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Tablet suggestions?
Looking to get a tablet for my birthday but I'm so disconnected I don't know what specs to look for, where to get one or a decent price range to expect. I do need something on the cheaper side, but am ok with something good if refurbished. Only ever had a tablet once and it was a "free*" one from Verizon over a decade ago. I'm also open to other device suggestions.
Wants:
- Not an iPad
- To be able to use it with an attachable keyboard as a light laptop replacement for the couch.
- To be able to use it to play mobile games similarly while on the couch.
- To set up in the kitchen when cooking with recipes or a video.
- To work for playing/running D&D or Pathfinder (Foundry VTT is the biggest memory user.
I am wanting to be able to disconnect from my phone and all the work apps and social media and such while still playing farmrpg on a lazy night watching a panel show on TV.
Or watch something on the tablet while knitting or something.
Okay, I hear you on not wanting an iPad, but…
Apple kinda cornered the tablet market just because nobody else has bothered to make a good user experience for their tablet operating system. Android tablets have so many weird limitations, either from the device manufacturer or because app developers don’t bother testing with larger screen androids. An iPad (any iPad) fits your requirements spectacularly, except the « not an iPad » requirement. I would strongly recommend you consider an iPad. Apple actually has a pretty decent return policy, and sometimes extends it during the holidays. You can buy one and return it if you don’t like it. Or ask a family member if they have one you could try for a bit.
Anyway, my personal favorite tablet in terms of hardware is the Microsoft surface line. It has an attachable keyboard for real laptop use, but separates out into a tablet with a fantastic kickstand. If you want an Android, I think Google has made some tablets in the same form factor as the surface devices. Those could be worth considering.
I use them for work and really don't like using them, plus I'd not be able to carry over my mobile games and in general I just really dont want the thing.
I also don't need super high performance, I just don't want to get a cheap tablet like the "free*" one that runs like junk and has no memory.
I have not, other than work/school reqs, used Apple since iTunes came out and fucked up all my totally legitimate mp3 files by helping me organize them. I don't anticipate that changing. Open to Microsoft or Google though.
Agree, surfaces are the best non apple tablet by a wide margin, but an iPad Pro is better than a surface by a similar margin.
I've been a huge android fan on phones for years, and generally speaking prefer PC over Mac, but I have an iPad and would never even consider an Android tablet. They are just miles ahead of the competition and it isn't even close.
Otherwise probably a Surface device might be the next best thing if OP is adamant about not iPad.
My tablets of choice are iPads for reasons outlined in a sibling reply, so I can't necessarily give a recommendation, but I can share my experience.
I have a couple of Android tablets I use for app dev/testing:
The first is intended as a stand-in for a crappy cheap Android device, for which it's quite suited. It's quite slow and plods along with just about any imaginable task. The display is surprisingly decent for its original price point, but the 16:9 aspect ratio is for practical purposes only usable in landscape mode because in portrait, it's awkwardly skinny and doesn't fit printed documents like PDFs or manga without either horizontal scrolling or a big chunk of vertical empty space. Bundled crapware is present but not overbearing. It might have accessories like keyboard covers for it but I think those would be a waste of money given the assuredly short useful lifetime of the device (OS/app requirement creep will bog it down even further with time). Overall I'd recommend spending a bit more on something nicer even for basic usage.
The S8+ is a much higher end device. Display is great which is no surprise with Samsung being one of the premier OLED panel manufacturers. It's speedy enough that most users would be hard pressed to find issues with performance. Its 16:10 aspect ratio is less lopsided than the Lenovo's 16:9 and is a much closer fit to paper documents, but at its size it still feels awkwardly tall. Accessory ecosystem (keyboard covers, etc) is vastly more robust. Its biggest negative point though is the trademark dump truck of crapware that Samsung is famous for… this can be disabled if you're a little handy with a terminal and disable packages via
adbwith a computer, but not an amazing out of the box experience.I don't own one and have never used their products, but on the Android side of things, OnePlus' Pad lineup has caught my eye on multiple occasions. The Pad 3 (13") and Pad Go 2 (12") in particular look like the closest thing to Android clones of iPads without crossing into brands where availability may be limited (Xiaomi, etc). Their more square 7:5 aspect ratio is nicely balanced and practical for portrait use while still being wide enough for multitasking in landscape, and they sell a case with integrated KB+trackpad for the Pad 3 which should make it quite laptop-like.
