Best 10" Tablet?

M

michael.pa2

2[H]4U
Joined
Dec 26, 2006
Messages
2,998
My son wants a tablet for Christmas,and I'm totally unfamiliar with the portable market. My basic requirements are a 10" screen,preferably under $400,probably used mostly for web use and media viewing.
 
Under $400, Nexus 10, over $400, iPad. If you can find a used iPad 3 for $400 or less that would be the best way to go. Best app selection, best display, and fastest hardware.
 
Why spend $400 on a 16GB tablet with no expansion options? The entire reason to go Android is to get expansion options. Otherwise, go Apple.

Also, the charger that comes with the Nexus 10 takes all day to charge the device, so you have to use a different charger with it. That's a bit nutty if you ask me.
 
AQ_OC said:
Why spend $400 on a 16GB tablet with no expansion options? The entire reason to go Android is to get expansion options. Otherwise, go Apple.

Also, the charger that comes with the Nexus 10 takes all day to charge the device, so you have to use a different charger with it. That's a bit nutty if you ask me.
Click to expand...

It's not just the Nexus. The new iPads also take years to charge. When you bump up the brightness you also drive up the power consumption considerably.

Most tablet makers just ship a shitty smartphone charger with their tablets.
 
If you just want to browse the web and consume media, you don't need a $400 tablet. That said, if you are considering spending that amount, the iPad is where you should be looking as the app selection absolutely blows Android out of the water. You can get a great Android tablet for two-thirds to half that much if you don't care about the poorer selection of tablet-focused apps.

For consuming media, check out the B&N Nook HD+. It's $269, has a 1920x1280 screen and MicroSD for expansion. If you'd rather have cameras than a MicroSD slot, check out Amazon's Kindle Fire HD 8.9 for $30 more.
 
pelo said:
It's not just the Nexus. The new iPads also take years to charge. When you bump up the brightness you also drive up the power consumption considerably.

Most tablet makers just ship a shitty smartphone charger with their tablets.
Click to expand...

the nexus 10 charger is 5 V at 1A. iPad charger is 5V at 2A. Nexus 10 take much longer.
 
AQ_OC said:
the nexus 10 charger is 5 V at 1A. iPad charger is 5V at 2A. Nexus 10 take much longer.
Click to expand...

I stocked up on HP t\Touchpad chargers when they were clearing those out. Great 2A chargers with nice long USB cords, were only $5 a pop.
 
AQ_OC said:
the nexus 10 charger is 5 V at 1A. iPad charger is 5V at 2A. Nexus 10 take much longer.
Click to expand...

It's not that simple, as there's the hardware to take into account as well, chief of which are the display, SoC and battery.

There's a reason the iPad has a larger battery than all of the other competing tablets and it has to do with higher power consumption.

I heard this mentioned on Anand's podcast by Brian, and it's what I've noticed as well. Brian noted that he's seen iPads at the Apple store that are sitting at ~40-50% charge, and that's not to do with degradation or some physical limit imposed via software, but rather that they've spiked up the brightness and they're under constant use by woulde-be buyers and the charger barely manages to keep up.
 
pelo said:
I heard this mentioned on Anand's podcast by Brian, and it's what I've noticed as well. Brian noted that he's seen iPads at the Apple store that are sitting at ~40-50% charge, and that's not to do with degradation or some physical limit imposed via software, but rather that they've spiked up the brightness and they're under constant use by woulde-be buyers and the charger barely manages to keep up.
Click to expand...

The store by us keeps the chargers on timers to keep them from running all the time. I've frequently seen iPods and other low-power-draw devices on display at 40-60% battery. I'm not sure this is actually indicative of anything. My iPad 3 runs Splashtop Remote Desktop for several hours a day at max brightness (fairly CPU intensive; the unit gets warm while running) while plugged in and doesn't leave the "fully charged" state.
 
Try firing up a game on the new iPad with an A6 SoC and see what happens :p It's the GPU and the massive amount of pixels on that display that are the most taxing as far as power consumption goes.
 
pelo said:
It's not that simple, as there's the hardware to take into account as well, chief of which are the display, SoC and battery.

There's a reason the iPad has a larger battery than all of the other competing tablets and it has to do with higher power consumption.

I heard this mentioned on Anand's podcast by Brian, and it's what I've noticed as well. Brian noted that he's seen iPads at the Apple store that are sitting at ~40-50% charge, and that's not to do with degradation or some physical limit imposed via software, but rather that they've spiked up the brightness and they're under constant use by woulde-be buyers and the charger barely manages to keep up.
Click to expand...

