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HamburgerTownUSA
Aug 7, 2022

neogeo0823 posted:

What if I don't want an iPad though?

Hello, thread. My wife is looking for a tablet for her business needs. Shes rents out a space doing aesthetics and nails, and wants something that'll be inexpensive and workable for that. She plans to use it for basic internet/email/website functionality, basic business stuff like tracking finances, taking and posting photos of her work on the various socials, and as a "nice to have" sorta thing, if she can do some basic drawing/design work on it, then cool. If not though, then that's fine to. We're both generally not in favor of Apple as a company, unless there's literally no viable options otherwise.

Earlier today, she found a refurb Samsung Galaxy Tab A7 64GB for $175. Is that a decent tablet? Is that a decent deal? We're open to recommendations here.

Knowing what size tablet she'd ideally want to use, as well as realistic budget would help for getting suggestions.

quote:

and as a "nice to have" sorta thing, if she can do some basic drawing/design work on it, then cool. If not though, then that's fine to.

If you are trying to stick with "cheaper" tablets, this isn't going to happen in a not-frustrating way

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History Comes Inside!
Nov 20, 2004




Just about everything that isn’t an iPad loving sucks for anything except consuming media. Sometimes they even suck for that.

I say this as someone who doesn’t own an iPad so you know I’m not just being a weird Apple guy!!

neogeo0823
Jul 4, 2007

NO THAT'S NOT ME!!

HamburgerTownUSA posted:

Knowing what size tablet she'd ideally want to use, as well as realistic budget would help for getting suggestions.

If you are trying to stick with "cheaper" tablets, this isn't going to happen in a not-frustrating way

Yeah, like I said, the drawing thing was a "All else being equal, this would be neat to have". It's not required in any way for this thing. As far as budget, ~$250 give or take is ideal. She's pretty good with the A9+ that was already recommended, so unless we can find it cheaper somewhere, we're gonna get it from Best Buy in the next couple of days.

History Comes Inside! posted:

Just about everything that isn’t an iPad loving sucks for anything except consuming media. Sometimes they even suck for that.

I say this as someone who doesn’t own an iPad so you know I’m not just being a weird Apple guy!!

Honestly, if it were up to me, I'd've gotten her a laptop instead of a tablet. But she wants the portability of a tablet instead of the ease of use of a physical keyboard, so... :shrug:

jokes
Dec 20, 2012

Uh... Kupo?

The only reason to not get an iPad is if you have a very specific, probably high-level use case or you're trying to buy the cheapest device by far. Liking Apple or not, the iPad is categorically the best tablet for 99% of people.

That being said, I had an A7 and it was fine I guess but Android loving sucks.

Duckman2008
Jan 6, 2010

TFW you see Flyers goaltending.
Grimey Drawer

neogeo0823 posted:

Yeah, like I said, the drawing thing was a "All else being equal, this would be neat to have". It's not required in any way for this thing. As far as budget, ~$250 give or take is ideal. She's pretty good with the A9+ that was already recommended, so unless we can find it cheaper somewhere, we're gonna get it from Best Buy in the next couple of days.

Honestly, if it were up to me, I'd've gotten her a laptop instead of a tablet. But she wants the portability of a tablet instead of the ease of use of a physical keyboard, so... :shrug:

If she is using it for business she should absolutely get an iPad. It’s going to be way more versatile than any android tablet, especially an android tablet in the $250 range. For a business use it’s worth getting what works.

You seem set on what you want though. I’m sure it’ll like, probably work, but I wouldn’t expect it to be fast or reliable.

History Comes Inside!
Nov 20, 2004




jokes posted:

The only reason to not get an iPad is if you have a very specific, probably high-level use case or you're trying to buy the cheapest device by far. Liking Apple or not, the iPad is categorically the best tablet for 99% of people.

That being said, I had an A7 and it was fine I guess but Android loving sucks.

I like having expandable storage because the cost of whatever ok tablet plus a giant sd card is way less than an iPad with the same amount of storage.

If they made an iPad with a microsd card slot then I’d probably just buy an iPad, except knowing Apple it would only be available on the Super iPad Pro Plus 8k edition or whatever the gently caress and I still wouldn’t wanna pay that much for it.

Duckman2008
Jan 6, 2010

TFW you see Flyers goaltending.
Grimey Drawer
Samsung is moving away from SD Cards, although I guess we’ll see with their tabs. That said, android still has issues with partitioning storage with SD Cards, so there are reasons not to have them.

pun pundit
Nov 11, 2008

I feel the same way about the company bearing the same name.

Samsung authorized repair staff has recently been shown cutting into a TV screen with a box cutter to void someone's warranty (Louis Rossman video). I don't know if they are more deserving of my money than Apple. No ethical consumption under capitalism, and all that. I own a galaxy tab S7 and am happy with it.

The Grumbles
Jun 5, 2006

let the anger flow through your salt beef filling

History Comes Inside! posted:

I like having expandable storage because the cost of whatever ok tablet plus a giant sd card is way less than an iPad with the same amount of storage.

