Tablet advice needed.

[tadka]

Need a tablet of some sorts to have on the side of my desk for monitoring share price graphs and maybe occasionally make a purchase. So nothing fancy and cheaper is better. Not Apple as they seem to be in a habit of making their devices obsolete as they get older. I just had a look a Surface 2 on eBay but a quick google told me Win RT is for a 32 bit system and discontinued. So I thought I better ask those who might know. I love Win 8.1 and currently run it on my PC so don’t mind the Surface but if it’s only 32 bit then I’m not sure that’s going to be very future proof. What would you guys suggest? Something that’s cheap but decent and can have a newer OS installed once what it has has been discontinued.

[Dave Rice]

Not going to happen. With a tablet the o/s it comes with is what it will stay with, not least because of the CPU they use i.e. Apple and Android will be ARM and Windows will be Intel.

[tadka]

I see, never paid any attention to tablets. So what’s a good cheap option? Something Android?

[Drezha]

Is it going to run an app? If it’s web based, the Amazon Fire tablets are cheap as chips. Not much grunt but works well enough. However, it’s a modified version of Android, but locked to the Amazon app store, rather than Play (unless you download APK files etc and sideload them).

"Everything looks interesting until you do it. Then you find it’s just another job" - Terry Pratchett

[Dave Rice]

A customer of mine got given a load of Huawei MediaPad T3 8″ from Vodaphone and you see lots of them on Ebay

They are very nice indeed and he uses his with a mobile sim to view PDFs of huge CAD drawings on site, zooming in and out no problem at all.

[tadka]

The Fire tables are dirt cheap. But the app unavailability will be a problem. Might have to go with the MediaPad. I’ll sleep on it for a few days.

[The Duke]

My girl had a huawei media pad M3 light 8″. Cost me £180 last Xmas, and it’s brilliant. Some amazing sound too.

My wife’s had 2 huawei phones (P9 and P20) and I’ve had 2 (nexus 6P and P20 Pro), they make great kit.

So if you can get a M3 light for a good price I’d recomend it.the non lite version I think is 10″ if you want a bit more real estate.

Though unless your buying a new device, for a big brand, Samsung, Huawei, HTC you’ll get two years worth of os updates, (but still security patches ad they come from Google) or an ipad you’ll get a good few years is support.

But if you buy a cheaper one, even form the names avive (minus apple) you’ll likely just goer the Google security patches. But that doesn’t make them unusable.

I have a bunch of kindle fire cheapo tablets, you can side load the play store in that. But as Chris said, they are not great, but fine for webpages or data viewing apps, and a mini TV. But your not going to do any heavy lifting with one, and tbh the res is not great so if your wanting to view read a lot of data off one, I’d probably say pass on them.

As go windows tablets, u think you need Atleast the surface 4, I’m sure that’s the one that gor good reviews, all before it was bug riddled and I never seem any good press off anyone that actually used one for more than reviewing one (hope that makes sense). Basically anyone that used one for any period of time soon realised they was poor. So 4 is decent, but relativly expensive and tbh a bit pointless. I don’t get really get them.

 

[blacklion1725]

The Duke wrote:

My girl had a huawei media pad M3 light 8″. Cost me £180 last Xmas, and it’s brilliant. Some amazing sound too. My wife’s had 2 huawei phones (P9 and P20) and I’ve had 2 (nexus 6P and P20 Pro), they make great kit. So if you can get a M3 light for a good price I’d recomend it.the non lite version I think is 10″ if you want a bit more real estate. Though unless your buying a new device, for a big brand, Samsung, Huawei, HTC you’ll get two years worth of os updates, (but still security patches ad they come from Google) or an ipad you’ll get a good few years is support. But if you buy a cheaper one, even form the names avive (minus apple) you’ll likely just goer the Google security patches. But that doesn’t make them unusable. I have a bunch of kindle fire cheapo tablets, you can side load the play store in that. But as Chris said, they are not great, but fine for webpages or data viewing apps, and a mini TV. But your not going to do any heavy lifting with one, and tbh the res is not great so if your wanting to view read a lot of data off one, I’d probably say pass on them. As go windows tablets, u think you need Atleast the surface 4, I’m sure that’s the one that gor good reviews, all before it was bug riddled and I never seem any good press off anyone that actually used one for more than reviewing one (hope that makes sense). Basically anyone that used one for any period of time soon realised they was poor. So 4 is decent, but relativly expensive and tbh a bit pointless. I don’t get really get them.

 

Just bought the same one from Argos yesterday -£140 – agreed Duke – very nice bit of kit.

[The Duke]

Very nice. But like everything, whack the Google now launcher on it, for a quick and dirty more stock look,and it adds back in the app draw which hauwei stock launcher takes away,to look more ios. Or like I do on the my phone use nova launcher, and the pixel icon pack (youtube it) and set up to look very stock indeed. Takes about 20mins.

 

[Ed P]

Unless Amazon have played ‘sneaky’ with new Fires it is pretty easy to get the Google Play Store onto a Fire. Example link.

[blacklion1725]

The Duke wrote:

Very nice. But like everything, whack the Google now launcher on it, for a quick and dirty more stock look,and it adds back in the app draw which hauwei stock launcher takes away,to look more ios. Or like I do on the my phone use nova launcher, and the pixel icon pack (youtube it) and set up to look very stock indeed. Takes about 20mins.

Duke on mine (Android 7) there is an option in Settings to bring back the more traditional app drawer/laucher – and with that in place haven’t felt the need to change it, you can add re-namable folders on the home page and get rid of what you don’t want, and customise the launcher tray with the app drawer in the middle. I’m a Nova fan and have it on my phone, but haven’t felt the need for it (yet) on this tablet. BTW know what you mean about ios – opening “settings” looks almost identical to my work ipad.

[The Duke]

Tbh I’ve not even used the girls for a few months, and on my phone, you can re add the app draw too, so probably could for her tablet. I just never put the two together. Lol

 

It’s a cracker of a tablet. I was amazed by the sound. And it’s powerful enough for everything my girl throws at it. Well I’ve jid no complaints off her, and she speds at least an hour every night on it before bed.

[Ed P]

Just to throw in an out-of-the-box idea, take a look at AndyOS and run it in a PC window. My wife uses a different Android Oreo VM to run ScratchJr on her PC ( a full keyboard is the big plus) and teach the grandchildren introductory programming.

[edit] Beware – AndyOs uses VMWare Player 14, which can screw up any vms you have on other vmware releases! If you have other vms then use the Oreo link.

[Mark Turner]

We have 3 of these https://www.argos.co.uk/product/6779469 these are good tablets for the price have been faultless compered to the acer ones they replaced

[Author]

Posts