Windows tablets are an utter mystery to me because nothing I've seen indicates that the Windows pure touch experience is anywhere near as good of that as "real" mobile operating systems, and the Intel based options (which are the most interesting for perfect software compatibility) are all markedly hotter, noisier, and more power hungry than their ARM counterparts.
Thanks for the info
I don't want a lot in the way of accessories, just the ability to type if say I want to do a longer Tildes post for example. I'll have to go through and make some lists.
The Samsung Galaxy Tab S6 Lite (2022 or 2024 models) can be found for very cheap used/refurbished (often <100$), and has pretty good stylus support (so, good for digital art if you want a really cheap standalone drawing tablet). I can't say how it would perform for Foundry VTT or mobile games, but my S6 lite has been pretty good for various art tasks. My one gripe with it is the aspect ratio, I would have preferred a more square aspect ratio, rather than the narrow-ish 16:10.
Thanks. Worth looking into. Definitely open to a refurb
A fellow knitter!
I picked up a pixel tablet pretty cheap. It satisfied everything I might need to use a tablet for. If you don't like the Google ecosystem, look elsewhere.
I use a Pixel phone, just had never heard much about Pixel tablets. Worth checking out, ty!
And yes, I haven't really done much this past year and I want to get back into it. Life has been hard.
+1 for the Pixel Tablet. I bought one for my iPhone using wife, and she's enjoyed it. About two years old and like the Pixel phones, performance is still great. Great integration with the dock, too.
I have a Galaxy Tab S7 FE which has a separate keyboard cover.
I use it mostly for digital comic reading, watching stuff while I row, and playing the occasional game. It works for all of those and I think it would clear all of your requirements.
My main complaint is that don’t love it as a laptop replacement. The keyboard works fine and is easy to connect and disconnect, but I just don’t like touching the screen in place of a mouse. It’s workable but clunky.
As a tablet though, it’s great. I don’t love Samsung’s OneUI, but I also haven’t been bothered by it enough to replace it.
Fwiw I do have a laptop still, plus I can use my work laptop at home sometimes. But comics and basically couch activities are definitely what I'm thinking about it for.
The only thing I think would strain it is using it for Foundry. Which if nothing else it could be my character sheet and I could run foundry on my laptop. (When I'm DMing it'll be a nice notes page for me)
I've been on the hunt for years now to see if there's anything I prefer over my Surface Go 2. So far: Nope.
So I know you're not interested in a Surface and that's fine, but I'm going to try and briefly go through what I've discovered by buying different tablets; in 2025 alone, I bought three different ones and none of them have supplanted my little 10" Surface Go. Keep in mind I've purchased all of these used, at a discount.
Anyway, I picked up a couple Android tablets this year, but the one I want to mention is the Samsung Galaxy Tab S7 SM-T870 128 GB, which I paid $170 for and then another $63 on eBay for a type cover and so far, I like it a lot. It has a beautiful screen, pretty good battery life, access to Samsung Dex, which is a nice approximation of a proper desktop OS. It's played every game I've thrown at it, including Civ 6 and I've successfully emulated (not a lot of) PS2 and Gamecube. I think it's really great with the pen too (mine is a knock-off third party pen) and has been great for tracking data in my tabletop wargames.
That said, I struggle to use Android. I find it annoying as hell that I can't access deep into the OS file structure and have to use all these workarounds to actually do that; I like to transfer my save files from various games around to different devices I own and it irritates the the hell out of me that I'm not trusted as a user to do so. I also dislike that it's essentially a large phone. I use an Android telephone and it's fine for that, but it feels silly to me to use it on such a big device, because I feel like I should be able to do things I can do on a proper computer. For instance, seeing multiple tabs at once in Firefox and the ability to switch windows while an app does its thing in the background. Dex helps with this, but again, I feel limited by Android and much as I really like the tablet, I keep running into these little roadblocks that drive me crazy. I also dislike that many apps and games often become deprecated; I have quite a few games I've bought that just straight-up won't work on modern versions of Android because they're too old.
It's also stuck on Android 13. I don't find this to be much of a bother personally and I do know you can install GammaOS or some other costume ROM, but I haven't bothered with that. But maybe that would resolve some of my issues with Android as an OS?
