Android tablets

[Jackalope]

I'm considering buying an Android tablet in the under ~250USD price range.

Right now, the Google Nexus 7 looks promising. Anyone have any experience with one or similar models?

[Jackalope]

Well, I ended up pulling the trigger on the Nexus 7. Pretty sweet piece of hardware.

[Norfolk And Chance]

I'm thinking of buying my wife a Google Nexus for chrimbo.

Then again, I might buy her fuck all.

[downbeatplumb]

Kindle fire looks good.
I have a Blackberry playbook which is amazing but not android so has a limited App market.

[Jackalope]

Kindle fire looks good.
I have a Blackberry playbook which is amazing but not android so has a limited App market.

I looked at the Kindle Fire, and for what it is, it's a nice piece of tech at a good price. However, it's limited to Amazon's own walled garden and cannot use Google's app market (Google Play). That was a deal killer for me. (Some day it may get rooted and be capable, who knows.)

The Nexus 7 is faster (quad core Tegra 3 FTW), ships with Android 4.1 (and will get upgrades first as a Google flagship product), and is not much more expensive.

After playing with the Nexus for a couple of days, I'm impressed. As one reviewer said "It's not just a nice $200 tablet, it's a nice tablet, period". (I paid $250 for the 16GB version)

It does have a few drawbacks: storage is not upgradeable(*), it has no HDMI output (not an issue for me), and the current version is WiFi only (also a non-issue for me). I don't know how available they are outside of the USA to date.

(*) lack of upgradeable storage isn't much of an issue, IMO. Your entire music library can be stored in the cloud (as long as it has no DRM) and persisted selectively to the tablet. The same goes for ebooks, emagazines, and video from Google Play. You effectively only need to store such data temporarily while you're off-network, so 8/16 GB is plenty (for me at least).

[Erinome]

My ex has one. He just bought it. I played around with it, and it was just like having an over-sized Android phone. I wasn't that impressed.

[Jackalope]

I played around with it, and it was just like having an over-sized Android phone.

I suppose it's a matter of expectations. I wanted an ebook reader. I don't care for the E Ink displays, and the idea of shelling out nearly a c-note for something that was just a reader wasn't very appealing.

For not that much more, I can listen to music, watch TV and movies, browse the web, etc. I use my Android phone heavily for such things, but found the tiny screen to be very limiting.

A PC replacement it isn't, but for something still highly portable that fits a niche between smartphone and laptop, it's perfect. Not everyone has a need to fill that niche, of course.

[Angrboda]

I haven't checked cyanogenmod re: kindle, but it sounded like kitting the kindle fire was imminent at the start of the year. (ISTR alpha builds were available.) I bought a nook color, largely for kitting and because of the memory slot. Though I would have preferred a larger format tablet than the 7" eReader form factor, but couldn't afford it. Kindle has some new models out in a larger form factor, that look similar in size to the old DX, but they're not as cheap as the smaller ones — though 3G is an option at $500, if I could afford 3G.

I bought a netbook at the time and have used that a lot more. Part of that is I haven't prepped the nook via kitting, but part is I use the netbook for taking notes at lectures and discussion groups, and it's ideal for that.

[Tino]

I got Kindle Fires for my wife and daughter last Christmas and they both love them.