Thinking of buying one in the new year sales. Ipad 2 is supposed to be the best. Is this a fact or are the others out there that are just as good but cheaper.

Any comments/recomendations would be appreciated

I've just got a Samsung Galaxy 8.9. Pretty impressed with it so far, although it appears that some apps are not available for it that I use on my Android phone...ESPN goals being a big loss

there is no one best tablet for everyone.

What do want to use it for, what is your budget and do you have any other apple products ?

This is the one tablet I have been waiting for an is the one that could finally tempt me, but the prices are looking a little too high, especially for the 3G models.

Or... I could wait for the 7.9 model. Hmm....

It depends on what you want it for.
By far the iPad has the most amount of apps available optimised for the tablet.

I have an iPad 2 which I bought recently and have barely put it down. It's worth going into somewhere like pc world and looking at all the different tabs and seeing what suits you.

Also it's worth noting that apple don't really do sales so you are unlikely to find one discounted by much but you could consider the refurbs which are on the apple site they come with full warranty etc.

Personally I don’t think you will see much discount on iPads in the new year sales as they sell well without giving you a rebate.

Who knows though I may be wrong.

There's a new Asus Transformer just out,

The Prime

Review here

If you have the iPad in mind, then iPad 2 would be the best choice. Android Tablets from Samsung and Sony has a better hardware, but not enough apps to do all the stuff. Do not try Kindle Fire if you aren't a Amazon fan, as you may not like it. Checkout the link in this profile, to get more recommendations.

I've just got the Wi Fi model.

Other than a few apps not being available I've no complaints so far!

You would think that calling yourself TabletPCExpert you wouldn't talk a load of rubbish.....

There are plenty of apps on android to do pretty much anything you can do on an ipad plus it has flash which the ipad doesn't.

each has its limits but ability to do pretty much what you want with apps is not one of them.

plus look carefully at the cameras in an ipad if you are going to use them at all as they are really awful.

plus if a 7 inch would do then don't discount a blackberry playbook if you have a blackberry phone as its now selling for £169 at currys, pcworld, carphone warehouse and dixons....

The Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 and the Sony Tablet S both use the Tegra 2 System-on-a-Chip (SoC), the same as the Motorola Xoom and the ASUS Eee Pad Transformer.

Same CPU as the iPad 2 (1GHz dual-core ARM Cortex A9).

More RAM than the iPad 2 (1GB rather than 512MB).

Inferior GPU to the iPad 2 (GeForce ULP rather than a dual-core PowerVR SGX543).


I'd rather have the superior GPU of the iPad 2 than the increased RAM of the Tab 10.1 etc. The iPad 2 doesn't suffer from "only" having 512MB RAM, but it definitely benefits from having a better GPU (just look at the games, or check out the various benchmarks on Anandtech etc.).


I think the upcoming (I don't think either is out officially in the UK yet?) Galaxy Tab 8.9 and 7.7 have upgraded internals plus an AMOLED screen... but of course they're smaller, which may be an issue for some people.

If I were going for an Android tablet, I'd much rather get an ASUS Eee Pad Transformer Prime than the original Eee Pad or a Samsung or Sony tablet. Tegra 3 is so much better than Tegra 2.


Just how necessary is Flash nowadays on a tablet or other mobile device? Even Adobe has acknowledged that HTML5 is a better option and is killing off mobile Flash development.

iPlayer, 4OD, Demand Five, ITV Player, Sky Go, TVCatchup (Freeview TV streaming), YouTube, and various other video services all work on the iPad despite its lack of Flash, via dedicated apps and/or HTML5 websites.

With video content moving to apps and/or HTML5, what's left for Flash other than browser games (some of which are also moving to HTML5 from what someone said in another thread recently), adverts, and those utterly appalling Flash-based websites some people still insist on creating?


The cameras on the iPad 2 are crap for taking photos, but I still fail to see why anyone would use a tablet camera for anything like that. It's simply not convenient, no matter what the quality is. They're OK for video, though, which is just about the only use I can think of for cameras on a tablet (although I don't generally bother much with video chat myself on any device).

The screen on the Tab is higher resolution though both are probably near right for size and finger use..

Good points. The iPad 2 would be better with just one quality camera on the front for Skype and Video users. The existing one causes a little too much facial distortion.

Minor thing though, the iPad 2 really is a great bit of kit and a delight to look at.

If you want a good tablet, you could get the HTC Flyer 16GB WiFi and 3G for £249.99?

7" 1024*600 LCD
1.5GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon Scorpion processor with Adreno 205 gfx
1GB RAM
Android 3.2.1 [Upgrade to 4.0 due next year]
5MP auto-focus rear camera, 1.3MP front facing camera
Flash 11.1
Special stylus input available too
Access to over 380,000 Apps

The Flash thing is because Apple and Microsoft want you to use their apps instead,
The less content access via the web the more you need an APP.

Lovefilm actually closes down on the mobile web in the New Year.

As a complete package the IPad is the best tablet on the market, it may not always be the best at a particular feature but it's level across the board is consistently high leading to the most enjoyable overall experiance.

The weakest part of the iPad2 is the camera, this is great outdoors in natural light but in low light the CMOS sensor is a bit weak and can lead to grainy images/video. Outside however you can get some pretty decent video from it.

Just got a Motorola Xoom, after much research, and I personally think it's a brilliant piece of kit.

Not being locked into Apple's restrictive system is one of the main reasons I went for an Android phone and tablet.

Microsoft don't really make apps though - and even Adobe are stopping Flash on mobile development as HTML 5 comes in

As a complete package the asus transformer is surely leader .....

Great tablet plus the option of netbook type use with the keyboard dock. The new prime version looks even better !

Neither do Apple .
And HTML 5 can't do DRM. Bye bye Lovefilm.

Wrong re lovefilm.


They are changing to Microsoft Silverlighjt to keep going at the request of movie studios.


Next they will most likely switch to ultraviolet to keep going.....

That's it. My will power has just snapped and I've reserved a Playbook for collection at PC World tomorrow. For £169 it's a steal.

£169?! Very good price.

That's quite a drop considering that RIM initially attempted to sell it at the same price as the iPad 2.

It looks like RIM have decided that the whole launch of the Playbook didn't work. Reports are that they have warehouses of stock they cannot shift so they are now going for clearance pricing. It may be technically a decent tablet, though going with their own O/S may have been a a bad move (as HP found), the app support never materialised and the marketing was all over the place (the name "Playbook" works in the US but makes it sound like a toy in Europe)

Even if I only use the Playbook for a year until the rest of the market works itself out, then for £169 it could be a bargain. Looking forward to getting my hands on one tomorrow morning.

The PlayBook has been a total failure, and I'd hope that RIM sees that. Too expensive at launch, too few apps, not enough developer support... It's also still waiting for a rather important update which is hoped will fix some of its shortcomings. Sales of the PlayBook have been *terrible*, absolutely terrible...

Motorola's Xoom was also a failure, but at least that has the benefit of using an OS which people actually want to develop for, so even though Motorola had to cut the price again and again to get it to sell (and it still hasn't done that well after the cuts), at least you don't have to worry about there being sod all apps for it.


But for £169 the PlayBook is a pretty good deal, despite the lack of apps compared to iOS and Android.