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back to article The best tablets for Christmas

Thank God for Microsoft. Without it and its new Surface tablet this article would be nothing more than me running around having an Android versus iOS argument with myself. Thankfully, as with smartphones, the arrival of Windows 8, here in its RT incarnation, has saved mankind from a bipolar tablet OS nightmare. More …

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    1. Anonymous Coward
      Reply Icon
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: iPads feeling expensive now

      The Nexus 7 has got a 1280x800 resolution, the Nexus 10 twice that in both dimensions. 1280/800=1.6 so that works out as 16:10 for both. Not as good as 4:3 in my book but still a lot better than 16:9.

      I bought both Nexi and am really pleased with them. My wife and the kids mostly use the 10 while I have the 7 to comment on Reg articles while on my way to work. I really like the fact that you can set up separate accounts for each user on the Nexus.

      Personally I don't mind Google's data aggregation needs as much as others do. The Chocolate Factory is giving me plenty in return.

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    2. R Varia
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      Re: iPads feeling expensive now

      I have 3 android tablets but even I have say the if you have a Apple eco system with an iphone or Mac PC then iPad is better choice then android. Plus apple aftersales is way ahead of anything I have seen from any android manufacture. Also they may not be VFM but if you have the cash and are want something that 'just works' then apple is still a good choice.

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  2. Anonymous Coward
    Stop

    Asus

    The Asus tablets maybe are a bit pricey but way better than Acer.

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    1. The Alpha Klutz
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      Thumb Up

      Re: Asus

      yeah but you could say that about any equivalent product.

      Acer use the nice cheap plastics that look like shit and fall apart, and for that you save maybe 10% over a correctly built unit from another manufacturer.

      Acer are shit.

      1 1
    2. DrXym
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      Re: Asus

      I've never had a problem with an Acer device which wasn't my own fault (e.g. spilling a drink over a laptop). But my ASUS Transformer is nice and will probably benefit from an upgrade to 4.2 soon.

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  3. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Why not buy your wife a gold plated ring or a stainless steel one - sure she would not mind - cheapskate.

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    1. The Alpha Klutz
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      Thumb Up

      my wife is lucky to get food

      10 3
      1. Silverburn
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        Windows

        <--- you want this icon, Alpha...;-)

        1 0
      2. Christopher Rogers
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        Go

        You need to send the staff to Waitrose more often

        1 0
      3. Anonymous Coward
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        Anonymous Coward

        my wife is lucky to get food

        That's epic, grin. I really want to be around when your wife gets to read this..

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      4. Law
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        Trollface

        "my wife is lucky to get food"

        Food? LUXURY!!!!

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  4. Mad Frankie
    Meh

    I love the Register's reviews. They might like to give some good kit a percentage number that is different to 85 in the future - just to liven things up a bit.

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    1. Ian Yates
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      Pint

      Agreed. It would be nice to know what the top three could have done for the extra 15%.

      He described the N7 as almost impossible to beat (amongst other hyperbole), but 85% leaves a large gap for someone to improve (assuming there are quantifiable reasons for the score).

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    2. Benchops
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      Headmaster

      Why multiples of 5 %points?

      El Reg's department of measures and standardisation should be insisting on a pericosage score.

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  5. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    what about the really cheap....

    ... android tablets you cab get for 50-60 quid? I appreciate they are not a Nexus in spec, build quality or (ease of putting on) upgrades, but my word are they good value by comparison. The only real downside I've found with them is battery life - but for a medium bus or train journey they are fine. I think they warrant more of a mention - if your needs are moderate they can't be beaten IMHO.

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  6. Silverburn
    WTF?

    Photoshop fail

    Check out the hand on the ipad photo, page 2.

    Either the ipad is actually a 5.5" version, or the guy (and it is a guy) picking it up is an 8 foot tall gorilla.

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    1. Pete 2 Silver badge
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      Re: Photoshop fail

      I think the hand is on an ipad mini.

      Though you're right: it does illustrate just how tiny the display is. Can you really do anything useful, apart from merely consume content, on such a small screen?