If they made an iPad with a microsd card slot then I’d probably just buy an iPad, except knowing Apple it would only be available on the Super iPad Pro Plus 8k edition or whatever the gently caress and I still wouldn’t wanna pay that much for it.

Seeing as all the newer ipads are usbc, can't you just plug in usb-c storage or a microsd reader or something?

Also depending on what you're using the storage for, the ipad is pretty friendly with most home networking so you can just like set up a NAS or something. icloud will cost you a couple of quid a month but it also works great

HamburgerTownUSA
Aug 7, 2022
Welp. It finally happened. My trusty 10 year old Samsung Galaxy Tab S 8.4 running Android 13 via LineageOS 20 that I was using to read manga/comics on via tachiyomiMihon finally died. Screen no longer comes on. It's not the battery, because I replaced the battery not that long ago, and a tester shows that it's taking a charge (and thermal imaging camera shows that stuff is happening internally, at least), so something else is borked, and at this point, it's not worth fixing and I don't care to troubleshoot it anymore.

So since I have somewhere to be in a few days and would like to have stuff to read, off to Amazon I go for a cheap Android tablet that I can just shove my microSD card in to so I don't have to download everything again.

At first I was going to get one of those cheap random Chinese tablets, but the reviews don't seem that great, and after the whole "cheap Android boxes meant for hooking up to your TV have spyware on them" thing, I don't exactly trust them.

Looks like you can get a Samsung Galaxy Tab A 8.4" (2020) on Amazon for really cheap if you get a used/refurbished one. I ordered one for $39.94 that's listed in "acceptable" condition that is an LTE version for Verizon (I'm never going to use the LTE part), and in general, all the carrier subsidized versions of this tablet are dirt cheap.

For now, it has the basics of what I want in a tablet I'm just going to read manga on; 8-9" screen, decent enough ppi (1200x1920, so 270ppi), microSD card slot, USB C. I imagine it'll run VLC fine if I want to throw stuff on the card to watch (even my old tablet could manage that), and maybe asides from some light web browsing or YouTube via BraveNewPipe, I don't need it to do much else than that.

It arrives tomorrow, so we'll see how noticeable the screen is compared to my old tablet which had a higher resolution AMOLED display.

When I get the chance I'm finally going to just order an iPad Mini 6th gen and then use the Galaxy Tab A as a panel for Home Assistant or display for SimHub or something.

HamburgerTownUSA
Aug 7, 2022
Tablet arrived from Amazon.

First impressions:

It wasn't packed particularly well. Just a single layer of bubble wrap that covered like 75% the tablet itself put in a cardboard box. Came with generic 5V2A charger and USB C cable. Tablet was a little dusty, and needed a little additional cleaning.

There are just two tiny scratches in the screen. I can barely catch them with my nail. Only barely visible with screen off, not visible with screen on. For the cheapest "acceptable" condition, I am pleasantly surprised as to how nice a condition it is.

Did not come with a microSD card installed (wasn't expecting it to), did have a SIM card installed (wasn't expecting one), which I promptly removed.

Powered it on, skipped through all the setup stuff.

Wow, there is a lot of Verizon and Samsung crap on here. I'm also getting nagged by a persistent notification about the missing SIM card, and I can't make it go away.

Comes with Android 11 and One UI 3.1. Doesn't look like there's a possibility of putting on a custom ROM I guess.

Ran it through Universal Android Debloater to get rid of pretty much everything. Sideloaded F-Droid and Mihon so I could at least get a different launcher on there and get my manga/comics stuff working. I'll install BraveNewPipe later once I get around to doing another Google Takeout to get my YT subscriptions for my burner YT watching account.

All in all, I am happy with the $47.43 I paid in total ($39.94 for tablet, $3.49 tax, $4.00 CA Electronic Waste Recycling Fee). This tablet seems like it will do everything I want. The resolution is more than fine for the size (which was one of my concerns), although I do miss the black blacks that come from having an AMOLED display (my other concern) and the viewing angle maybe isn't as nice (which isn't really an issue).

edit: sideloaded AutoNotification and SystemUI Tuner, and used those to get rid of the last visual reminders/nags that this is a Verizon tablet, namely the persistent missing SIM card notification, and the phone signal bars in the status bar.

HamburgerTownUSA fucked around with this message at 20:53 on Feb 28, 2024

Rocko Bonaparte
Mar 12, 2002

Every day is Friday!
My mother-in-law apparently has some PC that's over a decade old and it's not really pulling its weight for social media and The Yahoo any more. Faced with the spectre of a Win11 PC and running her through that, my wife was thinking she could use a tablet that is mostly just docked. I can see the thought process. She doesn't really have anything substantial to migrate (if anything), and is lacking in a portable camera anyways, so it would be nice if she had something for that and maybe video calls with the lot of us. Her nearby family and us are all Android people and can steer her through that. She has no need for a laptop and a laptop keyboard, and I think she wouldn't want to use something with a laptop keyboard.