I also picked-up a Surface Pro 7 for $120 on Craiglist. It's fine. It's more powerful than my Surface Go 2, but I find the size obnoxious. It's far too large to be able to use as a tablet when I want to (which isn't often) and overall, I just find it a step down from the Surface Go 2. Obviously you don't care for that, but just figured I'd throw it out there.
Anyway, over the years I've tried half a dozen tablets and I always come back to my Surface Go 2. It's just the right size for me, has access to all the software I want, can play a good portion of my Steam and GoG libraries and works great as a tablet for when I want to read PDFs, game manuals or what have you. Yeah, it's a little more fiddly to use the touch interface on Windows, but I don't mind it at all and my usage is probably 70% laptop, 30% tablet. If I had to pick one to keep forever, I'd keep the Surface Go. That said, I'm still probably going to hang on to the Galaxy Tab, because I do want to get over my misgivings and appreciate it for what it is, rather than what it isn't.
I'm not opposed to a Surface necessarily, I just don't know much about it. I do still have a laptop that's older but serviceable and maybe long term I just need to replace it but I don't feel I can spend that much money right now.
Thanks for the other info though, worth me looking into!
FWIW, I didn't know if I'd like a Surface either, but I picked up a very basic one several years ago for about $150 to see how I liked it. Long story short, I loved it so much that I upgraded it to the 2 with a faster processor and twice the RAM. It's not a speed demon by any means, but it does what I want it to without complaint. And they're even cheaper these days than they were back then. The upgraded 2 I paid $300 for and they can be found for half and less these days. Do note that the linked one is the Surface Go 1, with less RAM and a slower processor, but that is the same version I initially fell in love with. If you were to get one without the tablet cover, I'd highly recommend an official Microsoft one, it's just so much better than the third party ones.
That said, again you'll be paying roughly the same (maybe a bit more) for a similar Galaxy Tab 7 and it is a big upgrade over the surface as far as screen and general performance go. The Surface Go can be a bit sluggish at times, but for me I don't find that bothersome, because it's still a fully featured OS.
After typing my last comment on my Surface Go, I did switch over to my Galaxy Tab, since I was thinking about it and it certainly does have a lot to recommend it. Better pen performance using Samsung Notes vs Microsoft Onedrive, better screen, keyboard is maybe not as good and tactile, but is slightly larger and easier to type on, but the touchpad is kind of garbage, especially in comparison to the glass one on the Surface type cover. But it is a fine tablet, very premium feeling and generally just very nice if you're not a weirdo like me.
I should also say that the Surface line also has it's own community of Linux developers, so you can actually switch over to various distros that work very well on the Surface. On my Surface Pro when I first picked it up, I installed Debian and it was actually perfect and fully featured; I ended-up not keeping it on there for long, as I'm not a big Linux fan, but it was a very good experience overall. I am considering installing it again on my Go, but I'm happy right now with how it performs and I don't want to go hunting for new software to do what I am already doing in Windows.
Edit: Making a quick edit here to say that I went back and edited this post several times and used the touchpad on the Galaxy to put the cursor where I wanted it and eventually ended-up just using the arrow keys because the touchpad is so shit it's difficult to point and click where you want it. That's my primary complaint, but the keyboard is pretty good otherwise.
I am definitely not going to be installing Linux. Very much out of my baliwick and while that could have been me with different life choices, I don't have the energy or inclination to have to fuck with my OS and all the other little adjustments. I'm not really a putterer by nature.
Appreciate all the info though!
I like to mess with stuff, but exactly why I never stick with Linux long term!
Oh also, battery life on the Galaxy seems to be significantly better, but never measured it. As well, both tablets have MicroSD, which I like.
I tend to over inform, so if it's too much info, sorry! I'm certain to think of new things to come back and blab about...
No no the info is good. I miss SD slots on phones but the security stuff got weird near the end anyway.
I'm mostly trying to not have a piece of junk but I don't need something high performing either. I prefer a smaller phone so something larger feels like it'd be better for couch time.
Oh, I remember what else I wanted to say:
Much as I love my Surface Go, it can feel a little redundant, since I have a powerful 4lb Thinkpad Workstation. But the Surface is damn nice for transport if I'm going somewhere, since it weighs basically nothing and can use the same charger as my Steam Deck. But the redundancy, since you already have a laptop, is something to consider.
But I've still kept the little thing all these years and I've had four different Thinkpads in the time I've had the Surface Go. Love my Thinkpads, but the Go is just doing something special.