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      1. Zaphod.Beeblebrox
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        FAIL

        Re: Photoshop fail

        Even for an iPad mini, that hand is too large by far. Makes it look like a largish phone.

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      2. JDX Gold badge
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        Re: Photoshop fail

        >>Can you really do anything useful, apart from merely consume content, on such a small screen?

        Well you can do everything you can do on your phone, better. So that's email, games and web-browsing covered. And you can read books on it. So, yes.

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        1. mrfill
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          Stop

          Re: Photoshop fail

          Can you make a phone call with it?

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  7. RegKees

    more than apps

    Depends on who you're buying for. A nexus 10 is going to be a disappointment to your parents.

    Calling the Nexus 10 a great media device, when most of the media delivery is through scaled up phone apps is a biased opinion at best.

    If you like to fiddle, sure go ahead. Android is good on phones, but nowhere near on the tablet yet.

    It's not just the apps, it's the whole integration between devices, even within those apps, that sets the Apple eco system apart. I know Google claims much the same, but it isn't at the same level yet. And since they do not control as much of the eco system as Apple does (arguably a plus in some ways), they will probably never be able to do the same tight integration between all devices and OSs.

    If I'm catching up on some news on my iPad in the dedicated news app, I can put it down and pick up my iPhone in the train and continue on with the article, including my reading history. All of that could be done on Android, but no dedicated tablet app even exists, and the Android phone app does't sync.

    I come home and Safari shows the tabs I have open on my iPhone on my MacBook Air, and is uploading the pictures I took on the phone today to it over wifi without any user interaction. Getting Android to do such things requires a lot more work and knowledge.

    I have enough to deal with during the day, I don't usually feel a sudden urge to make the interface's text purple, I just want to pick up where I left off, regardless of the device I pick up. Apple is still way ahead here, and frankly, Google might not have the same possibilities Apple does.

    This is why it is so interesting to see where Microsoft is headed with Windows 8. W8 should have been better, frankly, but there is a lot of potential there.

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    1. Jonathon Green
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      Trollface

      Re: more than apps

      "Calling the Nexus 10 a great media device, when most of the media delivery is through scaled up phone apps is a biased opinion at best."

      On the other hand it can play high definition video from .mkv files (and other non-iApproved iFormats) without outside assistance, which is more than my iPad can manage...

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      1. Richard 81
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        Re: more than apps

        "non-iApproved iFormats"

        That would be anything that's not m4a.

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      2. Steve Todd
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        Stop

        Re: more than apps

        Converting MKV to M4V is fast and easy. Most MKVs use h264 video anyway so it's mostly just re-multiplexing. Look at an app like Subler.

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        1. Nick De Plume
          Reply Icon
          FAIL

          Re: more than apps

          "Converting MKV to M4V is fast and easy. Most MKVs use h264 video anyway so it's mostly just re-multiplexing. Look at an app like Subler."

          Why sit in front of a computer and convert if you don't have to? And doesn't that kind of defeat the purpose? My el-cheapo Nexus 7 can stream from my home network (a cheap Seagate HDD attached to my router) or play off a USB stick without converting. anything. avi, divx/xvid, mpeg, mkv, you name it.

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          1. Steve Todd
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            Re: more than apps - @Nick De Plume

            When I can convert a 1GB MKV to M4V, while at the same time adding Internet sourced cover art and meta-data, in about 30 seconds, why would this be an issue?

            It looks like the Fandroids haven't found a decent re multiplexer yet given the number of down votes that got. Maybe they should explore the options, they may be surprised.

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            1. Al Jones
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              Re: more than apps - @Nick De Plume

              @Steve Todd

              if you "can convert a 1GB MKV to M4V, while at the same time adding Internet sourced cover art and meta-data, in about 30 seconds" why does Apple make you jump through that hoop, instead of just letting you play the file without converting it?

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            2. Jonathon Green
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              Re: more than apps - @Nick De Plume

              @Steve Todd: "It looks like the Fandroids haven't found a decent re multiplexer yet given the number of down votes that got. Maybe they should explore the options, they may be surprised."

