Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

Hello.
I'm hoping this is the correct place for this. I'm looking for a decent tablet to get for "just war gaming". Meaning ebooks like GW has started doing and maybe Battlescribe like programs.
Any advice? I'm pretty ignorant as to what's good or bad as far as ereaders/tablets are concerned. My main requirements are:
touch screen
8-10" screen
web access
color screen

I'm not looking for high end, top of the line. Something that will work for what I need it for, but not break the bank.

I'd really appreciate any input or ideas!
Thanks.

I use an iPad, which I'm very happy with. Wife uses a nexus, which she's pretty happy with. I think as long as you don't go too cheap you'll be fine. They are all pretty similar these days.

 Eggs wrote:
I use an iPad, which I'm very happy with. Wife uses a nexus, which she's pretty happy with. I think as long as you don't go too cheap you'll be fine. They are all pretty similar these days.

Thanks for the fast reply! ipad is way out of my price range. I'm actually looking for "Cheap" but workable. I was hoping maybe someone else might have been
in a similar boat, and found something along those lines.

Well she uses a nexus, and it seems pretty competent. Obviously I haven't tested it for wargaming stuff though. A second hand iPad might be in a similar price bracket though. I'm using iPad 3, which is 1 or two models old, and it's still plenty powerful.

I really like my Kindle Fire HD 8.9"
If you already use Amazon regularly, the Prime membership is a great bargain for what you get.

I've been using a nexus 7 and recently switched to a Dell venue 8 with windows and both work well for 200 bucks. You'd probably fine with an inexpensive Asus tablet which would run you more like 130, but I haven't played with the one my wife has to know for sure.

I have not been thrilled with my Nexus 7... or I guess it's just Android, but it's a bit buggy.

I think an Amazon Fire might be a good idea, too.

It depends on what you want as far as the software goes.

The iBooks format for the iPads is interactive and you can click keywords in the books and have a pop-up of the rules for it. This verison will run a tad bit more then the Epub or Mobi versions. Epub and Mobi are the two formats used on Android and Kindle. They are the cheapest option and are just like a PDF. They'll run just as good as the iBooks minus the interactivity.

You can get a decent 7-8 inch tablet for around $130. The 7 inch Kindle fire 8 gig being the example here. If you can swing $200, go with an 8 gig Samsung Galaxy Tab 3, or the Nexus 7 for $30 with 16 gigs of memory. Personally I'd just go with an iPad mini. 7 inches with 16 gigs for $300 and access to iBooks.

At the very least, don't cheap out on the tablet, stick to name brands you know like Kindle, Samsung, Nexus, Asus, or Apple as they all make quality tablets. If you find a $50 tablet expect to get what you pay for and the headache along with it.

I use a Sony reader although it doesn't has color (it is mostly for books) , it uses an SD card, and reads most used formats. touch screen, e-paper long battery life.

You could always look for a used iPad 2 if you want to go a little cheaper.

Ours works fine with all of the updates.

My Asus Transformer tablet (with clip-on keyboard) has been slow and clunky.
It looked fairly beefy, and the 2nd battery was a nice bonus, but if you don't use it daily, it grabs all its updates and chugs for ages.

Battlescribe works well, as do a couple of ebook readers.

Tannhauser42 wrote:I really like my Kindle Fire HD 8.9"
If you already use Amazon regularly, the Prime membership is a great bargain for what you get.

Apostle Pat wrote:It depends on what you want as far as the software goes.

The iBooks format for the iPads is interactive and you can click keywords in the books and have a pop-up of the rules for it. This verison will run a tad bit more then the Epub or Mobi versions. Epub and Mobi are the two formats used on Android and Kindle. They are the cheapest option and are just like a PDF. They'll run just as good as the iBooks minus the interactivity.

You can get a decent 7-8 inch tablet for around $130. The 7 inch Kindle fire 8 gig being the example here. If you can swing $200, go with an 8 gig Samsung Galaxy Tab 3, or the Nexus 7 for $30 with 16 gigs of memory. Personally I'd just go with an iPad mini. 7 inches with 16 gigs for $300 and access to iBooks.

At the very least, don't cheap out on the tablet, stick to name brands you know like Kindle, Samsung, Nexus, Asus, or Apple as they all make quality tablets. If you find a $50 tablet expect to get what you pay for and the headache along with it.

I'm interested in the Kindle fireHD and the Nook. Price wise(~$150-175 USD) they're good. How are they for web surfing? I had a coworker tell me he thought Kindle was crap.
But I also am pretty sure he wasn't referring to the HD Fire version.

