3 ms·

Eeesh, I dunno. With an iPad costing about 50% more than a decent (e.g. Lenovo or Samsung) Android tablet, then I would absolutely go for the Apple product. M

Eeesh, I dunno. With an iPad costing about 50% more than a decent (e.g. Lenovo or Samsung) Android tablet, then I would absolutely go for the Apple product. My $450 8th gen iPad is a fantastic device. But if an iPad now costs 100%+ more than a decent Android tablet, then I think I'm being squeezed out here. A tablet is a not a laptop-replacement for me. It's a thing that I use to read books and watch movies laying in bed. $600+ for that is starting to get silly, when there are plenty of serviceable options in the $300 range.

d3nj4l 4y ago
You can still get the 9th gen iPad at $329.
- Kon-Peki 4y ago
  Even better would have been to get one of those last month when Costco was liquidating their stock for $270. Almost nobody carries the "old model" in stock, always a good idea to pay attention when they lower the price to get rid of it ;)
  - d3nj4l 4y ago
    It wasn't just Costco! I was hearing tell of people getting them for roughly that price all through October. I think they were discounted even in Walmart/BestBuy.
tonymet 4y ago
Android tablets are universally terrible. A poor product isn't worth half the price – better to avoid it altogether.
- nfriedly 4y ago
  Eh, I get where you're coming from, because most Android tablets are indeed terrible. However, I finally got myself one of the higher-end Samsung ones (Tab S7) and it's ...fine. Not earth-shatteringly good, but I'm happy with it. It's completely replaced my iPad usage except for one game that isn't available on Android (FTL) - I still break out the iPad to play that occasionally. No tablet is going to replace my laptop for my primary task of coding, but for video calls, email, note taking, slack, checking my calendar, web browsing, movies, and occasional gaming, the Samsung tablet is great. Two things I particularly like about the Samsung tablet are the microSD slot for expandable storage, and the fact that I can unlock the bootloader and install a community ROM whenever Samsung stops supporting it. The lack of a headphone jack is disappointing, but I think Apple is partially to blame for that.
- w1nst0nsm1th 4y ago
  Xiaomi My Pad 5 is a great device for 400$. Hi res, great battery life. Improved user experience, and spied all at once by Xiaomi, Google, Uncle Sam and Uncle Xi. The real magic with android devices is you can (could?) obtain easily superuser privilege just by 'dd' the system partition, install in it supersu binaries with proper privileges and ownership by mounting the said partition on a linux system, and fastboot it back in the tablet. You could also back up your whole data partition in the same way and upload the resulting .img file to mega cloud drive automatically with a script if you had a sd slot in the tablet as a temporary directory... And until KitKat, you could also install and run a full debian system with debootstrap side by side with android with DebianKit on the android kernel (no chroot nonsense). It was a marvel of its kind at time impossible now. That being said, I'm writing this on an iPad.

d3nj4l 4y ago

You can still get the 9th gen iPad at $329.

Kon-Peki 4y ago
Even better would have been to get one of those last month when Costco was liquidating their stock for $270. Almost nobody carries the "old model" in stock, always a good idea to pay attention when they lower the price to get rid of it ;)
- d3nj4l 4y ago
  It wasn't just Costco! I was hearing tell of people getting them for roughly that price all through October. I think they were discounted even in Walmart/BestBuy.

tonymet 4y ago

Android tablets are universally terrible. A poor product isn't worth half the price – better to avoid it altogether.

nfriedly 4y ago
Eh, I get where you're coming from, because most Android tablets are indeed terrible. However, I finally got myself one of the higher-end Samsung ones (Tab S7) and it's ...fine. Not earth-shatteringly good, but I'm happy with it. It's completely replaced my iPad usage except for one game that isn't available on Android (FTL) - I still break out the iPad to play that occasionally. No tablet is going to replace my laptop for my primary task of coding, but for video calls, email, note taking, slack, checking my calendar, web browsing, movies, and occasional gaming, the Samsung tablet is great. Two things I particularly like about the Samsung tablet are the microSD slot for expandable storage, and the fact that I can unlock the bootloader and install a community ROM whenever Samsung stops supporting it. The lack of a headphone jack is disappointing, but I think Apple is partially to blame for that.
w1nst0nsm1th 4y ago
Xiaomi My Pad 5 is a great device for 400$. Hi res, great battery life. Improved user experience, and spied all at once by Xiaomi, Google, Uncle Sam and Uncle Xi. The real magic with android devices is you can (could?) obtain easily superuser privilege just by 'dd' the system partition, install in it supersu binaries with proper privileges and ownership by mounting the said partition on a linux system, and fastboot it back in the tablet. You could also back up your whole data partition in the same way and upload the resulting .img file to mega cloud drive automatically with a script if you had a sd slot in the tablet as a temporary directory... And until KitKat, you could also install and run a full debian system with debootstrap side by side with android with DebianKit on the android kernel (no chroot nonsense). It was a marvel of its kind at time impossible now. That being said, I'm writing this on an iPad.