              Well, with my Fandroid head on snd my Samsung Galaxy in my hand I don't need the remuxer because everything Just Works. With my Fanboi head on and my iPad 2 in my hands (which as it happens it is, because that's what I'm posting from!) I've got several remuxers and:

              A) The files I've been working with (motorsport events which aren't broadcast in the UK) are considerably over 1GB and none of the remuxers are anything like as fast as you suggest when working with 8GB files, OK my PC is getting on a bit, but it works just fine for everything else and I'm damned if I'm going to replace a machine I'm otherwise quite happy with...

              and

              B) Every now and then something in the chain objects to the audio encoding in the mkv and the only way round it is splitting out the audio and re-encoding which is a PITA .

              Bottom line is that not supporting common formats which everything else in the house (couple of Samsung phones and a couple of set-top streaming media players) will quite happily work with s a bit poor, and while it's not neccessarily a complete deal breaker it's a considerable black mark for some people, myself included...

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      3. RegKees
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        Re: more than apps

        typing mkv in the search box at the app store is a bit over your head, yeah?

        It's the whole point of the iPad. The more 'advanced' stuff to set up Apple offers an automated solution (the syncing of tabs, notes ,email, photos etc) while for anything it doesn't do, you get an app.

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    2. Anonymous Coward
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      Anonymous Coward

      Re: more than apps

      You seem to have a fundamental misunderstanding of the Android ecosystem.

      Firstly, regarding so-called "dedicated tablet apps", what you are really referring to is adjustments made for different screen dimensions and resolutions. This may be a significant thing for iOS apps, since they have a comparatively small set of possibilities, where dimensions tend to be integer multiples of each other. Android apps on the other hand have always had to dynamically scale for quite different and arbitrary screen dimensions, so the first thing they do is determine the pixel dimensions of the device they are running on, and scale accordingly. Sure, some of the older apps may look a little minimalist if they were never intended for a tablet, but they won't suffer from black bar syndrome or pixel doubling, unlike some other ecosystems.

      Secondly, nobody does cloud syncing better than Google. The browser bookmarks I have on my PC are automatically copied to my Android device - same goes for calendar appointments, Google News settings, email, etc. Note that this happens transparently across completely different ecosystems (in this case Windows and Android), so I am not locked in to a walled garden.

      Best of all, though, I am in control. I am able to change things to suit myself. I regard that as essential, because nobody on this planet knows what I want as well as I do.

      18 2
      1. Lunatik
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        Re: more than apps

        @mutatedwombat

        I was going to comment almost exactly the same thing. Having recently switched to iPhone from Android (and borderline regretting it) I now realise that I wasn't even aware how slick the de facto Android/Chrome syncing of just about everything across phone, tablet & PC (Win, Mac or even Linux I guess) had become.

        Trying to straddle two ecosystems is almost impossible if you want to achieve seamless syncing. Articles like this

        http://www.theverge.com/2012/12/5/3732364/best-way-gmail-google-calendar-iphone-how-to

        only illustrate how broken Google syncing of the simple things (mail, contacts & calendar) is on iOS, never mind the hidden stuff like browsing tabs, history, custom dictionaries etc.

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    3. 20legend
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      Re: more than apps

      'I come home and Safari shows the tabs I have open on my iPhone on my MacBook Air, and is uploading the pictures I took on the phone today to it over wifi without any user interaction. Getting Android to do such things requires a lot more work and knowledge.'

      Only if you are a complete fu*king idiot!!!

      I guess you've not used the sync option in Chrome on a 'droid before - which amazingly allows you to access the tabs open on other devices you are running Chrome on from the one you are currently using.

      While St Steve may have determined which apps an iUser WILL use for particular functions, Google on the other hand, didn't. Therefore I use MY choice of app (in this case SugarSync) to launch my photos (and any other files I want, for that matter) into the cloud automatically, on the fly (3g or wifi) which once again, by some form of robot magic, allows me instant access and sharing from any other device running the Sugarsync client, or through the web portal if the client isn't installed.

