems like they’re just overpriced generic crap that all looks and mostly feels the same.
IDK, I haven’t used a tablet for years now.
I have a 6.7" Phone which is great for portability and easy to read, and when I want the bigger screen I use a “real” (old fashioned) computer, either laptop or desktop.
I still prefer the desktop format of a (Linux) PC. 32" desktop monitor is great IMO, and super for gaming.
The tablet fills a hole that doesn’t exist for me anymore.For the people around me, the only people using tablets are students. It’s actually very helpful for note taking and I don’t think there are any good alternatives to the iPad unfortunately.
2in1 laptops aren’t that useful when you need to both type and draw/write
The original apple tablet was amazing for its time and then google put out something that was such a good deal for what you paid. Since only the fire sorta came close but its even more closed nature ruined it. I mean you could work around it but as you say its low powered and having to put that much effort sorta makes the cheap tablet thing meh.
This was clearly written by someone ignoring new tablets, especially from china.
My main working device is a xiaomi pad.
Their hardware is meh, particularly for the price. I consider it GrapheneOS tax.
Android tablets anyway. Has there ever been a good one?
Get an iPad, there isn’t a bad one, just less good ones. The $300 (or $330) base iPad is still better than like 95% of Android tablets, it can run Procreate, and it gives you access to the App Store. Nothing wrong with running an Android phone and an iPad. A lot of bloggers do it and recommend it, it’s a good “best of both worlds” scenario, especially if you’re into custom firmware on the Android side and tablet support is much less than it is on phones… might as well diversify at that point. Kind of like how if you’re gonna get a PC, you maybe want Windows for gaming, but for a laptop, you’d be a fool to not just get a MacBook for its performance and battery life. Laptop gaming is streaming anyway, both platforms do it just fine. And again, there really aren’t great PC laptops, and if they are, they’re hard to find.
Android was until recently an acceptable choice, while iOS has never been acceptable, no matter how “good” they make them. They are poisoned. Apple in general has always been extremely consumer-hostile and they are not trustworthy for the kind of relationship that they abusively force on their users.
I have a Samsung Tab S7 that I still use and like. It’s great for watching Plex and YouTube ReVanced, and I even use the Samsung Notes app with its S Pen. The bummer is Samsung will seemingly never update the OS on it again, so it’s stuck on Android 13. There are custom builds of LineageOS I could try, but apparently those break S Pen support.
Call me a fool, but Macbooks are 300-500 euros more than a decent windows laptop.
Has there ever been a good one?
The original nexus 7 was pretty good (for the first few years of its life)
Nope, the touchscreen was terrible. It would have been nearly a perfect device for the time. Phones were smaller, and it was a nice accessory for watching videos and playing games that were less convenient on a smaller phone with poor battery life, but… It barely registered touch inputs.
Still salty about that waste of money. The forums were just full of people complaining about it and Google tried to fix it with software, but it just didn’t work right.
Not something I noticed from several years of use. Every touchscreen I’ve used has behaved the same since they moved from resistive to capacitive!
I loved my nexus 7.
It was the first android tablet that was actually decent
What constitutes good? And what makes an iPad good? I had an iPad pro about 4 years ago and I hated it and its’ idiotic appleisms. People were paroting that iPad is the way to go back then as well and I fell for it. I switched to a Samsung Tab S7+ and couldn’t be happier. I still use it daily, it does everything I need it to do and it does it better than the iPad.
I’ve had my ipad for 6 years and still feels new. Still gets updates.
