- Joined
- Jul 5, 2011
- Messages
- 1,316
Obviously a certain gift-giving holiday is coming up shortly and I've been looking at tablets the last few months for asking as a gift. But I'm in something of a conundrum with the <$300 ones available. No phone company contracts wanted.
I really like the look/feel of the Nexus 7, and its benchmarks are far and away higher in most all categories than the other 2-3 I've looked at. It's also got access to Google's Play store which is a huge plus IMO. But being limited to the 16GB one w/out the microSD card port puts a bit of a damper on it. It can be remedied with things like Dropbox and gmail for storage, but still.
The other I've looked at is the newer Fire HDX, which looks nice and everything, but being anchored to Amazon's stuff only puts a massive hamper on app selection. Some would complain about the ads the cheaper version has embedded in it, but if they're on just screen savers and the lock screen I really can't imagine them being obtrusive in day to day activities. Also having Prime obviously gives this one a bit more sway, but I really can't imagine myself using it for movies and whatnot when I've got a LCD TV for that stuff, and the small screen isn't exactly even remotely close to the quality said TV has.
The third actually just came on my radar tonight: the Samsung Galaxy Tab 3 8.0. Saw it at Costco for $259 or so and was intrigued, so I looked up some information about it after getting home. Most I've seen however state that, while it's not a bad tablet, it's overshadowed by its $350 brother, the Galaxy Note 3. And with the Black Friday deals Costco has going on, it'd end up getting $50 lopped off, even online. Also coming with a bunch of "features" like a Google Play store credit and 50GB Dropbox deal doesn't hurt either, and to boot it has a microSD port.
Any other ideas as to a sub $300 tablet? I lean towards the Nexus thanks to a lot of things, but I'm still on the fence about a lot of it all. Most of it would be used for just everyday dinking around with, not really multimedia stuff.
I really like the look/feel of the Nexus 7, and its benchmarks are far and away higher in most all categories than the other 2-3 I've looked at. It's also got access to Google's Play store which is a huge plus IMO. But being limited to the 16GB one w/out the microSD card port puts a bit of a damper on it. It can be remedied with things like Dropbox and gmail for storage, but still.
The other I've looked at is the newer Fire HDX, which looks nice and everything, but being anchored to Amazon's stuff only puts a massive hamper on app selection. Some would complain about the ads the cheaper version has embedded in it, but if they're on just screen savers and the lock screen I really can't imagine them being obtrusive in day to day activities. Also having Prime obviously gives this one a bit more sway, but I really can't imagine myself using it for movies and whatnot when I've got a LCD TV for that stuff, and the small screen isn't exactly even remotely close to the quality said TV has.
The third actually just came on my radar tonight: the Samsung Galaxy Tab 3 8.0. Saw it at Costco for $259 or so and was intrigued, so I looked up some information about it after getting home. Most I've seen however state that, while it's not a bad tablet, it's overshadowed by its $350 brother, the Galaxy Note 3. And with the Black Friday deals Costco has going on, it'd end up getting $50 lopped off, even online. Also coming with a bunch of "features" like a Google Play store credit and 50GB Dropbox deal doesn't hurt either, and to boot it has a microSD port.
Any other ideas as to a sub $300 tablet? I lean towards the Nexus thanks to a lot of things, but I'm still on the fence about a lot of it all. Most of it would be used for just everyday dinking around with, not really multimedia stuff.
