What's happened to tablets ?

Dazstoke · 12 Dec 2017 at 10:25

Following the success of the original iPad there was a huge demand for tablets .
Manufacturers climbed over each other to bring out better and cheaper models.You could pick up a decent 7" with HD screen for £100.
A couple of years ago I got myself a Samsung Tab Pro 8.4.It's now almost 5 years since this model was launched and apart from top of the range models,little comes close,especially when you consider I paid £150 for it.....it now has a custom rom as Samsung didn't offer any upgrades at all from kitkat but still works great apart from the poor battery life but that was always it's achilles heel.
Today,there's hardly any new tablets coming on the market and the ones that do are often lower specc'd even than the likes of the Hudl 1 from 2013.
Is there really no demand except at the high end ?

krooton · 12 Dec 2017 at 11:23

Phablets made smaller tablets pointless I guess.

Kainz · 12 Dec 2017 at 13:15

Android Tablets are pretty much dead.
It's a horrible thing to say but it is true. Most folks use their large screen phones effectively enough on websites, and if they do require a large screen the iPad sadly fits the bill. For years now I've owned a Samsung Tab S 8.4 and more recently a Pixel C, which is a superb bit of kit. Sadly Google don't seem to give a damn about a tablet OS, and developers see no reason why they should adopt apps for the big screen as a result.

The Pixel C was recently on sale for £350 (64gb) I believe and for me has been a brilliant purchase. Sadly the OS fails to take advantage of that large screen in a lot of areas like the 'recent apps' card screen etc. Samsung's latest range as I recall have dire battery capacity and prices to match a far superior iPad.

Shocky-FM · 12 Dec 2017 at 19:55

Not sure if serious, the Samsung Tab Pro 8.4 is from early 2014 and the same generation as the Tab Pro 12.2 which I owned for a brief period, too slow for me.

It was slow, lacked performance in games even at the time of release and the touchwiz interface was just awful, plus the build quality was just bad, creaky plastic is never a good thing.

Why the hell would you continue using that pos for 4 years?

Rroff · 12 Dec 2017 at 19:58

Tablets seem to have slid off a bit lately sadly - I was hoping to see some decent updates on the original round of 2GB/32GB Windows tablets but most seem to have gone down the cheaper route with follow ups and a lot of new stuff is pretty low spec

the only way I got reasonably decent spec was going for a GPD Pocket but being far eastern development it comes with its fair share of glitches despite being in many ways a great product.

A lot of my potential Android tablet use is comfortably handled by Galaxy Note line of phones - I'm currently on the 4.

Randomface74 · 12 Dec 2017 at 20:02

Yeah I've got a 10 inch Samsung collecting dust too.
Epic waste of money.

Rroff · 12 Dec 2017 at 20:04

billysielu said:
Yeah I've got a 10 inch Samsung collecting dust too.
Epic waste of money.

I've got the original Sony Xperia tablet Z largely collecting dust aside from sometimes using it as a 4G router - that was pretty much a waste of money in the long term :s full spec version as well

Shocky-FM · 12 Dec 2017 at 20:14

Rroff said:
Tablets seem to have slid off a bit lately sadly - I was hoping to see some decent updates on the original round of 2GB/32GB Windows tablets but most seem to have gone down the cheaper route with follow ups and a lot of new stuff is pretty low spec the only way I got reasonably decent spec was going for a GPD Pocket but being far eastern development it comes with its fair share of glitches despite being in many ways a great product.

A lot of my potential Android tablet use is comfortably handled by Galaxy Note line of phones - I'm currently on the 4.

Excluding a few devices from nvidia and Google the tablet market has always been behind the curve when it came to specs, Samsung has never taken it seriously.

The only "high end" devices on the market is the Pixel C with Tegra X1 and the Samsung Tab S3 which uses last years Snapdragon 820.

nvidia made things interesting for a while with the Shield Tablet which basically destroyed everything else but it wasn't profitable enough for them, add the fact prices have been increasing, just look how expensive new phones are it's no surprise the budget tablets are not that fast anymore.

Not that much has changed, the market is still still flooded with low quality junk, but there are still some decent buys out there for around £200, just means you have to stick your boots on and wade through all the crap to find them.

Kainz · 12 Dec 2017 at 20:50

It's a shame Nvidia didn't follow up with the Shield. It was a great tablet overall, mine had serious battery charging issues but looking at the price/performance side of things it was brilliant. The Pixel C thus far has been my best tablet to date since my iPad 3 imo. Shame about Google's efforts to embrace it.

CapitalOne · 12 Dec 2017 at 20:53

Agreed on the shield - brilliant device and full of genuine new features at the time.

I have to say though Kindle Fire 7 hds make brilliant home automation controllers at the £29.99 they were.

To be honest for the mean time apple have this one stitched up - due to lack of credible competition (unlike phones) and the lack of interest of android vendors in updating thier software.

