- Google (ASUS) Nexus 7 - This was the smallest one I considered, only 7 inches, but the reviews everywhere just praise this machine. It has great hardware, boasting 1920 x 1200 native resolution, 32Gb of storage but no SD compatibility. 2Gb of RAM and is the only one with Android 4.3 (Jelly Bean) out of the box. The machine is beautiful and it sounds like it has early access to apps via Google Play, although I'm still not sure what that means. I think if I could get the Nexus 10 I would have considered the google tablets a bit more seriously, however 7 inches was a tad too small for me. I really wanted something a bit more substantial.
- Samsung Galaxy Tab 3 10" - One of my top contenders since it's a 10 inch tablet at a fairly reasonable price point. It uses Android 4.2, which is not the newest but it's close. It has 16Gb of storage which is upgradeable through MicroSD to 64Gb. It has 1Gb of RAM which is actually not very much and is the reason I didn't pick it. It weights 510g with a 1280x800 resolution. I considered the 8 inch one as well, which seems a bit better in terms of hardware, but the screen was too small for my needs.
- Microsoft Surface 32Gb Windows RT - The weekend I was looking at tablets, this one was hugely on sale for only C$199. In terms of hardware I actually thing it was easily the best option available. As you may or may not know, the windows tablets also come with virtually full featured office suite, which is great if you want a tablet for browsing and work. I was very close to buying this model, but I'm glad I didn't now. The keyboard doesnt come with the RT tablets, and it is sold separately for pretty much the same price as any other keyboard for Androids. The RT OS is actually pretty restricting, only allowing you to use RT software you get from the microsoft app store. This is unlike the Surface 2, which can pretty much run like a laptop, but those things are very expensive. As I said, in terms of harware, it's great. Resolution of 1366x768, 32 Gb of storage, 2Gb of RAM. It's a bit heavier, weighing 680g. But in the end, I realized I'm likely not going to be doing too too much work on this thing so I shouldn't buy something so restrictive. Apple and Androids just have so much more option in terms of apps.
- Sony Xperia Tablet Z 10" - It hast only 16Gb of storage although that can be upgraded with a SD card. It's 10 inches which I think is important to me. It's one of the lightest machines around and has the added bonus of being waterproof. It uses Android 4.1, which is a more dated OS but it is an Android still.
Anyway, I ended up decided on the Sony Xperia Z tablet. Despite not seeing it appear on a lot of review websites, I absolutely love the machine and now I can't believe I never had one before and that it doesn't receive more praise around. It is simply a perfect extension from my PC in the home. I love using it to connect me to all my devices and just have easy access to everything I need anywhere without needing my 5kg laptop. It also happens to be the only waterproof tablet around and it even has remote control capabilities, so I can use it to work my TV and whatnot. It's just perfect.
In terms of apps I actually use on it right now, I have evernote and dropbox for my cloud needs. I have Lemon SSH to connect to my home/media server. I use a reddit app and I downloaded Dungeaon Crawl Stone Soup for android which is availabe on Google play. It's actually not a terrible port to be honest. This tablet also has great integration with all my google accounts, including my schedule, my emails, my contacts. I'm still exploring what apps there are, but I'm very impressed with my Android so far.
As a last comment, I didn't really consider an iPad for 2 main reasons. First, it is fairly expensive for what you get compared to the Androids. More importantly, I hate Apple. I think they make good products and they have the best marketing team in the world as far as I'm concerned. However I hate what Apple stands for. They produce great products that unfortunately restrict their users to a lot of the software they want their users to use, instead of trying to open up so that users can have freedom if they chose so. How many times have I been stuck with a problem on one of my iDevices that I simply would not be able to resolve without a huge amount of headache if it wasn't for Linux. I can always just acces my apple machines with the help of my Linux and that usually allows me to have the freedom that Apple seems to always want to take away. A lot of people claim this is solely to protect users from making mistakes, but I think often it is to prevent users that are already paying a premium on their products from steering away from other products they will be happy to charge their customers for. It's just like Burton snowboards, that force you to buy the bindings from them and then the snowboard boots from them as well. People get tricked into buying their product, just to be stuck using all their other products in the end. I refuse to fund a corporation that uses these types of tactics to make money.
