JHZR2
Staff member
I have an iPad 3rd gen, from 2012. It is a retina display model, battery still lasts forever, screen is still beautiful, and its in great shape, but the computing power now is starting to get too slow for how I use it.
So Im looking for a tablet to bridge the gap. In general, Id prefer another iPad, but the mini 4 is old, the air 2 is older, the pro 12.9 is too big, and the pro 9.7, while maybe OK, is more of a tablet than I particularly need/want, since Ill spend my money on computers with real file systems... Tblets are just good because we travel a lot and they fill a gap when we don't want to carry a computer, and a phone is too small. I really want an iPad Air 3, but its release is somewhere between October and "never", and its not clear if/when such a mid range updated tablet will be available.
So really the only use for this will be multi-task web browsing and web-based email. Somewhere between 10-20 different browsing windows open and interchanging use as I go. This is precisely where the current iPad bogs down and gets stuck. Optimally I could run something like amazon prime music player or pandora in the background as well.
Because computing resources and OS efficiency will differ, I'm not sure I can compare processors and RAM, but the existing iPad has a dual core A5X computing system, clocked at 1GHz and offering 1GB of RAM, FWIW.
Since I have a high end 36MP full-frame DSLR, and an iPhone 6S, the camera on a tablet really doesn't matter to me at all.
What does matter is a half decent screen, something on par (don't need to go better, Im not watching 4K movies on this) with the retina display in my current tablet, which is a 2,048 × 1,536 px color IPS LCD display at 264 ppi.
Battery life doesn't much matter as I typically have a charger and don't use it for more than an hour or two at a time browsing.
I could buy an Apple refurbished iPad Air 2 for around $300. But it is old tech, and I'm more inclined to wait until the next generation comes out. I also hear that OLED variants will arrive in 2018, so I'm inclined to be patient until then. But I do need something before then.
The better Samsung and google tablets with specs on par with the Air 2 and iPad pro are at least as expensive as the iPad variants. Im not sure I need to have anything that advanced, I'm looking for a really good screen and snappy processing for multitasking on web browser pages, but that's about it... So, is there another "best value" option?
Recommendations???
Thanks!
So Im looking for a tablet to bridge the gap. In general, Id prefer another iPad, but the mini 4 is old, the air 2 is older, the pro 12.9 is too big, and the pro 9.7, while maybe OK, is more of a tablet than I particularly need/want, since Ill spend my money on computers with real file systems... Tblets are just good because we travel a lot and they fill a gap when we don't want to carry a computer, and a phone is too small. I really want an iPad Air 3, but its release is somewhere between October and "never", and its not clear if/when such a mid range updated tablet will be available.
So really the only use for this will be multi-task web browsing and web-based email. Somewhere between 10-20 different browsing windows open and interchanging use as I go. This is precisely where the current iPad bogs down and gets stuck. Optimally I could run something like amazon prime music player or pandora in the background as well.
Because computing resources and OS efficiency will differ, I'm not sure I can compare processors and RAM, but the existing iPad has a dual core A5X computing system, clocked at 1GHz and offering 1GB of RAM, FWIW.
Since I have a high end 36MP full-frame DSLR, and an iPhone 6S, the camera on a tablet really doesn't matter to me at all.
What does matter is a half decent screen, something on par (don't need to go better, Im not watching 4K movies on this) with the retina display in my current tablet, which is a 2,048 × 1,536 px color IPS LCD display at 264 ppi.
Battery life doesn't much matter as I typically have a charger and don't use it for more than an hour or two at a time browsing.
I could buy an Apple refurbished iPad Air 2 for around $300. But it is old tech, and I'm more inclined to wait until the next generation comes out. I also hear that OLED variants will arrive in 2018, so I'm inclined to be patient until then. But I do need something before then.
The better Samsung and google tablets with specs on par with the Air 2 and iPad pro are at least as expensive as the iPad variants. Im not sure I need to have anything that advanced, I'm looking for a really good screen and snappy processing for multitasking on web browser pages, but that's about it... So, is there another "best value" option?
Recommendations???
Thanks!
