Hi everyone, I'm in my junior year of college and to be honest I am extremely tired of carrying around my bulky laptop everywhere. I am wondering what tablet you think is the best out there for a reasonable price.

Define "Reasonable" Price.

I'd go for either the Asus Transformer Pad 300T (cheaper) or Asus Transformer Infinity 700T (HD screen, more expensive). Reasoning? Best keyboard dock of any tablet for better note-taking.

Wouldn't you want a tablet with a digitizer for note taking?

Could probably type faster than I can write but on a tablet dock keyboard? Unlikely.

well I dont see myself paying anything over $400. I will be taking notes mostly but access to the web is a must so I can get on blackboard etc

Even so, the keyboard doubles the battery life and gives it some extra connection options (USB ports are handy to have).

I've not had any digitizer for note-taking that I've liked so far. I would agree it's better, but I've not found one that works well. Granted, I've not tried the Galaxy Note 10.1 yet.


If you angle it properly, you can get an OG Tranformer with dock for that, but you'd be better with the Transformer Pad 300T (Dock will put you at $500-ish, though)

how would the Transformer 300t stack up to the Ipad? I really dont know much about tablets.

I'm sure Defron will disagree with me, but I still think the iPad is the best all-around tablet. No, it's not Android. But it has access to iOS's mature ecosystem of apps, it's fast and responsive, and - if you get the New iPad - the screen is just gorgeous.

It'll stack up just fine, not to mention the official Tranformer Dock kicks the butt of the unofficial iPad docks


- 4:3 screens svcks. All movies are widescreen nowadays, so all iPads are stuck with horribly annoying black bars resulting in wasted and unused screen real estate. Android tablets are almost all 16:10, meaning much more of the screen real estate is actually used in watching a video, meaning the video is bigger due to less letterboxing.

- Android tablets are just as fast as iPad. You know that the Apple SoC is actually made by Samsung, yes?

- I'd put Android apps against iOS apps any day of the week. Sure maybe iOS has more apps, but http://www.phonearena.com/news/400000-apps-in-the-App-Store-have-never-been-downloaded-says-report_id32943. Once you've gotten to a certain level of App market maturity, it doesn't really matter (plus Android has apps iOS will never have that improve productivity, such as windowed apps you can have side-by-side other apps).

1. You're absolutely right about widescreen movies, and that may be where the iPad falls short. But for just about anything else, the quality and resolution of the iPad's screen is unmatched, as far as I know. Besides, I rarely watch movies on my tablet - but that's just me.

2. Yes, but who makes Apple's parts is irrelevant. I'm not talking about hardware speed, but the speed of the OS. iOS is smoother and more efficient, it's as simple as that. Now, I'm well aware of 4.1 and Project Butter, but I have yet to use a handset running that for more than 3 minutes, so I can't comment on that. But from past experiences, Android has been slow and bloated compared with iOS running on up-to-date hardware.

3. I'm not talking about number of apps, necessarily, but the commitment and interest from developers. As iOS has a wider market, more developers are focusing on that platform. This has been changing recently, and it is true that Android has access to apps that an (un-jailbroken) iOS device doesn't, but I'd prefer to be on the platform that is most developers' focus.

There were HD Android tablets before the "New" iPad. For video, the higher than HD resolution of the iPad doesn't come into play (not to mention it's degraded by previously mentioned letterboxing makes most of that higher resolution unused). The screen on many Android tablets is superior IPS+ screens.

Really, this hasn't been the case since ICS Project Butter in Jelly Bean is just going to make it better, but HW accereration introduced in ICS pretty much solved this, with Butter just improving it even further.

Eh? iOS hasn't had a wider market than Android in years.

Yes, but that's video again. When a developer builds an app that takes full advantage of the resolution, there really isn't any Android tablet that can match up. This is especially noticeable when there's text on the screen, which is an integral part of what the OP was going to be using this for.

Perhaps it's just me, but Android - even after ICS - has felt a bit slow. It doesn't feel like a hardware limitation, but the way the OS is written. It simply doesn't feel as responsive as iOS. This is from my experience on an SII and SIII. But, again, it could just be me.

