What are the best options for tablets on the market?

[OttoVonBismarck]

Hi guys!

 

thinking about upgrading my surface pro (2017) in the next year or so for a combination of professional, and personal reasons. I'll lay out what i'm really liking, and what i'm really not:

 

What i like:

• Full desktop system - my computer encountered a problem with a faulty part around a year after i bought the surface pro. i just plugged my monitor to my surface, and a USB hub, and then from the USB hub i used my full keyboard + mouse + Monitor and headphones like nothing had changed, just couldn't really game on it until the part was fixed. Full desktop systems are great!
• the surface pen - A tablet with a good stylus is a must. Between client signatures on things that can accept digital signatures, light work with it, and my personal hobby of trying and failing to draw well, i wouldn't trade the stylus away
• the surface pro's keyboard is pretty good to type on, i enjoy it.
• I like having USB type A port because i handle USBs a fair bit and losing USB type A would be a bit of a pain
• Good front camera , i use the webcam a lot

 

What i don't like:

• Weight - the surface pro seems a bit too big+heavy for me to comfortably maneuver sometimes as a tablet. As a laptop obviously no complaints.
• Sometimes it struggles transitioning between tablet and laptop mode - i really hate when it misinterprets what i want and flips the screen orientation at the wrong moment. Windows 10 is just annoying to work with as a tablet at times.
• Multi tasking in tablet mode is hard for me on the surface pro
• Sometimes my palm gets picked up as an input by the surface pro. Not sure if this is my fault or the computers
• Rear camera - i don't care! i'm not an old lady that holds their whole tablet up to record things!

 

what's important to me not mentioned:

• Battery life - I'm okay with needing to plug these bad boys in to handle a full day. but i would generally like 5+ hours of intense use. currently my surface pro (2017) is short of this target. This might just be the battery having degraded over time though
• Beautiful display is a huge plus.. i can take a worse display if i have to, but a nice display would be good.

 

What i use my current surface for:

• Watching things in tablet mode on the morning commute
• Drawing / sketching in tablet mode
• Taking notes in client meetings, written + typed depending on what i want to do. Demonstrating things to clients with the tablet, highlighting key things etc. Very happy to hand it to them so they can look at things, sign things etc.
• light productivity - MS word, excel most commonly used. I use outlook for email
• web cam used for calls with both clients and friends.

 

Please, throw suggestions at me!

[Commodus]

4 hours ago, OttoVonBismarck said:

Hi guys!

 

thinking about upgrading my surface pro (2017) in the next year or so for a combination of professional, and personal reasons. I'll lay out what i'm really liking, and what i'm really not:

 

What i like:

• Full desktop system - my computer encountered a problem with a faulty part around a year after i bought the surface pro. i just plugged my monitor to my surface, and a USB hub, and then from the USB hub i used my full keyboard + mouse + Monitor and headphones like nothing had changed, just couldn't really game on it until the part was fixed. Full desktop systems are great!
• the surface pen - A tablet with a good stylus is a must. Between client signatures on things that can accept digital signatures, light work with it, and my personal hobby of trying and failing to draw well, i wouldn't trade the stylus away
• the surface pro's keyboard is pretty good to type on, i enjoy it.
• I like having USB type A port because i handle USBs a fair bit and losing USB type A would be a bit of a pain
• Good front camera , i use the webcam a lot

 

What i don't like:

• Weight - the surface pro seems a bit too big+heavy for me to comfortably maneuver sometimes as a tablet. As a laptop obviously no complaints.
• Sometimes it struggles transitioning between tablet and laptop mode - i really hate when it misinterprets what i want and flips the screen orientation at the wrong moment. Windows 10 is just annoying to work with as a tablet at times.
• Multi tasking in tablet mode is hard for me on the surface pro
• Sometimes my palm gets picked up as an input by the surface pro. Not sure if this is my fault or the computers
• Rear camera - i don't care! i'm not an old lady that holds their whole tablet up to record things!

 

what's important to me not mentioned:

• Battery life - I'm okay with needing to plug these bad boys in to handle a full day. but i would generally like 5+ hours of intense use. currently my surface pro (2017) is short of this target. This might just be the battery having degraded over time though
• Beautiful display is a huge plus.. i can take a worse display if i have to, but a nice display would be good.

 

What i use my current surface for:

• Watching things in tablet mode on the morning commute
• Drawing / sketching in tablet mode
• Taking notes in client meetings, written + typed depending on what i want to do. Demonstrating things to clients with the tablet, highlighting key things etc. Very happy to hand it to them so they can look at things, sign things etc.
• light productivity - MS word, excel most commonly used. I use outlook for email
• web cam used for calls with both clients and friends.

 

Please, throw suggestions at me!

Your desire for a full desktop environment limits things somewhat.  If you're expecting to basically pick up where you left off from your desktop, then you'd want another Windows 10 tablet, and that likely means the Surface Pro 7 (which has both USB-A and USB-C, thankfully for you).

 

However, if you're just looking for a mouse, keyboard and external monitor... yes, I'll be the one to suggest an iPad Pro.  There are significant quirks, such as mouse support being considered an accessibility feature (it's really there to replace taps, not mimic a PC mouse in every way) and some apps having very specific uses for the external monitor, but it works.  You can get a USB-C hub with the ports you need and you're off to the races (though one of those ports should be USB-C for power!).  And of course, all the Office apps and note-taking you need are there.

 

As for why you might want the iPad?  To start, there's the Apple Pencil.  It's considered a gold standard in tablet pens, and in some cases might be better than the Surface Pen (palm rejection and overall support for angles/pressure, I believe).  Also... it charges from the side of your tablet.  No battery swaps, no plugging it in.  You have to buy it separately, but I suspect you'd really like it.

 

More importantly, it addresses many of your dislikes from the Surface.  There's an actual tablet interface designed for multitasking using touch, not a basic thing grafted on to a desktop OS.  Truly complex scenarios do involve some finger kung-fu, but it makes more overall sense to me.  Palm rejection should be better.  And of course, the iPad is much lighter and thinner while mustering far better battery life.  I always scratch my head at folks who use the Surface Pro primarily as a tablet, since it's  so thick and heavy that you really don't want to use it as a tablet for more than brief bursts... the iPad is more like it.

 

I know Huilun mentioned the Galaxy Tab S6, but it wouldn't be my pick.  It's not terrible in itself -- rather, it's that it's saddled with the terrible Android tablet app ecosystem.  There are considerably fewer tablet-native Android apps than there are iPad-native ones, and finding the ones that are tablet-ready is still a pain (Google doesn't let you filter the Play Store by form factor).  Microsoft's apps are optimized, so that's reassuring, but some others could fall through the cracks.