      So very simple, a child could do it..........

      12 3
      1. RegKees
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        Re: more than apps

        no. Android doesn't do this for you, so you have to search out a solution for yourself, that's exactly my point.

        I will not debate that this works for many semi savy users, but my point was that this requires no installation in iOS, and no setup. You buy an iOS device, and check the relevant box during setup and the photo syncing just happens.

        YOU may not find that desirable, but people that have no interest in figuring that stuff out by themselves (the vast majority) love that kind of automatic setup.

        And I like it too, I'm sure I could get it to work on Android, but I have better things to do with my time than fiddling with tablet settings, sorry.

        3 8
        1. GregC
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          Photo syncing

          @RegKees - my photos are available on all my Android devices, with no input from me. It all happens automagically via Picasa.

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          1. Steve Todd
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            Stop

            Re: Photo syncing

            Stop me if I'm wrong, but is not Picasa something you need to know about and install? In what way does it make @RegKees comment incorrect?

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            1. Nick De Plume
              Reply Icon
              Go

              Re: Photo syncing

              "Stop me if I'm wrong, but is not Picasa something you need to know about and install? In what way does it make @RegKees comment incorrect?"

              Picasa the windows/osx application is a pretty decent photo manager you need to know about and install.

              Picasa the service is something you automatically have if you have a google account. It keeps and sorts (and shares if you like, etc) your photos. It works in conjunction with your default Gallery app on your Android device (in fact, it works transparently).

              4 0
        2. Anonymous Coward
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          Anonymous Coward

          Re: more than apps

          The photos I take on my phone are automatically uploaded to Google+ (not published, but ready for publishing when I want to). I am not aware of a storage limit, so far it's taken all I cared to throw at it and that includes photos and videos. I was asked when I set the phone up whether I'd like photos to be uploaded at all and whether that should happen only while on Wifi or on 3G as well. When I set up my tablet, all those photos magically appeared on it as well.

          The feature is called Instant Upload and you can read more about it here: http://support.google.com/plus/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=1647509

          They are not though automatically synched to my computer and I haven't researched how that would be done but it's overall not a far cry from what you describe. And considering we live in the "post-PC" world according to Apple and I'm indeed using my laptop less and less it covers my needs quite well.

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        3. Al Taylor
          Reply Icon
          Alert

          Re: more than apps

          " You buy an iOS device, and check the relevant box during setup and the photo syncing just happens."

          You buy an Android device, sign in with a Google account and all your photos, books, documents, starred map locations, YouTube preferences, Google+ stuff and music all appear on your new device. No need to check a box, download an app or do anything else.

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      2. Anonymous Coward
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        Anonymous Coward

        Re: more than apps

        "So very simple, that ONLY a child can do it"

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        1. dajames
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          Thumb Up

          Re: more than apps

          "So very simple, that ONLY a child can do it"

          Upvoted, but only for the Tom Lehrer quote ... I've quite lost track of who's making which points in this, er, debate!

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    4. Anonymous Coward
      Reply Icon
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: more than apps

      "Calling the Nexus 10 a great media device, when most of the media delivery is through scaled up phone apps is a biased opinion at best."

      I'm guessing you are still living in 2009, or believe the tripe that Apple wheel out at their conference as fact.

      The reality is, almost all the main Android apps have tablet layouts included in the APK. Since ICS merged tablet and phone, things have moved on MASSIVELY, not only in apps, but in the quality of Android tablets.

      They are way more functional, easier to use (nobody forces you to use widgets or "turn the text purple"), and there are plenty of apps that allow you to continue reading where you left off. My parents have a Kobo and a Nexus7 with the Kobo app, and it does precisely that.

      The only tool here is you, trying to justify your overpriced and simplistic crap.

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      1. Frumious Bandersnatch
        Reply Icon

        Re: more than apps

        The reality is, almost all the main Android apps have tablet layouts included in the APK.

