What to look for when buying a tablet

The world of gadgets has gradually become flat. At least this year, after the release of the Apple iPad, almost every major manufacturer announced plans to create such a device. And this is not surprising. The tablets are thinner and lighter than laptops, they easily fit into small bags, they offer super-simple web browsing and email reading. And although tablets lack a hardware keyboard, typing texts on them is easier than on tiny smartphones. They allow you to broadcast audio and video, which makes them excellent portable media devices.

However, to navigate the tablet market may be difficult. The difficulty of creating a convenient, useful, well-assembled tablet with a long battery life is illustrated by the fact that many manufacturers have spent many months creating a serious competitor to the iPad. Below are some features that are worth paying attention to if you plan to purchase a tablet computer.

Screen

This is perhaps the most important object for making a purchase decision. It will surely be more convenient to work with a larger screen, especially when entering text, and even half an inch can be significant here. However, many manufacturers want to make their tablets more portable, and the big screen adds weight and volume. For example, the Dell Streak is a five-inch tablet, which is slightly larger than a smartphone, while the Samsung Galaxy is equipped with a 7-inch touchscreen. For lovers of large devices, the Archos 101 may fit the 10.1-inch screen, which is even larger than the iPad, with its generous 9.7 inches. Lovers of the exotic should pay attention to Toshiba Libretto - a clamshell with two seven-inch screens.

Also pay attention to the screen resolution relative to its physical size. More pixels per square inch usually means a sharper image when viewing images and video and clearer text when reading. Also, the appearance of the screen is strongly influenced by the color depth, contrast and brightness.
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Specifications can be misleading for many, so it would be good to test drive the device you are interested in the store. It is worth checking how the screen will react to your touch - because you have to do it all the time. Make sure that the brightness of the screen is uniform over the entire surface and compare the brightness of the screens of several tablets. Finally, keep in mind that a sleek, glossy screen may look great in low light, but it may glare in bright light or in direct sunlight.

Immediately it is worth thinking about purchasing a protective film that will help mitigate glare and protect the screen from scratches. If you are planning to buy a tablet as a replacement for a laptop for daily use, a microfiber cloth will not hurt you, as usual cloths and even pants do not only do poorly with stains, but can also scratch the screen.

Wireless connectivity

Almost all tablets are now compatible with Wi-Fi, but you should pay attention to the specifications of a particular model. For normal surfing, the 802.11 b / g standard is fine. But if you plan to watch live video streaming or download large files often, pay attention to 802.11n.
The presence of support for 3G cellular communication will allow you to stay online even when you leave the Wi-Fi hotspots. But do not forget that 3G is not supported everywhere, and the cost of data transfer is still high.

A useful feature may be GPS, since the large screen size of the tablet makes it a more convenient travel companion than a small smartphone equipped with GPS.
Bluetooth support will be useful too. In addition to the ability to easily transfer data wirelessly, you can connect a Bluetooth headset or headphones, chat and listen to music, and use a Bluetooth keyboard when you need to type a lot of text.

OS and applications

The main choice here is between Apple iOS, which has proved its effectiveness in the iPhone, and the current and future versions of the Android OS from Google. Each has its own advantages and disadvantages.
Apple iOS offers a volumetric app store, reliable hardware and software integration, but does not support Adobe Flash, which somewhat limits the device’s web capabilities.

Choosing Android, you can consider devices made by different companies, but this OS is not as sophisticated as an Apple product. In the application store of this OS there are also many good applications, both paid and free, but the quality control here is much worse than in the similar service Apple. There are many Android apps that are identical or similar to iPad apps, but they are often less stable.

Data storage

The rule that has developed over the years of the existence of computers works here - there is never a lot of free space, especially if you plan to use the tablet as an entertainment device for watching videos and listening to music. Most tablets use expensive flash memory, so you have to limit your appetites or spend more money on a model with a large storage. In this situation, tablets equipped with SD or microSD slots are a great blessing that will allow you to expand storage using removable memory cards.

Inputs and Outputs

Since the tablets are rather thin devices, there are few connectors in them, and often the case is limited to a 3.5-inch headphone output and a USB port. The iPad does not have a USB slot at all, so you will be limited to peripherals that work with the proprietary iPod connector.
Only a few have additional ports, such as HDMI, to view videos and photos on a TV screen. Ask yourself, will you use the tablet as a laptop replacement? If yes, then additional ports may be useful.

If the tablet does not have the ports you need, then this is often not a problem. There are several external port adapters for tablet computers. For example, Archos 9 offers a removable port replicator that provides VGA output, Ethernet and a couple of USB ports, while Apple has a VGA docking station for connecting a full monitor and a camera connection kit for downloading photos from the camera to your iPad.

Sound

Of course, most people use headphones with portable devices, but inevitably there will be times when you want to turn on the sound in the external environment. It is worth considering that the built-in speakers in the tablets are unlikely to sound good.

Camera

Even if the camera is already in your phone, which is still likely to be with you all the time, it is convenient to have another additional camera on hand. Editing photos on the tablet screen is much more convenient than on the phone. The number of megapixels of the integrated camera is often not the main parameter. The actual quality of shooting depends on the settings of the camera. Samsung Galaxy Tab has two cameras in front and behind that allows you to video chat or record yourself. And in the iPad, for example, the camera is completely absent.

It will not replace your PC.

Tablets may be the future of laptops, but we interact with them differently than with smartphones or laptops. They are ideal for surfing the web, watching movies and TV shows, working with e-mail, reading books, newspapers and magazines. Content consumption is their strong point.
But for its creation, they are not good enough compared to even the most ordinary laptop. Plates will definitely influence how we interact with the web and other media. But you can hardly expect them to become your main computers.

via Wired