Looking to buy yourself or someone like you a new tablet for the holidays? We're here to help. Here are our favorite small and large tablets for the holidays.
In 2012, the tablet grew up and grew down. Nearly every smartphone and PC maker tried their hand at cracking the iPad’s iron grip on the tablet market this year, but few of them have faired well. By sheer volume, we’re beginning to see some erosion of Apple’s lead, but for the third year in a row, we still think that the iPad has the best overall ecosystem behind it. There were a lot of good tablets out this year, but this article is about the best. Right now, the best tablets for the best prices come from Apple, Google, and Microsoft.
The list is short and predictable this year.
| In a bid to stay ahead of the competition, Apple updated the market-defining 9.7-inch iPad not once, but twice this year. In mid-March it released the third iPad, which looks the same, but packs a screen with more pixels than a 1080p HD television. If that wasn’t enough, those who chose to hold off on buying the third iPad were rewarded in October as Apple replaced it with the fourth-generation iPad (iPad 4), which looks the same, but packs more than twice the processing power and uses Apple’s new Lightning Connector. Whether you choose to love or hate Apple, the iPad is still the best tablet money can buy. At $500, it’s now more expensive than most of its rivals, but that’s only because it’s won the war of attrition. Most tablets have been forced into the $200 – $400 price range because, really, if you’re going to spend $500, you might as well get an iPad. Aside from its speedy, fluid user interface and remarkable hardware design (always a strength of Apple), the key to the iPad’s success is its app ecosystem. By requiring developers make apps specifically for the iPad, Apple has amassed more than 300,000 original apps. Android and Windows 8 tablets simply cannot compare. At the end of the day, the measure of a tablet is what you can do on it. Here, Apple wins. |
| Amazon and Barnes & Noble were the first companies to release $200 tablets, but Google’s the first one to release a really good $200 tablet. The Nexus 7 debuted in July and it’s been climbing the popularity charts ever since. Designed in conjunction with Asus, the Nexus 7 is the best tablet if you’re a fan of Android or hope to avoid the iPad. With the Nexus 7, Google rethought its tablet strategy from the ground up. Instead of trying to imitate computer desktop interfaces, Google has made this Android tablet look and feel identical to an Android phone. It’s just bigger. Normally, we feel that 7-inch tablets are a little too small to get anything substantial done, but somehow the Nexus defies this rule. It can run the few tablet apps Android has very well, but also runs Android phone apps in a surprisingly adept fashion. Though many people seeking out the Nexus will be hunting for a bargain, what you’re really getting is more of a steal. The Nexus 7 has highly competitive specs and is as fast and slick as any tablet, but costs about half the price of most of its competition. It’s a far more fluid and usable device than a Kindle Fire HD, which has a poor email client, limited app selection, and still tends to get laggy. With the Nexus 7, you have access to going on a million Android phone apps/games on the Google Play Store, including many by Amazon and B&N, like the Kindle app, AmazonMP3 app, or the Nook app. You don’t have to give up their services to get a good tablet. |
| After spending years reviewing tablets in every shape and size, we’re happy to report that the iPad Mini’s 7.9-inch screen is probably the best-sized tablet display to date. It’s noticeably larger than a 7-inch tablet, which gives you valuable screen real estate, but still small and light enough to hold with one hand or store in an abnormally large pocket. Best of all, because it’s basically a shrunken iPad 2, every full size iPad app works out of the box. If you own a newer iPad, you will notice one luxury missing. The iPad Mini has a 1024 x 768 pixel screen. In 2011, this would have been an awesome resolution, but after Apple raised the bar with the Retina screen on the iPad 3, times have changed. The iPad Mini’s screen looks noticeably more pixely than you may like. This annoyance fades in time and has no real bearing on the performance of the tablet. If you really want a Retina screen, you should hold out for the iPad Mini 2. Price is the other big issue. $330 is a lot more than the $200 it costs to buy a Nexus 7. They are both great tablets. We would edge Apple’s tablet ahead because of its app selection, screen size, and comfort, but only you know if that’s worth $130. |
| The Nexus 10 is not our favorite tablet on this list, but it is better than your ordinary 10-inch Android tablet. Like it did with the Nexus 7, Google has made the large tablet version of Android 4.2 feel more like a phone. It’s a lot easier to pull down notifications and get what you need to get done on the Nexus 10 than most other tablets. And did we mention the screen? Google got screen envy of the iPad 3 and 4, so it packed 2560 x 1600 pixels into the screen – even higher than Apple’s Retina. The Nexus 10′s screen looks gorgeous and it has enough processing power to punch a baby. Like all big Android tablets, it will suffer from the Google Play Store’s lack of solid tablet apps. Things are getting better, but be prepared to run some hideous apps until all developers customize their goods to the big, pixel-dense screen. But for $400, you’re getting the fastest, prettiest 10-inch Android tablet we ever laid our eyes on. |
| Should the Surface RT be on this list? It depends on who you are. For those of you who want to try out the new version of Windows, the Microsoft Surface is one of the best ways to do it. It’s built well, has a nice kickstand, and we love the magnetic TypeCover attachment. The problem is Windows RT. It walks and talks like Windows 8, but can’t run any Windows 7 applications. That means you can’t install any software on it that doesn’t come from the Windows 8 Store. Want the Chrome browser, iTunes, Spotify? You’re out of luck. The Classic desktop is difficult to use with a touchscreen and feels slow. Still, Microsoft is issuing fixes pretty regularly and is committed to Windows 8′s success. If you want a new, different kind of tablet, give it a go. |
Source : digitaltrends[dot]com
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