Android

Not to mention fakes. I bought and Android 12 tablet on Amazon as new not long ago, the version string said 12, but the actual API level was 24 (Android 7) and the UI wasn't android 12.

If you don't think that's a big deal on a cheap tablet then you're not considering what else could have been done to it that you can't see. They're already lying after all.

And even apparently from name brands.

My sister bought a low-end Samsung tablet (some years ago admittedly), and it NEVER received a software update in the 3 years she owned it. Not a major update, not a security patch, nothing.

I'd hope they've gotten better about that, but I wouldn't hold my breath.

Some of the crap being pushed out cheap is made just for Black Friday. Weird TVs with one HDMI port, or the guts of it are leftovers from three years ago, stuff like that.

I mean sure, buy a PS5 or whatever because there's no cheapo version of that with a PS4 Pro in it, but for things like TVs, tablets, or things with a million different model numbers? Buyer beware.

Yeah, title should just be:

Don't waste your money ~~on an awful Android tablet~~ on Black Friday

I bought two 4TB USB SSDs half price, they seem well built and were brand new. I think I did pretty well.

When is a good time to buy then?

And enjoy the moment

That's so wasteful. And I dragged my old Sony reader for like 7 years and then even handed it down until the battery just wouldn't hold a charge anymore. In 14 years I'm my second reader and feel the Kobo I've got is perfectly fine.

Damn I would take a free Kindle!

I would have personally accepted. More devices for modding and tinkering with! 🔥

I've been using old kindles for homeassistant interfaces for across the house.

This is literally terrible advice and incorrect. Lenovo and Xiaomi are at just 2 examples of brands whose midrange and high end tablets get supported with updates for years.

I have a Lenovo tablet, bar being useless to me as piece of tech it is very functional and continues to get updates.

Pixel

After getting burnt by both the Google endorsed Xoom and the Google branded Nexus 10, I don't trust them at all when it comes to tablets.

With both, Google released good products, and then proceeded to ruin them with abhorrent changes to the software. They made the Nexus 10 dump it's tablet interface in favor of a big phone UI ffs.

What about Lenovo tablets?

In 2017 I got myself a lenovo tab 8", Android 6, 3GB of RAM for less than 120€. Thanks to AOSP, I got it on Android 10, and it's still kicking 6 years later. Get tablets that you can own! (ie Unlock bootloader).

s/Samsung//

This is SEO foam of the sea of e-commerce.

Samsung still makes great ones. Some of them are even compatible with Wacom pens.

Once I helped to set up a Lenovo Android tablet, that too was stellar compared to the cheap junk you can meet with easily.

Samsung's are generally regarded as pretty good. There's also that OnePlus tablet that MKBHD liked because it has features similar to iPads

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That depends, of course. For media consumption you might want a bigger screen. For reading you might want a smaller screen. Many will want a more mainstream OS that plays better with all their apps and various DRM. Some will want a more capable OS, like Linux or Windows. Some will want iOS, for some unfathomable reason...

For me, a big portion of what I want a tablet for will be covered by the Pixel Tablet on Graphene. That is multiple profiles, for work, play, and banking.

• Most of my banking apps are available, and most importantly so is YNAB. My phone is kept with a very minimal app footprint, and no Play Store in any capacity, and I don't particularly like budgeting in my browser either on my phone or laptop.
• I don't let work anywhere near my phone, but occasionally I do want to check Outlook or Teams without jumping into my work laptop. I also need to monitor some things actively for hours on end, so it would be nice to be able to do that from the kitchen, living room, or patio without having to go through the nightmare that is un-docking and re-docking my work laptop that runs Windows. Luckily work lets me Intune join a tablet so long as it's not rooted, others may have stricter OS limitations though.
• Sometimes I just want to chill out on the couch and watch a movie or TV show. I don't have a TV, and if I'm on my laptop I tend to put the video in PIP and divide my attention. A tablet makes me far less likely to do this.

I prefer Calyx on my phone, for the sake of the extra privacy of Micro-G vs sandboxed Google Play Services. But most of my tablet use case tends more towards mainstream, so I think the compromise is worth it for the more robust multi-profile support in Graphene. But hey, Calyx supports the Pixel Tablet, too.

But... part of me still wants a tablet with a full Linux distro on it, so I'm tempted by stuff like the Starlabs Starlite, and the upcoming Minisforum Ryzen 8000 tablet. But I won't have a streamlined OS that minimizes distractions, and unless I run Ubuntu LTS I wouldn't be able to use it for anything work related. There are also a lot more DRM limitations in regards to streaming video.

Point is, everyone is going to have their own special use case. I'm just glad we're finally getting some FOSS capable tablets into the market, be they running AOSP or Linux.

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And it still isnt enough nowadays.