Maybe "wider market" wasn't the correct term - but my point still stands. Developers tend to focus more on iOS. Maybe the App Store doesn't get the specialty apps - that's what Cydia is for - but it does get solid, high quality apps on most of the spectrum, be it productivity, games, or reading. Lack of focus and moderation on Android insures that it has a shakier app-ecosystem.

Depends on the content viewed. If all you watch is 16:9 video I can see why it would. If you use it as an e-reader it fits the content better than widescreen. Plus web surfing on a small screen is much less annoying in 4:3 than 16:10 or 16:9. I'd wager most tablet owners spend more time reading and browsing than watching movies.

iPad lacks http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6FE6XMiuGys. It's just a standard IPS screen stuck at 300 nits. Really, the resolution difference between an HD Android tablet (1920x1200) and the New iPad (2048x1536) works out to be something like less than 10 seconds of arc per pixel smaller.

Both the SII and SIII have TouchWiz, and depending on the carrier you used, it's been tweaked further (except the SIII which is universal across carriers). I gutted my SII of all the cruft T-Mobile put on there and it runs like a champ, not to mention you can overclock Android

This doesn't even make any sense. There's no logic behind your statement of "Developers tend to focus more on iOS" other than your word that they do. I disagree and without proof on your behalf, it's illogical for a developer to do that. And counterexample: Facebook for iOS is just a webapp in actuality (HTML5 webapp, to be precise). Currently so is Android's facebook app, but just this week Facebook announced doing a bona fide Android app, which obviously would require a lot more work than just using an HTML5 webapp.

Basically this one is entirely your word and not backed up at all by reality

Also: Cydia is seriously the worst thing about iOS. Jailbreaking just leaves your mobile device highly vulnerable to all sorts of bad things because in order to jailbreak (and maintain it) you often have to purposefully leave your device unpatched, the exact opposite of Android rooting.

16:9, I'd agree, but 16:10 I wouldn't. Especially when you can rotate it and rearrange text (Opera, Polaris, most ereader apps).

Aside from personal experiences, it's not difficult to find developer surveys, statistics and polls. Two recent and separate surveys with a quick Google search:
http://www.informationweek.com/byte/news/personal-tech/smart-phones/240004275
http://www.dailyfinance.com/2012/06/07/7-out-of-10-developers-agree-ios-beats-android/

As for your Facebook example, their app was recently updated to no longer use HTML5. I can vouch for the improvement. http://www.engadget.com/2012/08/23/facebook-updates-ios-app-says-its-now-twice-as-fast/

As for jailbreaking - Apple's updates are usually jail-break ready shortly after - if not before - they are released. It's simple as updating your device, and then re-jailbreaking.

I can't comment on speed - I was just going off of past experiences. If it's been updated, then it's been updated. And I still maintain that the iPad's screen beats out the competition, if the resolution is utilized fully. The difference is noticeable - especially on text and 3D graphics.

Any Samsung tablet. Apple svcks balls.

Do note: those are about app developer's personal preference, not about app development time or support. Your argument was that Android apps are somehow inferior, not that App developers prefer iOS while still developing by-and-large for both platforms.

That's the experience for 1. People willing to tether jailbreak (not a real jailbreak) and/or 2. People with Mac OS X. A real jailbreak, especially a real cross-platform jailbreak, is often much, much longer to produce than tethered or OS X-specific jailbreaks and your example most certainly isn't the case when new hardware or a major iOS update comes out.


I'd highly recommend NOT doing this. the iPads are superior to the original few Samsung tablets by a decent marker. Wasn't until the Galaxy tab 7.7 that Samsung came out with a decent tablet. The Galaxy Tab 10.1 had various issues, though it looks like Samsung has learned a lot from their mistakes with their latest few tablet offerings.


Man, I really need to get around to playing with the Galaxy Note 10.1 with an S-Pen...

The Nokia N9 has a simple, toggle-able switch that allows/disallows installation from non-Nokia sources, and another for 'dev mode' (which gives your access to root powers).

But that's not a tablet .

I smell a hacker project in the works