My friend decided to buy a tablet but considering the prices of iPads, she wants to know what other products are the most closely comparable to the iPad 3- especially in areas of screen resolution, pixels, camera pixels, processor speed, & memory (at least up to 32g). What would you recommend?
At the moment there is nothing that comes ever remotely close to the iPad 3. Nothing. Just tell her to get that. The upfront cost differential is more than made up in long term costs to the alternatives.
The consensus next best seem to be the Asus Transformer Prime, Sony Tablet S, and Samsung Galaxy 10. However all are in the same basic price range as the iPad. None of them have anything resembling the iPad 3’s screen resolution (1200x800 vs 2000x1600). But most have some various advantages over the iPad. All are worth looking at. And long term you probably can’t go wrong with any of them.
If she is really looking to save money, she is probably going to have to go down to a 7" screen and get significantly lower performance. The key players here are the Amazon Kindle Fire, B&N Nook and Samsung Galaxy 7. All are fine tablets… but they aren’t iPads.
Might be worth noting that the Transformer Infinity is hitting the shelves in the next few weeks at 1920x1200.
My friend was wondering about this. How is this comparable to an iPad 2? The customer reviews are impressive.
What technological features does the iPad 3 have that the competitors just don’t have to any degree? (It should be obvious that I’m asking from total ignorance here. I’m not even personally interested in one, but I do want to help my friend make a good, affordable decision.)
I’ve never heard of it, and there’s no listing for it on Cnet.com. I’d be extremely wary - reviews can be manufactured. There’s one thread over at Android Central, and it’s a thread asking why there’s no other thread on it. Looks like junk.
The main advantages of the iPads are quality and ease of use. That said, they do isolate you from the hardware and they try to corral you into staying with the iTunes store.
If the person is technical they might prefer an Android tablet because they are infinitely more hackable out of the box. Plus they support simple drag and drop to get files on and off the tablet.
There are a variety of 7" Android tablets around the $250 price range. I have an HTC Evo View that I use daily.
The big thing I found using the iPad is it’s so smooth with the touch screen. No andriod tablet I’ve seen is as smooth. It doesn’t seem much at first, but it can get on your nerves after a bit.
Also you might want to wait till September, when I read the Windows tablets, with Win8 will be released.
I’ll just copy and paste what I put in the other tablet thread.
I have an Asus Transformer Pad TF300. It’s quad core processor with Android 4.0. Very slick, very fast. $399, 32GB internal storage and a micro SD slot that can hold up to a 32 GB card. If you want, you can get a keyboard dock for it (I did not) that doubles your battery and basically turns it into an Android netbook.
In all honesty, Android tablet or iPad, they all do the same shit: internet, email, games, music, movies, blah blah. Your best bet is to go to a store that has both and play. Get whichever one you like the best.
The whole purpose of raising this is to help my friend decide what she wants. She had a Polaroid Android tablet that she would have been happy with except it took to long to do tasks & was problematic in adjusting the screen size when she got online. She was mainly using it as an e-reader & to play app games. But she wonders if she wants to put out all the money that an iPad or the next best thing would cost or if there is something closer to the Polaroid Android or at least in between that would satisfy her.
So, it would have been perfect, if not for the fact that it sucked. I’d recommend to your friend to read reviews of items at reputable websites before making any additional electronics purchases in her future.
Agreed. I have a Galaxy 10, a Kindle Fire, and an iPad2.
The iPad2 wins, hands down. Galaxy 10 comes in second based on screen size. Kindle Fire is small and not as quickly responsive.
Purely anecdotal-- I initially didn’t want to spring for an iPad and bought the Touchpad instead. I almost never used it.
I fell in love with the screen of the New iPad, used my bonus to fund that frivolous purchase, and I use it every single day.
YMMV, of course!
The Touchpad with CM9 installed makes for a pretty damn nice 10" 32g Android tablet for the $150 I paid for it 
I use mine all the time.
I wouldn’t recommend it to anyone asking for tablet suggestions though since these days you’d have to get a refurb and it requires a a bit of tinkering to get Android installed on it.
The guy I work with keeps saying stuff like this too. As I keep saying, 95% of the people out there have zero interest in this sort of thing. They just want something that works.
My point being that this isn’t much of an argument for the vast majority of people out there.
Buy what you like. As for me, I use my iPad every day.
I had seriously been thinking about the Kindle Fire, but I’m getting uncomfortable with the thought of having to be dependent on Amazon for whatever would be used on it.
So, I’m researching other alternatives and leaning towards the Samsung.