back to article 2011's Best... Premium Tablets

Now, we're going to annoy some of you with this one. Choosing the year's best tablet is easy. Picking one that'll appeal to the more vocal Reg readers is easy too. Selecting a different one because you think it's right is another matter, however. But let's say from the outset: all of the five tablets that follow are ones we'd …

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  1. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    This is going to get heated!

    1. Tony Smith, Editor, Reg Hardware (Written by Reg staff)

      Re:

      Yeah, might be the one that finally tips Barry Shitpeas over the edge. :-)

      1. K. Adams
        IT Angle

        Barry S. ...?

        For those of us Yanks situated West of the Big Pond, could we get some cultural edification as to whom/what "Barry S." refers?

        1. dogged

          Re: Barry S...?

          Charlie Brooker uses his producer, under the name Barry Shitpeas which is not his name, to give moronic man-in-the-street talking head opinions when he wants to demonstrate that the public are stupid.

          I don't think _our_ Barry has a sense of irony.

  2. Bear Features

    Wot no xoom? #fail

    1. Gene Cash Silver badge
      Thumb Down

      Xoom is serious rubbish

      I love my Motorola Droid, but my Xoom was a ripoff. I discovered it's nearly impossible to transfer files from my Linux box, the screen looks nasty after a day of use, Bluetooth crashes the machine a lot, there's no charging over USB as you must use the proprietary brick, and the SD card slot pretty much doesn't work.

      In short, it holds down papers well, and plays an excellent game of Solitaire.

      1. David Harper 1
        FAIL

        A satisfied Xoom owner writes ...

        "I discovered it's nearly impossible to transfer files from my Linux box"

        I don't have any problems with this. I run an ssh server on my Linux box, and an SFTP client on the Xoom. Job done.

        "there's no charging over USB as you must use the proprietary brick"

        USB provides power at 5 volts, but the Xoom has a 7.4 volt battery. Ye cannae change the law of physics, as a well-known Scotsman once said.

  3. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    If I was buying for someone else the last tablet I would consider would be an apple device.

    This isn't an anything but apple rant - I have friends with apples and the biggest complaint is connectivity. All my tablets connect to all my computers and USB sticks without any problems at all.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      WTF?

      change the cave dweller mindset :P

      tell your friends to think different at least when it comes to connectivity. it's there and it's great, but it's not old school. why do you have so many tablets (all your tablets)? If you personally have more than one, then you didn't find the right one yet.

    2. Giles Jones Gold badge

      Depends what you like doing with your spare time. The last thing I want to do when I get home is driving over to someone's house to fix a problem on their tablet.

  4. tmTM

    Samsung and Sony price

    What are they thinking, exactly the same price as an ipad two, but running the inferior Tegra2 chipset.

    I can understand the lawsuits now, Samsung are being sued for the downright cheek to compare the 10.1 to the ipad2.

  5. Richard Johnson 1

    I like how you kept the reveal to the end, to ensure people read at least 80% of the reviews...

  6. eSeM

    Screen Ratio?

    4:3 screen ratio on the iPad is pretty crap for watching movies unless seriously cropped.

    Video is *so* much better on the other tablets.

    :-)

    1. Tony Smith, Editor, Reg Hardware (Written by Reg staff)

      Re: Screen Ratio?

      True, but there's a lot more to do with a tablet than watch video on it.

      1. Oninoshiko

        Re Alot more to do

        Examples please.

        I have one of the iPad2s, and so far it only gets used for Pandora, some technical PDFs, and TED talks.

        None of that is vary often.

      2. JEDIDIAH
        Linux

        Dropping th ball.

        > True, but there's a lot more to do with a tablet than watch video on it.

        ...yes and none of that really depends on the aspect ratio of the screen.

        It's pretty simple: Doing video right doesn't impact general usability.

        Real machines running real apps like web browsers do fine with the wide format and so do real books. About the only thing that's relevant for 4:3 is old TV shows and similarly ancient computer monitors.

        it's simply not 1988 anymore.

    2. Steve Evans

      @eSeM

      Not that aspect ratio has ever stopped laptop manufacturers building so-called business machines with movie viewing 16:9 screens.

      *rolls eyes and sticks with his ever ageing 1400x1050 Thinkpad*

  7. Christian Berger

    I'd like to have one with Debian/Ubuntu

    Ideally with some slide-out or clamshell keyboard. I don't want an Apstore, I want a distribution.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Mmm...Slider with E17

      If only nVidia would release the drivers, and Asus had stuck to standard ports...