Thanks a million for all the replies! I couldn't find an Asus Transformer? I really like the brand.

Admittedly, my Kindle Fire HD is sometimes a little slow to respond when surfing the web (it loads pages just fine, but sometimes is take a second to realize you touched the screen). I do not know if the current HDX generation of Kindles have the same issue.

I bought the Lenovo cheap tablet this Xmas, got it for 100$ (Can) and it works great. No data plan possible, but everywhere I get free wi-fi, I use it and it's fine. The basic suite of programs is good for exactly that: quick wargaming reference. I also use it to make Infinity army lists and review rules.

I ahve a samsung galaxy tablet with a 10.1" screen. My phone uses android, so it firstly helps me maximize my mobile app dollars since most things that will run on my phone also run on the tablet. The best thing about it, though, is that it has a microSD card slot. This is a must if you want to hold a lot of gaming rulebooks on the unit. I currently have a 32gb MicroSD card in the tablet and have full collections of rulebooks for about 8 different RPGs, 40k and a couple of other tabletop games on the card with space to spare. Get a couple other MicroSDs of the same size and I can ultimately have all of my gaming books in hand easily with a tablet and a small pocket to hold the MicroSD cards. I far prefer the MicroSD card solution to the cloud because then, no matter where I am, I have full access to all of my books when I want them and am not restricted to only when I have access to some kind of wireless connection.

The Samsung was also a good bit cheaper than the iPad.

Skriker

iPads are great and give you access to the more expensive and fancy codex format but the storage is not expandable and 16gb won't last long once you start putting stuff on it.

The Kindle fire HD runs a heavily modified version of android so gets updates very late or never. Also it has limited app store access. Overall I can't recommend it to anyone.

Samsung's galaxy tab range and the Asus Google nexus are fairly similar. I think the nexus is a little more powerful. The tab takes microSD cards so can be expanded cheaply, the nexus might as well but I'm not sure. If your on a tight budget get one of these.

The galaxy note is twice the cost and twice the power.

Sony makes some nice tablets but they cost far to much and feel a little flimsy to me.

Archos Arnova tablets are about as cheap as you should go. I have found they crash and freeze all the time though.

Anything cheaper then that, cheap unbranded eBay sold Chinese imports or re-branded supermarket crap should be avoided. These are so bad I wouldn't even claim you get what you pay for.

I run a second hand shop and see at least one of each of the above a week. I have plenty of hands on experience with not only how these items run when new but also what they are like after several months or years of use. Overall I would say the iPads cause us the most issues, well them and the cheap imports but we won't even buy them from people cause they are so bad.

Hope that helps.

I started with the same question you had, and ended up choosing the Google/Samsung Nexus 10 - before I went out and parted with any money though, I talked to a colleague from work who was laos looking at buying a tablet, and she suggested the MS Surface Pro, since the older model is being run out at the moment for the Surface Pro 2.

It worked out to double what I wanted to spend, really, but in the end I decided against the Nexus 10 and got the 128mb SP. Windows 8, being a real computer, nice integrated keyboard, bluetooth mouse and Ethernet adaptor. And a 64gb sdx card. So I can tether it to me phone or use the home network.

I had to get it a little later (needed to stockpile some more cash), but it was the right choice. It's a full, decent PC (once I installed an app that restored the start menu), I can do work on it (Word, etc), surf the web, use it as a touchscreen for PDFs etc and gaming rulebooks - and never mind Angry Birds and Candy Crush - I can run steam games on it!

It's a much more expensive option, and not one I'd considered at all until told about it and did some research, but it was the right one for me.

I have a 7" google play tablet. It's android, and uses a drag and drop system for porting docs to it (unlike ipads - those have issues with pdfs).

It's mainly used as a pdf reader and it does have the aleph toolbox app for infinity on it, but it does the job.

I have absolutely no issues with PDFs on my iPad. I have hundreds of them in here - from infinity and x wing rules and faqs to PDF comics. Not sure what issues you are on about.

I use a Nook. It's not as big or snazzy as an iPad but it works great as a reader for E-books and PDFs. Also it's small-ish which means it doesn't take up a lot of space on a tabletop.

I'd like to thank all of you fine people for your input!
I'm typing this from my new Samsung Galaxy Tab 3 7!
So far so good. Still feeling my way through it. I've got Battlescribe on it and running.
Dropbox seems to be a decent way to store my files for easy access and storage without
using up memory. I didn't realize how much the case would be. Anyone planning out a similar
purchase keep that in mind.