Any idea what the best Android tablet available is?

[DanceswithUnix]

Wifey is getting fed up with the Hudl 2. It just doesn't seem to work, and when it does switches from flying along to glacial stodgyness.

Love my Nvidia tablet, but they don't seem to make those any more.

Any ideas people? The Hudl was on the cheap as we had Tesco vouchers, this time I'll pay money if I have to.

Edit: Usage is the usual casual surfing, Facebook, candy crush style games.

[Smudger]

Do they still do the Samsung Tab S3? There's a dearth of decent tablets around, lots of cheap ones though, but nothing with the same decent screen as the HUDL2. Is an Amazon Fire tablet an option?

[g8ina]

I just bought an Amazon Fire 8" 32GB for £90, only problem is adverts ! Screensaver is "special offers" which you can remove for another tenner.

But basically, Im dead chuffed with it. Takes up to 256GB uSD card

[DanceswithUnix]

I don't think an Amazon Fire is going to up up to the task, would rather have full Android rather than Amazon's fork.

[g8ina]

Google Play store installs fine so all apps are available.

[DanceswithUnix]

Google Play store installs fine so all apps are available.

OK that's interesting, though ISTR reading that Google are starting to clamp down on that sort of thing.

The Hudl was full of loads of Tesco bloatware, are the Fire tablets not loaded with unshiftable Amazon stuff?

The Fire 10 HD looks an OK spec at 1.8GHz cores though it only has 2GB of ram which isn't that much these days. If she was a patient person the existing tablet would still do

[GHz]

If you're looking for a good value tablet Argos has a whole refurbished range on eBay with a year warranty.

I've bought a few from there and all looked brand new.

[spacein_vader]

OK that's interesting, though ISTR reading that Google are starting to clamp down on that sort of thing.

The Hudl was full of loads of Tesco bloatware, are the Fire tablets not loaded with unshiftable Amazon stuff?

The Fire 10 HD looks an OK spec at 1.8GHz cores though it only has 2GB of ram which isn't that much these days. If she was a patient person the existing tablet would still do

If it's for a non-techy who isn't into the Amazon eco system I wouldn't bother. Out of the box they're loaded with Amazon cruft, some as a result of not using Google services so it's own app store, browser, Contacts and Launcher plus ones for all their services, Amazon itself, Kindle, Audible, Prime Video and none of it can be uninstalled.

While you can sideload the Google Play store and install apps from it they don't always work without some fettling and system updates (which are fairly regular to be fair to Amazon,) can break them, leading you to need to find a new workaround. It's fine if you know what you're doing but from an "It just works" standpoint it fails.

[g8ina]

I used this guide, worked perfectly first time :
https://saintlad.com/install-google-...n-kindle-fire/

[DanceswithUnix]

If you're looking for a good value tablet Argos has a whole refurbished range on eBay with a year warranty.

I've bought a few from there and all looked brand new.

Well I'd rather not pay the £500 for the best Samsung tablets, £200 would be fine and think I could stretch to £300.

There just doesn't seem to be much effort put into tablets these days, I'm starting to give up on the whole idea.

[jim]

I feel the same, and wound up with a Fire just because there was nothing reasonable for a small budget.

Xiaomi is my go to for phone but they seemed disappointing to me in the tablet arena.

[DanceswithUnix]

Are the Samsung tablets really running such old Android versions? Huawei M5 tablets look like excellent hardware but reviews imply the software is flaky. Why is this so hard?!?

[spacein_vader]

Tablets are commodity items these days sadly, and it seems my usual go-to option (anything cheap with an official LineageOS build,) doesn't work as the devs don't seem to target many/any modern tablets.

Sadly these days it seems the only way to buy a well supported tablet that'll run an up to date OS is to get an iPad.

[rich835]

Got my wife a Lenovo Tab 3, 10.1" 16GB from argos a year ago to replace a bashed up old Acer tablet. Was about £100.
It's still going strong a year on, and reasonably quick too. Certainly a masssive improvement on the Acer, which had WiFi problems and was very sluggish.
I'd buy a Lenovo again, based on our experience with this one.

[DanceswithUnix]

The wife doesn't do ipad.

Tab 4 looks OK, if a little weedy in spec. Was really hoping for something with an A57 or better but seems this is another A53 based tablet.

[J17hnt]

Extremely happy with my Samsung Galaxy Tab S2 8" 4g. Only cost £144 refurbished from O2 refresh trick.