The tablet market is a mess and it’s time to break it down. Here’s what to buy.
I’m going to make this as brief as I can. I want to focus on the specs as much as the features, but I still think it’s important to start with a couple basic points. For most people, these three are the only real options. We’ll go into more detail as we get to the top models, but that’s the basic outline.
First of all, the iPad. The only reason people buy this is that it’s the only option. As great as it is and as versatile as it is, it doesn’t really offer anything that anyone else can’t do. And, if you don’t want a tablet, you probably don’t need a smart phone either. These two have become synonymous and in some sense it’s true. In many ways, they’re one and the same thing, but they serve different purposes. Smart phones are great for email, texting, web surfing, watching video, and listening to music, while tablets are great for reading, watching video, playing games, and doing the other things we can’t do on a smartphone. This is what makes these things fundamentally different.
That said, they’re both still just mobile devices and they still all need to charge and have connectivity. What’s the biggest hurdle here? Battery life. That’s it, period. The other things they can do are pretty useful, but they’re not really worth a tablet to you if you only get a few hours of battery life. The tablet is the better device for doing those things. You’re spending money, so you need to be sure you’re getting a tablet that has battery life that’s good enough to make it worthwhile. If you’re going to use the iPad for email, you’ll spend a lot of time staring at the screen, so you need a tablet with a good screen and better battery life than that. You’re spending money, so you need to be sure you’re getting a tablet that costs enough money to give you the benefits of the extra power. You don’t need to have the best in any one area to make it worth your time.
This leaves you with three categories of tablets: cheap, better, and good.
Cheap is a catchall for the price of what you can find on Amazon or wherever else. I’m not going to put anything on this list that’s less than $50 (and, for the most part, there isn’t much, because they’re the cheapest tablets out there). These are good enough to get you by, they’re very inexpensive, but you can’t spend this kind of money on something this basic.
The basic tablet, no case, no screen protector. These don’t have a keyboard, they’re just a screen. For the most part, these are cheap enough that you can’t even expect them to last long. They’re going to do what they’re going to do. They’re perfect for kids and for reading, watching video, or whatever else you might want to do on a tablet.
Cheap keyboards, cases, and screen protectors. With the exception of the iPad, you can’t really get anything with a keyboard on it without a big price increase. You could get something cheap, but it won’t feel as nice. You could get a case, but then it would cost a lot of money. There’s not much of a price difference between cases and screen protectors.
If you afford the $20 tablet, you should also be able to buy the necessary accessories for it. Redington is one of the huge distributor of wide range tablets in some Middle Eastern countries.