My wife was poking around and saw the Lenovo tablets like this:
https://www.bestbuy.com/site/lenovo-tab-p12-with-lenovo-tab-pen-plus-zach0165us-storm-grey/6551465.p?skuId=6551465

We haven't sorted out a dock yet either and wondered if there are recommendations. I guess just about any whatever-what-the-heck dropshipped USB-C thing on Amazon would be sufficient so long as it mates with her monitor (I have to see what ports it has) but I'll take recommendations there too.

Perestroika
Apr 8, 2010

I have a somewhat specific use case and I'm wondering if a tablet could cover it. Basically I'm currently using an old windows laptop stream media to my living room TV via Wifi. Crucially, at the same time I'm often also using it to browse and chat and similar low-impact stuff. Since the laptop is kinda cumbersome in size and weight as well as getting up there in age it'd be nice to be able to replace it with something more lightweight.

Can tablets effectively do this kind of multitasking these days? Any particularly better at it than others? I'm more used to/have a slight preference towards windows or android, but I'm not too opposed to an Ipad either. Ideally it should be somewhere in the <$500 range. Is that at all realistic?

Hippie Hedgehog
Feb 19, 2007

Ever cuddled a hedgehog?

Perestroika posted:

I have a somewhat specific use case and I'm wondering if a tablet could cover it. Basically I'm currently using an old windows laptop stream media to my living room TV via Wifi. Crucially, at the same time I'm often also using it to browse and chat and similar low-impact stuff. Since the laptop is kinda cumbersome in size and weight as well as getting up there in age it'd be nice to be able to replace it with something more lightweight.

Can tablets effectively do this kind of multitasking these days? Any particularly better at it than others? I'm more used to/have a slight preference towards windows or android, but I'm not too opposed to an Ipad either. Ideally it should be somewhere in the <$500 range. Is that at all realistic?

So your TV is a “smart TV”, I presume? One that connects to WiFi and your PC has been able to somehow mirror its screen onto it?
[Edit: Oh maybe you mean you’ve been connecting the laptop to the TV directly using HDMI?]

What I’d usually recommend is for people to use an Android unit with a Chromecast dongle, but newer TV units often have chromecast receiver capabilities built-in. You can try it with your phone before investing in the tablet.

Any tablet will be able to cast streaming video into a chromecast while doing something else. I’ve done this with a very very slow tablet without hitches in the video stream. It works because the Chromecast is not taking the video from the tablet. It streams it straight from the internet server instead. All the tablet does is to provide the URL to stream from, and act as a remote control.

Hippie Hedgehog fucked around with this message at 09:39 on Mar 20, 2024

Perestroika
Apr 8, 2010

Hippie Hedgehog posted:

So your TV is a “smart TV”, I presume? One that connects to WiFi and your PC has been able to somehow mirror its screen onto it?
[Edit: Oh maybe you mean you’ve been connecting the laptop to the TV directly using HDMI?]

What I’d usually recommend is for people to use an Android unit with a Chromecast dongle, but newer TV units often have chromecast receiver capabilities built-in. You can try it with your phone before investing in the tablet.

Any tablet will be able to cast streaming video into a chromecast while doing something else. I’ve done this with a very very slow tablet without hitches in the video stream. It works because the Chromecast is not taking the video from the tablet. It streams it straight from the internet server instead. All the tablet does is to provide the URL to stream from, and act as a remote control.

Ah yeah I should have specified, it is some Samsung smart TV that's discoverable via wifi, and connecting to it via windows basically lets me treat it as a secondary screen. I'm mostly using it that way because the TV's native interface for youtube and its generic browser are terrible.

Chromecast sounds like it might just be exactly what I need, I'll look into that. Thanks!

Hippie Hedgehog
Feb 19, 2007

Ever cuddled a hedgehog?

Perestroika posted:

Ah yeah I should have specified, it is some Samsung smart TV that's discoverable via wifi, and connecting to it via windows basically lets me treat it as a secondary screen. I'm mostly using it that way because the TV's native interface for youtube and its generic browser are terrible.

Chromecast sounds like it might just be exactly what I need, I'll look into that. Thanks!

Does it not work with your phone already? I would guess a smart tv these days would be compatible with either android “casting” or Apple airplay.

Perestroika
Apr 8, 2010

Hippie Hedgehog posted:

Does it not work with your phone already? I would guess a smart tv these days would be compatible with either android “casting” or Apple airplay.

Only just got to try it out. Seems like it supports some kind of casting protocol, but not specifically Chromecast. Google Home can't find it, but some other android casting apps seem to manage it just fine. I'll have to test them out and see if I can find one that isn't too obnoxious to use. :v:

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gariig
Dec 31, 2004
Beaten into submission by my fiance
Pillbug
If casting works for you get a Chromecast, I think they are like $50.

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