    2. K. Adams
      Linux

      "Ideally with some slide-out or clamshell keyboard."

      They already make those... They're called "feature phones" and "laptops," respectively... :-)

      Although I do agree with you - in the main - on OS selection. I think it would be really cool to be able to combine a full-featured GNU/Linux-based OS with a slate form-factor machine.

      I have an HP tx2z-1300 "convert-a-tablet" which runs Linux Mint quite happily, but isn't really practical when used in its tablet mode, except to take hand-written notes in Xournal, with the unit sitting firmly on a desk.

    3. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Someone had the gen 1 Transformer dual booting Ubuntu

      Not sure how well it ran.

      A friend of mine (an Apple aficionado) was telling me today that he thinks the new Transformer, sticking with Android, will work for him as a general purpose computer. He said he was about to order an iPad until he started playing around with some uber-cheap Android slabs that he had bought for his kids. He said the deciding factor vs the iPad was really the local filesystem - which doesn't really exist for an iOS user.

  8. NHS IT guy
    Thumb Up

    I agree

    Been looking at a fondleslab for myself and my partner lately. Have played with an array of Android tablets, the BB playbook, but we both independently settled on the iPad 2.

    It's super slim, best range of apps, most consistent interface, best battery life and biggest range of accessories. Although we did argue over colour, him white and me black.

  9. Kristian Walsh Silver badge

    iPad is the best all-rounder, but...

    ... the screen is markedly inferior to the panel in the Sony. On the downside for the Sony is, of course, Android, which still isn't ready for tablets. (iOS is a bit weak for larger screens too, but it was coming from a better designed mobile version).

    Also, kudos to Sony for exploring different form factors. I can see what they're going for in the S, but the "spine" is on the wrong side to feel like a paperback book to European reader. (Yes, I know you can turn it around, but its weight distribution means you tend to hold it with the thick bit at the right)

    As someone who'll probably return to OSX (from Windows 7) for my next laptop, I'm actually very interested in seeing what Windows 8 will bring in tablets before I decide on something to leave in the living-room.

  10. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    I've only seen page one of this article....

    ...but I bet the Ipad 2 wins/gets recommended.

    Tell me I'm wrong.

  11. Gio Ciampa

    Style vs Substance

    Any chance of a slight rewrite? One where the first two-thirds of each "review" isn't about how it looks... but how it functions instead?

    Thanks

  12. ElNumbre
    Stop

    Subjective Styling.

    I for one like the styling of the EEE, its all very subjective. I don't particularly like the Acer which is too boxy, and the Sony feels a bit 'fisher price' for my liking.

  13. Nick Roberts
    Happy

    Transformer ugly?

    "why did Asus have to make it so fugly?"

    Mate it with the keyboard, and suddenly it's actually rather beautiful. The tablet itself does look like it was designed to be half a nettop, for sure.

    1. Tony Smith, Editor, Reg Hardware (Written by Reg staff)

      Re: Transformer ugly?

      It does look better with the keyboard, yes. But then you may as well have an 11in Ultrabook and it'll look better still - though cost you more.

      1. Nick Roberts

        Yeah, about twice as much. Personally, I would go down that Ultrabook route, but my need is more for something that will edit photos, and I'm talking big DSLR files, rather than more typical tablet uses - for which I've got my phone. However, I bought a tablet for my wife for her birthday - I would've bought her an iPad 2, for the reasons you gave, but they were out of stock - so got her the Transformer. Must say she loves it, and I think it's the second-best tablet user experience in terms of touchscreen - not quite as good as the Apple - but far more usable overall with all the built-in extras and that keyboard. Which makes the better present, though? ;)

        Forgot to say - good, well-balanced article.

      2. dogged

        Prime

        The Transformer Prime is pretty gorgeous, to be fair. Asus learned from its prototype.

        1. Tony Smith, Editor, Reg Hardware (Written by Reg staff)

          Re: Prime

          Spot the potential winner of the *2012* list.

          1. M Gale

            Spot the potential winner of the "2012" list.

            iPad 2S?

      3. Ramazan
        Holmes

        ultrabook? No way

        I had several ultrabooks and now I'm going to buy another one, although it's piece of history already - Sony VAIO X505-VP. Modern "ultrabooks" all have a CPU blower fan, and moreover, I _never_ managed to finish Machinarium game on the the top-of-the-spec MacBook Air because of overheating and kernel_task kicking in before "owl" level. By definition everything with active cooler sucks, but tablets, the Asus Transformer and some elitist notebooks like Samsung Q40 and Sony X505 don't have one and may be considered more or less equal, but The Ultrabooks? No way.

