Tablet advice

[919191]

I was all set to get my wife for Christmas a Samsung galaxy tablet and then she tells me she wants a Nook HD 32 GB. I was wondering what I wouldn't get with the Nook that I would with the Samsung. She wants it as a reader and to play games, like Words and Candy Crush and not so much for video. Anyone have any advice to offer?

[KittyDuran]

I bought the Samsung Galaxy Tab 3 7.0 for my Mom. She using my old Nook Color reader but has complained about the weight (she had a Simple Reader before). The Galaxy Tab is lighter and obviously gives more options than the old Nook Color but I haven't really checked out the new Nooks. That's because I haven't seen any coupons or discounts on B&N products in a few years. The Samsung was on sale at Microcenter so I went for it. Still working my way around and getting it programmed but it seems (at least for now) to be the right choice. I'm hoping that Mom wants to use it for more things than reading (like getting a email account, FB and games)... but the woman reads about 5-7 books a week - so when does she have the time for the other stuff?

BTW, my Dad has a Simple Reader (books), an iPad (games, FB, videos) and laptop (email)... and he still wants to use Mom's new tablet for his stuff - the man is gadget obsessed!

[RBA]

We got IPads last year and regret our decision. Rather have android devices. Not a big fan of Apple, but we bought into the hype. We use are android phones, more than the Ipads.

[SunDeck]

A lot depends on the ecosystem and one's comfort level with them. With Apple, you get an ecosystem of apps that tend to be a little better vetted than what is on the Android/Play ecosystem. Apple works great for my 74 year old mom, and she spends a lot of time having the nice young folks at the apple store explaining things to her (instead of me, happily). There is really no support like that for Android and generally, part of the lure of Appledevoces is the user friendliness of the experience.
I am not a big fan of Nook or Kindle, or really any other tablet that has it's own, more limited ecosystem. Plus, what they do to Android is usually an abomination, meant to limit your ability tipo customize and maximize the likelihood that you will buy more stuff from them. The point of Kindle is to get to buystuff from Amazon (which is the case with an iPad as well, but it's not as blatant). I like the wide open nature of Play.

I've got a couple iPads, a Nexus 7, Nook Color, a few Kindle Fires at work and I'm probably most in favor of the Nexus. At home I have an iPad and I do enjoy it, but to me Android is a better OS. That is probably more a personal bias; as I said I like the open source nature of Android/Play and IOS makes me feel like I can't figure out how things work very easily.

I have not looked at a galaxy, but as far as screens go, to me iPad and Nexus are the top. So, if the plan is to use it for videos, consider screen quality. The bad news about tablets is that they really don't make for great readers. Backlit display is hard on the eyes and I much prefer Kindle's paper interface. I'm not sure but I've heard they are working on that for tablets. Tablets do have some ability to adjust the readers (i.e., using sepia is less likely to strain my eyes).

[Stray]

In the small range I'd go with the asus nexus 7. The new gen is a really really good tablet for the price.

The new kindle fire hdx are also very good around that size. They're more aimed for multimedia tablets tho, but at that price you're getting good hardware. 2500x1600 resolution gives a beautiful screen for watching movies.

For iPad the air is amazing if youre into ios, which personally I can't stand.

If youre going big and willing to spend the money the new Samsung galaxy note 10.1 and Sony xperia z tablets are very strong.

But yeah, best bang for your buck will be a kindle or a nexus 7.

[RBA]

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