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What do you use tablets for?

02/27/2015 at 10:00 AM by Brad Linder 97 Comments

Last year tablet shipments were down for the first time since 2010. That’s led a lot of folks to try to come up with explanations. Maybe big-screened smartphones are eating into tablet sales. Maybe people who already own tablets don’t feel the need to upgrade to new models as quickly as they would upgrade phones. Or maybe they were just a passing fad.

The truth is probably a lot more complicated… but it does leave me wondering what exactly people are using their tablets for.

comic dw

Personally, I’ve never really seen the point in using a tablet for email, social networking, or web surfing. I’d rather do all of those things with my smartphone or a laptop.

I do occasionally read eBooks on a tablet, but I typically prefer to do that with a dedicated eReader with a black and white screen, long battery life, and no distracting notifications.

But there is one area where I find a tablet to be the best tool for the job: reading digital comic books or magazines.

Comics and magazines were originally designed for large pages and they can be tough to read on a smartphone screen… even if you have a phone with a 6 inch screen. Sure, there are apps that let you read comics panel-by-panel or zoom in on magazine pages. But I’d prefer to view pages in their original layout.

In fact, when I killed my Nexus 7 a few months ago with one experiment too many, I decided to pick up a used NOOK HD+ tablet specifically so that I’d have a cheap 9 inch tablet with a high-res screen that I could use to read comic books.

It’s not the fastest tablet around, but I use it almost exclusively to read comics using Marvel Unlimited, Google Play Books, and Perfect Viewer and it’s more than worth the $90 I paid for it.

During a recent 14-hour plane ride, I also loaded up a few movies, but for the most part I use this tablet for reading comics and graphic novels, and it does a great job .

I’m sure there are other reasons to use a tablet instead of a laptop or smartphone… and I try to play some games, do some web browsing, and perform other tasks whenever I’m reviewing a tablet. But for most things, I prefer a device with a dedicated keyboard or a device that I can fit into my pocket. For reading material with a strong graphic element, I prefer a big screen.

What about you? If you’ve got a tablet, what do you use it for?

If you’re thinking about picking one up, why? And if you’re waiting for tablets with different features, what are they?

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I have an old HP TouchPad running Android (it’s my Android beta testing rig) and a BlackBerry PlayBook which I use primarily on the treadmill while running, listening to music through Neutron Music Player. The swiping actions on the PlayBook make it perfect for music selection while running without falling off at speed. I also use the tablets on a music stand to display song lyrics and chords when jamming on the guitar. They have tuner apps which work very well and programs like Guitar Pro which help you loop and play back song sections while learning. I could use my smartphone or laptop for this too but the phone’s display is too small and the laptop just too big to be totally portable. Though I primarily browse the web using my laptop, I sometimes prefer to browse in bed using a tablet. Just less cumbersome and more relaxing. I… Read more »

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3 years ago
GraveDigger27
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Ah – a fellow TouchPad/PlayBook owner. There aren’t many of us and we need to stick together. Seriously though, I’ve moved away from the TouchPad and PlayBook to a dedicated Dell Venue 8 Android tablet as my daily consumption device – music and movies on a 64GB microSD card, lots of games and productivity programs installed on the tablet, Netflix and Hulu Plus for TV and movie viewing and Spotify for music streaming. I’ve installed lots of comics and ebooks to my Google Play Books account (thank you Humble Bundle) and keep up with the latest news with the USA Today app. Of course I will watch the occasional YouTube video, check my email accounts with the email app and browse the web using Google Chrome. I even have an external keyboard that I can use (but almost never do) if I need to do much writing on the tablet.… Read more »

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3 years ago
Young CRV
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Watching streaming video (e.g. NBA) while using my laptop to do work … “Double” screening it.

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3 years ago
Doug Heffernan
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doing any surfing is tedious on tablet , but anything on a smart phone is redic. unless your making a call…

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3 years ago
BoloMKXXVIII
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I had a 7″ Nook Color that I hacked into a vanilla Android tablet but when it died I never replaced it. I currently have a 5.5″ smartphone and a couple of laptops so it is hard to justify also getting a tablet. If I did get one it would be at least 10″ and good tablets that size generally are not cheap.Add to that I do not like where Google is taking Android and I am not a fan of Apple products and I guess I will be tablet free for a while. I might pick up a Windows 10 convertable at some point.