        Yup. I see this line or variations of it, such that Android layout looks shit because its too hard for developers to code for the myriad screen sizes (and orientation). In fact, if you've ever looked at the UI design parts of the Android SDK, you'll find that they have great support for tailoring the look of your app to differing screen sizes, and probably (like me) find it easy to understand and implement UI design using the SDK. In particular, they define various constants relating to screen size, dpi and relative icon size and so on so that you can either dynamically reorganise your UI at runtime, or pre-bake a set of default UIs and then select the one that's closest to the properties of the physical screen (or do a bit of both, if you wish). If you want to delve a bit into OpenGL, you can also create a mipmap for each icon and then interpolate to the correct scale, or you can just provided a set of fixed-resolution images and let Android select the best one.

        More recent versions of Android (3.0) and up also have the idea of "Fragments" to make dynamically-scaled/rotated UIs even easier to build. More importantly, though, they make it easy to radically alter the UI layout depending of screen size and orientation, say by presenting a two-panel display on a large, landscape tablet, while omitting less important options (relegated to the action menu) from smaller or portrait displays.

        As for the specific claim that media delivery is scaled up, you're surely having a laugh, right? Surely "media delivery" just means playing a video, and I can't imagine any media player that can't handle matching the video stream dimensions to the physical screen dimensions? Ludicrous.

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    5. Anonymous Coward
      Reply Icon
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: more than apps

      So here's the thing. The majority of your post is about the experience by having multiple devices - and so is completely irrelevant for someone looking to buy a single device.

      And another thing; much of what you then go on to claim is just stuff that *you* find useful - and which I already do just fine in my way on multiple Android devices (Feedly for news, Chrome allows me to open any page that I've been reading on any other device I've used Chrome on). There are plenty of other use cases which Android users could state which Apple users would struggle to replicate the experience.

      I can't think of a single Andoid app I use which allows me to "make the interface's text purple" so I've no idea where you're coming from on that.

      So I'm glad you like Apple devices. I don't. I'm glad you can easily do what you want to do on Apple devices. I can easily do what I want to do just fine on Andoid devices. But I don't feel the need to go around disparaging other people just because they have different needs, desires and aims to me.

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    6. csumpi
      Reply Icon
      Stop

      Re: more than apps

      @RegKees: You have absolutely no clue what you are talking about. None. What you are saying is so stupid, it's not even worth correcting.

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    7. Radelix
      Reply Icon
      Devil

      Re: more than apps

      Chrome syncs my pages from the desktop to desktop to laptop to phone and to tablet. Pictures are auto sync'd to G+ ( yes I do use it). You should know the kindle app. And news is done with pulse, currents, and flipboard which of course sync respectively between devices and come with handy tablet friendly UI's. And of course this is all syncing between a Xoom, gnex, and N4.

      And my favorite part.

      "well I sign into my mac and all my stuff downloads and syncs" as a recent convert to Apple told me recently. My response being "If I sign into gmail then all my stuff is there too, no synching required." Their response: "...".

      I know I'm tied to El Goog but at least I know what they are doing with my data.

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      1. <shakes head>
        Reply Icon

        Re: more than apps

        Do you?

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  8. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Cut 'n' Paste

    Shouldn't "2012's top e-book readers: the best..." actually say Tablets, rather than be an exact copy of the text from yesterday's top e-book reader article?

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  9. David Gosnell

    Better than the Gadget Show anyway

    (as if that's difficult, these days)

    Their small tablet comparison ran to the iPad Mini and the Kindle Fire HD, and that's yer lot... I guess Apple and Amazon paid them not to include the Nexus 7, which would have wiped the floor with both of them. I can't even remember which one won, so irrelevant it became in an instant.

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  10. Longrod_von_Hugendong
    FAIL

    Sometimes...

    i wonder why i both reading el reg after shit like this - Basically this article could be summed up as, never used either a Surface or an iAnythig, i LLLLOOOOOOVVVVEEEEEE my Andriod tablet. Review my arse.

    3 17
    1. Richard 81
      Reply Icon
      Devil

      Re: Sometimes...

      It's a change from the iThing reviews, which always get given to the one person in the office who loves them.

      They always end up with 90% scores and reading like Stephen Fry's blog.

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