    2. Shannon Jacobs
      Flame

      My experience with ASUS was awful

      I had some recent experience with ASUS and I can't say anything good about the company. The website was remarkably useless. At one point I'm directed to a webpage for my device and it's pointing at something completely different. Presumably they had pasted an old webpage and planned to update it, but never got around to it.

      However, the part that over-annoyed me was the promise of 48-hour support that turned out to be 6-day response--with the question "Is this problem solved ?" (sic)

      Difficult to accomplish, but the ASUS people motivated me to switch to a Toshiba. New small model that the Register hasn't seen yet. Or perhaps the price prevented them recommending it?

  14. Magnus Ramage
    Megaphone

    But but but <splutter>

    What about the HP TouchPad? Good looking apps, strong integration with online services, great screen (and it's 4:3). There's the little matter that you can't buy one any more, and the other little matter that the apps have severely reduced functionality in places, but hey. I like my TouchPad a great deal, but that does have a lot to do with having paid the firesale price rather than the full price.

    Actually I understand perfectly well why the TouchPad's not on this list, but a year ago it might well have been expected to be there. (And the PlayBook too for that matter.)

    Still looking forward to the good quality £200 Android tablets we've been promised for a while now.

    1. Tony Smith, Editor, Reg Hardware (Written by Reg staff)

      Re: But but but

      You mean the one that no one can buy now? Tangentially referred to in the intro.

      1. Ramazan
        Pint

        no one can buy now?

        So is the X505, but everything is possible if you invest some time and effort

      2. Craigness

        So that's what it was!

        I thought another round-cornered ipad killer had been given the special treatment.

  15. James 51

    no playbook?

  16. Andrew 6
    Pint

    Asus Transformer Prime

    Anyone at el reg managed to get there hands on a review model yet?

    If you have one laying around Ill happily write a review of it in exchange for keeping it

    After I've named it Rodimus

    1. Tony Smith, Editor, Reg Hardware (Written by Reg staff)

      Re: Asus Transformer Prime

      You'd have read the review if we had. We're on the case, though. Watch this space.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Joke

        @Tony smith 16:18

        'Watch this space' You mean watch your comment?

  17. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    No surprise there - the only real niggle people raise about the iPad is that you can't stick your own / extra memory card in it - so what. You can use the camera adapter to transfer photos / media if you want and you just buy the model you need.

    Do you buy your new car with a 1.8l engine and whinge because you can't add another 0.5l later on?

    1. JEDIDIAH
      Devil

      Fanboy silliness.

      Now here we get into one of my personal favorites that did not make the list: the Thrive.

      You don't need any extra dongles that you are likely to use, you can just plug straight into the device itself. It's large enough that it can easily accommodate a real USB port and an HDMI port.

      Why buy an inferior product you know you will have to buy extras for?

      Having actually "been there and done that", I will say that an Apple dongle is a relatively expensive proprietary part that's easily lost and less easily replaced.

      You are far better of beefing up the storage in your cameras as they were likely built without the Apple groupthink mindset and can actually be expanded. Fortunately, not everyone thinks it's folly to be able to upgrade an appliance as storage technology improves.

      It is good that Apple makes neither video nor still cameras.

    2. Lamont Cranston

      I've always been a big fan of

      buying cars with doors/boots, so that I can put what I want into them.

  18. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    May the best tablet win - oh it did... well done iPad.

  19. Rufus

    What's the point of the Reg Rating.

    Four of the five tablets score an identical 85%!

    Or this another in-joke I've missed.

    1. Tony Smith, Editor, Reg Hardware (Written by Reg staff)

      Re: What's the point of the Reg Rating.

      We will be doing a special Barry Shitpeas edition next week where the Sony and Asus get 110% and the Apple gets 0%. Will that make your purchase decision easier?

      1. Arctic fox
        Trollface

        @Tony Smith. I take your point.

        However I don't think that giving Mr BS (and he is a master of it) any more publicity serves any constructive purpose.

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Mr Shitpeas frequently has a point, regardless of whether there's a full head of steam being cooked up as it is made.

          Continually naming and shaming the guy when his right to reply is obviously curtailed somewhat - if he cuts too close to the bone, you'll just nuke his comments - is pretty gutless and juvenile. Register article writers get several pages to push an agenda (wonder who I'm thinking of), and the comments section is the place where the readership gets to call them out in a pretty limited fashion. If the article writers can't take a bit of criticism, they shouldn't be writing their stuff in the first place.

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