FishLicker · 12 Dec 2017 at 21:05

My opinion is, Android tablets are all but dead.

I have a Pixel C, and tbh I really like it. However, even when compared with my old 2017 iPad 5th gen, the software in general is rough around the edges, even if the hardware is just as good.

My OH has just picked up her iPad Pro 12.9 tonight, and in all honesty, it is a lot better than any android tablet. Yes it is expensive, but where are the alternatives. The Pixel C is closest and truthfully nowhere near, nor are any rivals.

Google itself seems to have forgotten tablets, with the Pixel C being its most recent. It has Oreo but in all honesty it's nowhere near as polished as it is on the Pixel 2 phone (which I also have). They've not released a new tablet for 2 years, and don't seem like doing so. They seem to be concentrating on their Chromebooks now.

Windows has also been something of a failure in the tablet market.

Seems to me that in the tablet arena at least, Apple has it sewn up.

Ben Cole · 12 Dec 2017 at 22:43

Agree with a lot of the above.

Market saturation and Google’s reluctance to improve tablet optimisation mean the iPad just dominates.

Will try the Pixel C when one comes up second hand but until then it’s iPad for me.

I’ve just sold a Nvidia Shield K1. As much as I liked it, the fact is that it was really the same device as one released in 2014 and it was starting to get left behind.

Glaucus · 12 Dec 2017 at 22:59

market saturation, plus few manufactures making midrange tablets. it's either super cheap like the amazon fire range, or super expensive ipad/surface. I'm hoping the new arm Microsoft tablets will hit that as I want a new one. Although the first ones at least maybe al will be high end.
on top of that Google really doesn't appear to be bothered by tablets.

Rroff · 12 Dec 2017 at 23:09

Can't say I'm particularly convinced by ARM Windows tablets and the like.

Rimsy · 13 Dec 2017 at 00:07

Still use my Sony Z4 tablet daily and love it ! Other than something coming which is a bit faster I'm not really sure what would compel me to upgrade which I think is where the problem is.
Tablets aren't like phones which get replaced every year so they aren't as economically viable to pump r&d money into

maj · 13 Dec 2017 at 07:50

I picked up a HD Fire 8 in the black friday sales for a decent price and have previously owned other Android tablets. I only really use one to read comics either on my lunch break at work or when I'm travelling as the screen on my phone isn't big enough to read them. Android tablets do what I require without spending the absurd Apple prices for something to do the same job. Guess it depends what you use your tablet for as to whether you feel Android is being left behind in the tablet market.

Dazstoke · 13 Dec 2017 at 10:10

If

Shocky-FM said:
Not sure if serious, the Samsung Tab Pro 8.4 is from early 2014 and the same generation as the Tab Pro 12.2 which I owned for a brief period, too slow for me.

It was slow, lacked performance in games even at the time of release and the touchwiz interface was just awful, plus the build quality was just bad, creaky plastic is never a good thing.

Why the hell would you continue using that pos for 4 years?

If you re-read my post I bought it 2 years ago not 4. I have put a custom rom on it and it performs perfectly well enough for what I want.... I don't play games.
My point really was unless you want to spend £300+ there's nothing out there much better.

I wonder if iPad has the tablet market sewn up because schools use them ?

Shocky-FM · 13 Dec 2017 at 11:22

You said it was almost 5 years old, I just pointed out it's under 4 years, 4 years in January to be exact as it was released in 2014.

It performs perfectly for you which is great, in the same way my colleagues 5 year old laptop works perfectly for him because all he uses it for is browsing the web and playing solitaire.

Prices have increased quite a lot over the last 4 years, you could buy a high end phone for £500-600 back then, now it's over £700-1000+

Also you never bought it new to start with so maybe comparing to used devices would be a better idea, maybe you just had an exceptionally good deal which you're unlikely to find again?

You can pickup a few Snapdragon 625 tablets for around £200 new, used Galaxy Tab S2 for around the same price, a little less if you're lucky.

FishLicker · 13 Dec 2017 at 12:14

Dazstoke said:
I wonder if iPad has the tablet market sewn up because schools use them ?

I don't think so. I think its simply because Apple were there first, and for some inexplicable reason, nobody else has managed to come up with a product as good. I'm not a fan of iOS at ALL, so I use a Pixel C, but I really wish there was a viable rival for the OHs Pro 12.9 because it is just such a better piece of hardware. Screen, speakers, speed, app support, all in a totally different league.

thebandit · 13 Dec 2017 at 12:22

At parents evening a while back I noticed that in my children's school the teachers are all using Chromebooks. I asked my daughters teacher about it, she said they all have them and she loved hers, had bought one for home use too.

I keep being tempted by Chromebooks, but typically of Google stuff the market is a mis mash of various vendors offerings all not quite what you want. The Samsung ones never arrived in the UK, the plus would have done me nicely.