Help me choose a portable tablet (on a budget)

The Brayster

Hey Folks,

I'm currently on the market for a portable tablet (eg, Ipad, Amazon Fire, etc). The only 'tablet' I've ever owned was a kindle from... many years ago, so I'm not really familiar with a lot of the brands, pricing and features between them.

I'm interested now because I wouldn't mind having something for my train journeys and lunch breaks at work. At the same time, I don't want to break the bank - Ideally, this would be below £200, but I can make some wiggle room.

Desired features:

1) Reading, which I feel like they all allow

2) Drawing. This doesn't need to be the most complex, 'profesisonal artists best friend' level of tool, but I'd like it to be enough that I can practice some basic sketching / tracing to mindlessly do in small chunks of downtime, and save my work. This would need stylus support, I'm not really a finger-drawing kind of guy.

3) Note taking. Not super essential, but anything that allows easy note taking would be convenient.

4) Size. I'm normally carrying around a laptop bag anyway, so size in regards to portability isn't the biggest issue. If I'm drawing and/or note taking, however, a decent sized screen / resolution would be ideal.

6) Battery Life. This feels like it ought to be a concern by default, given we're talking about a portable tablet, but I'd just iterate that here anyway. More / Better use of Battery Life = Good.


So yeah, does anyone have any recommendations? Again, the biggest blocker is budget, I'm fairly easy on most other things.

localhjay

I can't speak too much on this but just to say, I bought the absolute cheapest Fire tab for work (like the 40-50 dollar one) and it runs like absolute ass. I'm assuming the higher tier ones will run better, but my experience with the fire tablets hasn't been amazing lol

The Brayster

Yeah, a lot of reviews seem to be telling me to stay away from the Amazon tablets.

Not that browsing the other options is helping me any further. A whole lot of 4-5 star reviews out there at prices I can match, then when when I look at actual reviews from people, they suddenly 180 into 'This device is poop from a butt, don't get it'.

Gilgaron

For a similar use case in that price range, I went with a 13" OLED 2 in 1 HP Spectre x360 laptop refurb from Microcenter. Cheaper than the high performance tablets tend to be and it is also a laptop. Availability is... you're dependent on what refurbs are around but I'd been keeping my eye on their page once my previous HP Spectre x2 started dying from battery bloat. Bonus is a 2 in 1 laptop is generally much more easily repaired than a tablet. Otherwise maybe a Samsung Tab A or Lenovo tablet might be had for that price?

furlion

The general consensus is that cheap tablets are awful. Slow, buggy, and overpriced. Your best bet to get something actually enjoyable to use in that price range is a used iPad or maybe Surface. We do have a general tech thread over in SE++ so you could try asking there, https://forums.penny-arcade.com/discussion/247900/newest-update-broke-the-tech-thread

Inquisitor77

It's going to be hard to find something that works for all those use cases with your budget... A good e-reader is basically half the cost right there, and you want an actual tablet that lets you do more than watch movies.

Your best bet may be to just save the money for your next phone upgrade and bump up to a bigger phone instead.

If you do enjoy reading then I would very much recommend just spending half the money on an e-reader. They are worth the cost, assuming you have the library to support using one.

MichaelLC

Foldable Chromebook?

Stay away from Amazon other than their ereaders.

I've had two different Chromebooks in the $400+ range and they're a big jump from the sub-200 ones. Still not a high quality laptop by any measure but does have advantages. Current one i have is an ASUS.

Or as Inquisitior77 said, if it's mainly reading, get a Kindle.