Right.. it’s been a while since the last blog post. In my mind I was going to publish it a week or two after the previous article about phone specs then fatherhood and commitments happened, all that good energy and the flow state disappears and next thing I know months pass by where I am still coasting and just trying to get through the day to day! Maybe this is why parenthood feels like a blur because you don’t realise where the time goes. Anyway England sadly didn’t bring it home but here’s another blog post to make you all happy again.
Who is this post for?
For the dad who has to answer the nagging demands of their kids wanting a new tablet but doesn’t want to go broke in the process, or the friend of mine who said he needs to buy a good cheap tablet for his niece but wants to keep the cost as low as possible because there’s two of them! Or just somebody who wants to get a tablet for themselves and wants to know what to look for. This isn’t for those who are looking to buy the latest iPad or the latest top spec android tablet for their kid. A moment of silence for your expenses. Lastly random tip - tablet cameras aren’t usually great and don’t really need to be, they aren’t really that practical for doing photography or making videos.
What to keep in mind?
Tablets as we all know are good for media consumption, playing games, watching videos and browsing on a bigger screen. It is I think the lesser of the two evils vs a phone because the size makes it impractical to carry around everywhere and it is easier to manage and to spot when it’s being used by your kids. I think there’s two directions you can go when buying a good value tablet, there is the upper mid range which is the level below top spec but the price point tend to be a lot better or the super good value budget range where you just need a cheap tablet good enough to run the basic games and functions for a few years. I recommend use GSMArena.com if you want to find full specs or ask any decent AI like Gemini is ‘X’ tablet (one you are considering) better or as good as ‘Y’ tablet ( I’ve listed below)
The cheap and cheerful benchmarks minimum benchmarks
RAM memory - it should be a minimum of 6gb to operate multiple apps smoothly, you can get away with 4gb RAM if you’re certain the usage won’t be moderately heavy but 6gb will reduce the likelihood of your kid complaining the tablet is too slow in the future or maybe you get a 4gb one because you want their experience to be limited, now that could be a genius power move.
Android - minimum version should be Android 12, I think a lot of affordable tablets now go above this.
Processor - the engine that completes the tasks. All phones and should have an octa-core processor, don’t be getting quad core, it will be either super slow or super old.
Chipset - Snapdragon 685 or Mediatek Helio G99 (6 nm)
An example and one I’ve experienced as I’ve sourced it for my nephew/nieces: Honor Pad X9a. The Redmi Pad is an alternative and there are newer models now.
Price: around £100 - potentially below if you can find a good used deal (my next post will focus on that)
The upper mid range end minimum benchmarks
All of the above
Chipset - Snapdragon 860
Device example - Xiaomi pad 5 to 7 models
Price range £120-240
If you're interested in an iPad only I'm convinced a used one from 3 years ago will do a solid job today. You’ll find a lot of tablets from 2022 onwards have reasonably good specs, be cautious to not buy the absolute cheapest ones from retail shops though as those specs tend to be rubbish. Anyway I think if you follow the above advice, do a bit of research you'll know what's good or not.
My own usage and what's coming next
I have personally owned a Xiaomi Pad 5 quite a few years back but still think it would do a good job today, I now have the Lenovo Idea Tab Pro 256gb version (Chinese version), I'll leave you to research the specs. It is a good size with a 12.7 inch screen, ot takes a memory card so I added a 512gb card and my main use case for it is essentially a portable digital album gallery to store, view pictures and videos and to edit vlogs (when I eventually get around to it!) so I made sure the processor was a good one for that purpose. More impressively I got this tablet brand new last year for about £175 from AliExpress, the Amazon price today is £350 and then a fried of mine did one better and got the 128gb version for about £105! I say about because it came about via various discounts timed to perfection.
That is all for now, I will be publishing the next blog shortly after this one. You should now have a good idea about what specs a good older phone or tablet should reach. You might be wondering ok great you’ve hyped me up well enough but now where do I find these older gen devices?? I’ve got you, don’t worry! The next post though will be about where and how to shop for good deals to bag some bargains!