What to buy - Tablet, Kindle Type Thingy...

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Harrison said:
The problem with the iPad Mini is that it's dated technology. It's completely based on the aging iPad 2, right down to the same 1024 x 768 resolution, which for a 7.9" screen is lower than the smaller 7" screens of the Nexus 7 and Kindle Fire. I would say it's about the same quality/dpi as an iPhone 3GS.

You can see Apple philosophy in doing that though. So many Apps already exist designed specifically for the iPad 2 spec, so they will all run perfectly on the Mini, without the embarrassing black bars that have plagued the iPhone 5.

The other issue is that if you believe the current rumours, and in traditional Apple style, it is about to be superseded by the Mini 2 as early as next month!

As for price, even the cheapest Mini is still £269. The cheapest Nexus 7 is £159, and even the top spec one is only £199.

Finally we come to the Nexus 10. For just £319 (just £50 more than the iPad Mini) this is a lot of tablet for your money. With a 10" screen sporting a higher resolution than even the iPad 4's retina display. If I were buying a tablet mainly for magazine PDF reading then I would definitely go for the Nexus 10.
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I hear you, but that's not quite true. The display is not exactly the same as the iPad 2 - it's nearly 3" smaller. The same resolution yes, but 1024x768 on a 7" screen is more than enough. That's far more pixels per inch than you get on a 1080p LCD monitor for example. Not as high as the other devices you mention perhaps, but that doesn't exactly make it bad. It is considerably clearer than the iPhone 3GS, I used to have one.

I understand why we now have high resolution screens on tiny phones, I myself have an iPhone 5 and the high resolution screen means I can read small text. But a phone is something you hold close to your face - a laptop, tablet and desktop computer are not. IMO 'retina' displays on anything other than a phone are completely pointless. Your eyes shouldn't be close enough to any of those screens to see the pixels. Get some glasses if you need them :)

I think you're confused about the iPhone 5 'black bars', they are there due to a change in aspect ratio, not resolution. The aspect ratio of tablet screens is unlikely to change any time soon even if the resolution does.

Also there is more to value for money than the purchase price. For example, the iPad 1, nearly 3 years old, still sells for over £150 on eBay. Most of the devices you mention are worth less than that the minute you take them out of the packaging, and are practically worthless within a year. Like Apple's retail prices or not, their products hold their value better than anything else. I could happily sell my iPad Mini for almost as much as I paid for it next month and buy the 'new' one if I really wanted to (and it materialises.) In fact I could probably sell it for more than the retail price - there is currently a 2 week waiting list for them from the Apple store.
 
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@ edd_jedi

:thumbsup:

Its nice to have some logic put forward in the discussion and i agree with you entirely :)

Peter what are you deciding for in the end?

I can see the arguement that some of the cheaper tablets offer value for money but then again a Kia may offer value for money - it doesn't mean you want one or that it holds its value come resale time.
 
There are definitely pros and cons to all tablets and I agree with a lot of the comments in general. I just see a lot of people branding people that buy Apple products as mindless idiots that only buy things because they look pretty or an advert tells them to, which isn't necessarily the case.
 
I have really enjoyed reading the comments, thanks to everyone for taking the time to share their opinions.

It is looking like the Nexus 10 is a strong candidate for what I want to do.

The only thing with all these devices is that they don't seem to offer very large storage space. I will have to investigate what sort of options each offer as far as offering USB, SD card etc. connectivity....

I will have to now research the Nexus 10 a bit more deeply I think.
 
For reading material both 16GB and 32GB will last a long time ;)
 
Peter said:
The only thing with all these devices is that they don't seem to offer very large storage space. I will have to investigate what sort of options each offer as far as offering USB, SD card etc. connectivity....

I will have to now research the Nexus 10 a bit more deeply I think.
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Don't forget that many cloud storage services are compatible with tablets. Google drive, Dropbox, iCloud etc.
 
Peter said:
The only thing with all these devices is that they don't seem to offer very large storage space. I will have to investigate what sort of options each offer as far as offering USB, SD card etc. connectivity.....
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I thought so myself, so i bought a 32gb one. After two years I'm using at least one... So my phone is now a 16gb which was the smallest avail. Unless you plan filling with movies and music, size don't matter.
 
The reason some of the main manufacturers are moving away from masses of built in storage, or card slots, is because we are getting to a point where they are not needed.

Until recently you needed to store everything you wanted to watch, listen or read with you. Now you can store it in one of the many cloud services, or stream it from services, or servers running from your main computer. But they still have enough storage for when you do really need something locally.

I've got a 16GB Nexus 7 and it is only using about 25% of that space, including installed apps, because I hardly store anything on it. All of my music is streamed from Spotify or from my home server over the internet to the tablet using Subsonic. For video I also stream it. Either using Sky Go or CatchupTV app, or from my server. And for books and other files I use Dropbox.
 
I guess I need to drag myself into the 21st Century - I come from an era where everything was backed up (twice) and I kept hard copies of everything - I still live in fear of the whole of the Internet just suddenly closing one day. I need to think of this device as a "different" type of computer that has no real need to be jam packed full of stuff if it's all on-line...
 
I love having my files on Dropbox. Now I can access my most important files from any device, and I'm not "device anchored" anymore. And once I've lost a device and after I'm done mourning the device, I'm not worried about lost data as the important stuff was on Dropbox or in other cloud services.

Now, if mega corporations never turn evil, then I'm in eternal bliss and never need to worry. :-)
 
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