Looking for a tablet for college

djdelarosa25 · October 2, 2021

Hi! I'm planning on buying a tablet for college once my scholarship money comes this semester. I live in the Philippines and the most I'm willing to spend is equivalent to around $500, give or take. I'll be using it for note-taking, light drawing work, and also media consumption (YouTube, movies).

On the Android side, I've been considering the newly launched Xiaomi Pad 5. It made my list because of its nice looks, 120 Hz display, and unbeatable price. The 128 GB version of it costs $350 here plus I can get the Smart Pen and I'd still have plenty left. The two downsides are the lack of biometric unlocking, which is a minor thing, and MIUI, which I really can't bring myself to like. My current phone is a Xiaomi and I flashed a custom ROM on it as soon as I can. I can imagine third-party support for this device would be good since it's such a good deal and many devs will buy it, but only time will tell. Plus, I don't think many custom ROMs are even optimized for tablets so I would be missing out on some handy features.

As much as I dislike Apple as a company, there's no denying they basically own the tablet market. I'm eyeing the regular 9th generation iPad but I can't understand why the hell there's no 128 GB option. I think 64 GB is enough for me but I want to keep the device for a while so I want just a bit more room for stuff, whereas 256 GB is simply overkill (my laptop has that much storage and I haven't used up half of it). While I habitually back up my files to the cloud and delete unneeded stuff on all my devices, buying a 64 GB workhorse in 2021 just feels wrong for me, and this is why I'm leaning more towards 256 GB despite costing close to $200 more. I also want to get the Apple Pencil as it looks like no alternative can match up to how good it is, so that's another $100. While I really like the new designs of the Air and Mini, the price difference compared to the regular iPad is just too much. By the way, I'm aware of Apple's discount for students and I plan on taking advantage of it.

What do you guys think? I'm open to other recommendations as well. Thanks in advance!