What are you talking about? A 5W charger will simply take longer to charge the device than will a 10W charger (assuming the device will allow higher charging rates). It is that simple. Turning the screen up bright is another issue not in consideration here. I never turn mine up past 40% or so.
 
Kueller said:
I stocked up on HP t\Touchpad chargers when they were clearing those out. Great 2A chargers with nice long USB cords, were only $5 a pop.
Click to expand...


Good for you. It doesn't excuse google/samsung from not including one in the box for the Nexus 10. It's one reason I bought the Asus and not the Nexus 10.
 
pelo said:
Try firing up a game on the new iPad with an A6 SoC and see what happens :p It's the GPU and the massive amount of pixels on that display that are the most taxing as far as power consumption goes.
Click to expand...

What does that have to do with the price of tea in china?
 
If it has to be 10", Nexus 10. I'd also consider a Nexus 7 or iPad mini if you can get by with smaller. Nexus 10 also has a pogo connector. The thought is that there will probably be a keyboard in the future. I'm enjoying my Nexus 10. It's shockingly better in the display are compared to my Kindle Fire.

If your son has no interest in learning more technology and flexibility, then I think Apple is the way to go. I've found the app story to be no issue for me, but then I look for tech apps that aren't available in the Apple app store. As strange as it seems, I can find more of what I want at the Google Play store.

BTW, the Nexus 10 does have a charger in the box, and I like that I can charge all of my devices with the same charger size. One final thought is Nexus 10 is definitely bleeding edge. It's good, but there is no doubt that it will get better as the software improves.
 
Ainol Novo 10 Hero. $200, 1280x800 IPS, 10.1 inches, dual core generic chip with a Mali-400, easy to mod, everything supports it, can probably put Ubuntu on it if you really wanted to, since it uses a very common chip. Youtube it, it's pretty nice, I almost got one. I chose the A10 with the quad-core Freescale instead, because I wanted something with a brand new SOC that will be buggy and crappy for now, but, as support gets better...

I don't see how everyone can recommend rediculously overpriced, locked-up tablets they sell here in the US for regular and lite users.
 
Last edited:
I've seen on deals forums that 10" Chinese tablets can regularly be had for <$200, even with newer chips like RK3066 which are more than powerful enough. Very tempted.
 
Are the Samsung Galaxy tabs any good,they seem closer to the price point I'm looking for.
 
AQ_OC said:
the nexus 10 charger is 5 V at 1A. iPad charger is 5V at 2A. Nexus 10 take much longer.
Click to expand...

Where did you see the charger is 5V/1A? Everywhere I've seen folks report in say it's a 5V/2A charger, with both the iPad and the Nexus 10 taking about 6hrs or so to charge.

N10 Charging graph (with stock charger, per poster):
ba8uf.png


iPad Charging graph (poster doesn't mention model, but I figure with a posting date of Mar 18, 2012 it's probably fairly relevant)
uUL0q.jpg


Not sure I see the "much longer" part of it.
 
Neb:

Fair question and I want to get to the bottom of it:

http://www.androidtablets.net/forum...pressive-android-tab-yet-but-feels-cheap.html

The second major disappointment on the Nexus 10 is charging. Google and Samsung decided to go with the standard Micro-USB Micro B connector that is used on nearly all (except for Apple's) smartphones.

Because of this, the device can only charge with 5W of power, versus 10W of power used on other full-sized Android tablets, the Microsoft Surface and the iPad 4 which use proprietary charger connectors in order to handle the higher wattage requirements. As a result, the charging on the Nexus 10 is unbelievably slow.

If you primarily use your tablet for a few hours in the morning and in the evening hours, it's not as noticeable, particularly if you charge it before you go to bed, but if you use the device heavily during the day, whether it is to do browsing, reading, or to watch movies or play a lot of graphics-intensive games while killing time on an aircraft you are definitely going to come up short unless you have a charging outlet nearby.
Click to expand...

Here is the original article: http://www.zdnet.com/google-nexus-1...e-android-tab-yet-but-feels-cheap-7000007846/
 
Last edited:
There's some funny rounding going on there. Looking at the original article you see this:

Here&#8217;s the problem: The micro USB pins are very small, and the power-carrying connectors, pins 1 and 5, are rated to carry 1.8 amps at 5 volts DC. That means that the maximum charging power that can safely flow across the connector is 9 watts. But the iPad wants 10 watts to charge. It will charge on as little as 5 watts, the output of most USB 3 ports and the specially modified USB 2 ports on newer Apple products, but needs 10 watts for fastest charging.
Click to expand...

