Ask Tech-No-Man! Best Tablet.
Last week the mysterious Caleb anonymous said: “Yo dawg, what do you see as the best tablet on the market? The iPad is clearly the most notable, but is it the top dog?” Good question Caleb, with so many tablets on the market how do we now which to choose? Do you choose one with android, ios or something else? Then if you selected android you have about 20 more choices with different hardware and software customizations. Since there are so many different tablets and software configurations it would be impossible to tell one person who loves android get an iPad or the ios freak to covert to android-ism. Instead what I will do is list out the top 3 tablets and let you readers decide which to choose. All 16 GB wifi only with duel core processers.
Asus Eee Pad Transformer --$399+Keyboard dock $150=$550 Set 16GB wifi
To start things of we have the transformer as you can see in the table below it is the longest of all the major tablets readily available. The weight is average and so is its thickness. It’s made of plastic though but it seemed like it would be rather durable when I checked it out at Best Buy. Standard ports. (miniHDMi, microSD, headphone jack) It has a 1280×800-resolution Gorilla Glass display that looks nice from many angles and has 2 cameras 1.2MP in the front and a 5MP in the back. It seems to be a trend but all the tablets I’ve played with all have pretty low picture quality. The Transformer is no exception. The OS is Honeycomb 3.0 (should get 3.1 later this month) and has just a few tweaks to the stock android experience. No UI overlays or anything just a few added apps. So far you have a pretty standard android tablet right but lets not forget it’s name. The secret is the optional $150 Keyboard dock. Basically this converts this tablet into a sort of net-book it houses a trackpad with full multi-touch, a super nice external battery and 2 Usb 2.0 ports. Oh and the usb port actually support stuff like an external hdd or an xbox controller! Battey life is great! (Chart below) Also, It supports adobe flash 10.1.
Acer Icona A500-- $400ish 16GB wifi
If you are in the market for cheap, (who isn’t) than this is the cheapest. Specs are a bit sub par though with battery life it’s biggest shortcoming only 6:37. The upside is mainly its price and the fact that it has a built in full sized Usb port. All the other ports are the same ( sd, headphone…) Build quality does seem pretty good though. Nice aluminum back. Supports adobe flash 10.1.Other than that I can’t say much more about the tablet. It’s the average tablet made cheaper nothing special. Oh and it has a 1280x800-resolution display not bad for the price. All in all it’s not a bad tablet in any means and if average is cool this is the best. Cameras = not so great
Apple Ipad 2 $500 --- 16 GB wifi
Yes, you know we can’t do a tablet war without king apple. The Ipad has the thinnest and lightest housing and the build quality is the best of the three and frankly it would be my choise hands down, but it isn’t the specs that wooh me it’s apple’s Appstore. Personally I like Honeycomb and would love to have a transformer but the fact is that the software is what makes the device and the apple appstore has over 65,000 apps tailored for the Ipad, and iphone apps will run as well, while the android appstore is a mess. On a honeycomb device there is only about 200 apps developed for the OS and no way to tell whether apps from the older phone OS (2.2, 2.3) will run or just crash. Battery life on the ipad 2 is still top notch. Ports include: headphone jack and a dock connector. HDMI out, SD card reader optional are accessories, attach via dock connector. The screen has a 1024-by-768-pixel resolution. The ipads front and rear cameras are better than any of the competition.
Wrap up time
So what’s the best? Well for me I would have to say the ipad. In many ways I would rather have the transformer with the SD card slot and the Usb support, not to mention the keyboard dock and HDMI port, but until Google fixes the appstore experience, and gets the developers on board to start making some apps for those fancey paperweights they call tablets they are not much more than that. So in my opinion the ipad still wins, for now. I’ll leave it up to y’all to decide what you think is best.
Battery life chart, included a few other tabs for reference.
| ASUS Transformer | 8:21 13:49 with dock |
| Acer Iconia A500 | 6:37 |
| Motorola Xoom WiFi | 8:20 |
| Apple iPad 2 | 10:26 |
| Samsung Galaxy Tab | 6:09 |
Weights, dimensions, and thickness, included a few other tabs for reference.
|
| Dimensions (in.) | Thickness (in.) | Weight (lbs.) |
| ASUS Transformer | 10.67 x 6.73 | 0.51 | 1.49 |
| Acer Iconia A500 | 10.24 x 6.97 | 0.52 | 1.60 |
| Motorola Xoom WiFi | 9.80 x 6.61 | 0.51 | 1.60 |
| LG Slate | 9.56 x 5.88 | 0.49 | 1.40 |
| Apple iPad 2 | 9.50 x 7.31 | 0.34 | 1.33 |