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3 years ago
Aboxman
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Put Cyanogenmod on the Nook, and you have just turned an OK tablet into a Great tablet. I use my HD+ for games, web and Hangouts Dialer truns it into a Wifi phone/tablet. Great for our remote cottage with no cell coverage, but we have Broadband.

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3 years ago
Chris K.
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How well does that really work? Our 7″ Nook HDs work well, but have a few limits (like being able to move huge games to SD cards).

The problem I’ve had in the past with Cyanogen and other custom ROMs is that they offer no improvement whatsoever to 80% of what we do, do improve about 10%, and render 10% completely non-functional.

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3 years ago
Aboxman
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Well the HD+ native OS is a heavily skinned ICS, Cyanogenmod is vanilla KitKat. Many more (and newer) apps can run on KK than ICS. Plus you have Root, which comes in handy sometimes. With B&N abandoning the Nook there will be no more updates. My HD+ is pretty stable. Is it as stable as my nexus? No, is it more stable than the stock OS? Pretty close. Is it easier to use than Stock? Yes.

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3 years ago
Brad Linder
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Yeah — as I mentioned, I’m only running a handful of apps on mine, and they run well. I wanted a tablet with Google Play support out of the box, a large high-res screen, and long battery life. The Nook HD+ fits the bill with no root or custom ROM required (I did install Nova Launcher to get away from the NOOK home screen though).

But if any of those apps drops support for ICS in the future, it’s nice to know that I can probably squeeze a little more life out of the tablet by loading a custom ROM.

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3 years ago
Chris K.
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Since I have a ridiculous number of devices in my house, I’ll try to explain when I got them and what they are primarily used for. Archos 5 500GB (purchased used in 2010) – primarily used for my 100gb-ish music and audio drama collection. Also made for a very useful portable movie player once I started converting my DVDs (and now BDs) to M4Vs, and it comes in handy for occasional VHS-to-digital recording. Web browsing was always subpar, the screen wasn’t great for ebook reading, and it didn’t have enough OS, power, or memory to do anything else. It’s still limping along, but freezes often, and its battery is pretty much toast. There is no viable replacement on the market as a portable media player (I’m making due with an Archos 43 with two 64gb miniSDs). Archos 7 250GB (two refurbs, one purchased in 2012, one in 2013) – the… Read more »

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3 years ago
wsabillon
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I don’t own one just yet, other than reading while in bed, I just can’t think of very good reasons to buy one. I’m waiting for an asus transformer type of device, but affordable and hassle free linux installation. I live in a “third world country”, so I’m not the guy tablet’s companies are aiming for.

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3 years ago
Olufemi Adeyemi
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Just like the author I use my tablet for comics

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3 years ago
bbkm
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Tablets for me only good for very basic stuff. Tablet/mobile browsers still not good enough to do what you can on a desktop. No printing on mobile OS is also a minus unless you are using a Win8 tablet. The lack of ubiquity on miracast displays slows me down as well. I use a tablet purely for basic browsing and not much else. My kids use them for games, and not much else. Occasionally I use an app to watch TV that might not be appropriate for my small kids (Black Sails for example), but the app doesn’t do my cable cos on demand so for on demand I end up on the TV. My smartphone can cover everything I use my tablets for, so I mostly keep them around for the kids to play games. The one use I have that may be unique/uncommon is using cheap tabs as… Read more »

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3 years ago
Nighty
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Oh, hadn’t heard of that use before. What software do you use for the WiFi repeater function?

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3 years ago
bbkm
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Connectify

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3 years ago
Nighty
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Thanks.

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3 years ago
Busybee
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Perhaps the tablet shipments were down because of the decline of ARM powered Android tablets while more Intel powered Windows tablets take center stage. That shift in tablet type could also explain why Intel suddenly became one of the top tablet chip suppliers (currently ranked second behind Apple).

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3 years ago

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