Looking at the actual spec (warning, zip file with pdfs) shows that the original article is correct, the maximum rating for micro-usb is 1.8 amps which means micro-usb has a theoretical limit of 9 watts, not the 5 watts that the review you linked says.

Rounding 9W down to 5W is simply misleading at best. That particular review knocks the Nexus 10 for supposedly using an inferior connector, spending nearly two whole paragraphs talking about how it charges slowly and how it can affect you, yet it does not mention a specific number for how long the charge time took. That's a glaring omission when you're faulting a product for a slow charge time.

Another way you can verify that the 5W statement is inaccurate is by using simple math (and being the lazy guy that I am, I use a charge time calculator). The Nexus 10 has a battery capacity of 9,000 mAh. With a 1A charger and assuming roughly 20% efficiency loss you would expect a charge time of nearly 11 hours. Looking through the various reviews and forum posts it looks like people are experiencing 6-7 hours to charge from empty.

Reversing the math and keeping the battery capacity at 9000mAh and using the charge time from the chart above's 6.3 hour charge time as the constants, the charge rate we get is 1.714A which is still well above the "5W" claimed in the review.

May I suggest that next time before you start quoting reviews, please check their facts.
 
Neb said:
There's some funny rounding going on there. Looking at the original article you see this:



Looking at the actual spec (warning, zip file with pdfs) shows that the original article is correct, the maximum rating for micro-usb is 1.8 amps which means micro-usb has a theoretical limit of 9 watts, not the 5 watts that the review you linked says.

Rounding 9W down to 5W is simply misleading at best. That particular review knocks the Nexus 10 for supposedly using an inferior connector, spending nearly two whole paragraphs talking about how it charges slowly and how it can affect you, yet it does not mention a specific number for how long the charge time took. That's a glaring omission when you're faulting a product for a slow charge time.

Another way you can verify that the 5W statement is inaccurate is by using simple math (and being the lazy guy that I am, I use a charge time calculator). The Nexus 10 has a battery capacity of 9,000 mAh. With a 1A charger and assuming roughly 20% efficiency loss you would expect a charge time of nearly 11 hours. Looking through the various reviews and forum posts it looks like people are experiencing 6-7 hours to charge from empty.

Reversing the math and keeping the battery capacity at 9000mAh and using the charge time from the chart above's 6.3 hour charge time as the constants, the charge rate we get is 1.714A which is still well above the "5W" claimed in the review.

May I suggest that next time before you start quoting reviews, please check their facts.
Click to expand...


Thanks for working it out, but seriously you would not have checked any facts had you not had the benefit of that other post you saw. I posted my concerns about this review at the forum for the first link....for the purpose of getting feedback on the issue. I'm not reviewing the product and I have no means to check their facts with no info on actual charge times. That's the purpose of forums like these, to get to the bottom if what's what. I will continue quoting reviews, as they need to be challenged when wrong.
 
Actually, I already was checking it when you said 5W. I already knew the range of the USB current limit and that didn't sound right given the 6-7hr figures that I had already seen. I just wanted to point out that figure was incorrect because earlier in this thread you were telling people off using that exact figure.

OP: sorry for totally derailing the thread :eek:
 
I don't know if this is an option but I picked up an Acer W510 from the Microsoft store on cyber Monday for $399. Might be able pick one of those up somewhere for around the same price. Full windows 8, 10.1 inch display, new Atom chip.
 
michael.pa2 said:
My son wants a tablet for Christmas,and I'm totally unfamiliar with the portable market. My basic requirements are a 10" screen,preferably under $400,probably used mostly for web use and media viewing.
Click to expand...

How old is your boy? Why is 10" a requirement over the 7" models? What will the tablet be used for?
 
michael.pa2 said:
Are the Samsung Galaxy tabs any good,they seem closer to the price point I'm looking for.
Click to expand...

I got my wife the Galaxy Tab 2.0 7" this past spring and she loves it. She has had essentially zero problems with it and uses it extensively; often several hours a day between web surfing, games, reading books, recipes, home-schooling, streaming TV, and probably other things. As well, reports say, it will be getting and Android 4.1 Jelly Bean upgrade very soon.

I've seen the 10" model for $400 on Amazon - I highly recommend it.
 
A refurbished iPad 3 is your best bet. Although for a kid I don't see how you could go wrong with an iPad Mini.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top