Which tablet c. £100?

dchwhite

It looks like my son's hudl2 is biting the dust - the screen has ceased to respond or display properly, & looking for advice online suggests a £60 motherboard replacement might be the only way to fix it, which probably isn't sensible.

There seems to be various Lenovo/ Amazon Fire tablets for about the £100 mark. If anyone has any thoughts/ advice on either recommendations or ones to avoid, I'm all ears - thanks

revsorg

I had exactly this problem.  I soldiered on with my Hudl2 replacing the battery twice and a broken screen once.  But it eventually just slowed to a crawl and the battery life was terrible.

So in July this year I bought a Kindle Fire HD 8 tablet on special offer for just £49.99.

I've found it very interesting what I won and lost on the move from the Hudl2:

- You have to buy all your apps again on the Amazon store because the Google Play store isn't on there.  I imagine it's possible to overcome this somehow but I can't be bothered.

- Google Play doesn't work on the Fire so any purchases you've made of TV, films or music don't work.

- Weirdly my UE Boom Bluetooth speakers won't work with the Fire because it uses some other kind of Bluetooth.  Other Bluetooth speakers might not be a problem but if you own any you'd want to check.

- The sound quality is sufficient to watch a TV program or film - you get stereo sound that isn't great but is better than the Hudl2.

- The best thing about the Fire HD 8 is the battery life.  I can now go a couple of days between charges and I use it every day.

My one warning about Amazon devices is to consider what you lose if you currently rely on things you've purchased through Google Play.

ThorpyFX

I bought the Fire HD  for my son. Seems like a really great tablet. Not slow, looks good and works well,

strumjoughlamps

ThorpyFX said:

I bought the Fire HD  for my son. Seems like a really great tablet. Not slow, looks good and works well,

I rate the Fire tabs but bloody Amazon with it no Now TV(and vice versa) is just annoying 

monquixote

The new fire HD 10 is supposed to be awesome but it's 150 quids.

rolls1392

When my Hudl2 died I bought a Samsung tablet for £99 
Wouldn't bother again. Very small memory and speed is not as good as my wife's Fire.

camoflamingo

Happy with my Samsung, but nothing to compare it with. About 100 quid. Does what I want.

FX_Munkee

Just to throw a curve ball in, I use a Linx 1010 windows 10 tablet/convertible laptop. It's pretty damn functional.
The newer model seems to be even better.
https://www.ebuyer.com/755452-linx-1020-10-32gb-tablet-with-keyboard-linx1020-bun

richcol

My son has the Fire HD also. Really good tablet for the price.

revsorg

One other thing about the Fire. We have a Chromecast Audio and a Chromecast video. The Amazon version of the BBC radio app doesn't work withe the Chromecast Audio, unlike the Android version of the app. Just another stupid example of Amazon and Google fighting each other at your expense.

4114Effects

https://www.google.co.uk/amp/s/lifehacker.com/how-to-get-google-play-on-a-kindle-fire-and-install-any-1790706649/amp

You can always put Play store on the Fire. :-)

dchwhite

Thanks very much for all the advice. He does download a lot of the free games from Google play store (football, wrestling and the like) so maybe it does need to be an Android one. (Thanks for the link about how to add play store to a Fire, but that looks beyond me!)

I did think about one of the convertible laptop ones - are they much better than the Android tablets would you say?

Thanks again - much appreciated

monquixote

FX_Munkee said:

Just to throw a curve ball in, I use a Linx 1010 windows 10 tablet/convertible laptop. It's pretty damn functional.
The newer model seems to be even better.
https://www.ebuyer.com/755452-linx-1020-10-32gb-tablet-with-keyboard-linx1020-bun

@fxmunkee I've been looking at those cheapo Win 10 devices.
Do they still work OK with only 2GB of RAM?
What do you use it for?

Myranda

Anyone know of a 12"-13" tablet hays not all of the money?

Want something for textbook size colour ereading... But don't want to spend Surface Pro money

FX_Munkee

monquixote said:

FX_Munkee said:

Just to throw a curve ball in, I use a Linx 1010 windows 10 tablet/convertible laptop. It's pretty damn functional.
The newer model seems to be even better.
https://www.ebuyer.com/755452-linx-1020-10-32gb-tablet-with-keyboard-linx1020-bun

@fxmunkee I've been looking at those cheapo Win 10 devices.
Do they still work OK with only 2GB of RAM?
What do you use it for?

Works fine. You have to take into account it's the 32bit version of windows (that's the catch). I use it for web and email, the odd bit of code (no serious compiling). Also editing patches on my GSP1101, and backing tracks. One of its best uses is as a holiday laptop/tablet. Basically it's a tablet that can do a bit of proper PC stuff.

monquixote

Myranda said:

Anyone know of a 12"-13" tablet hays not all of the money?

Want something for textbook size colour ereading... But don't want to spend Surface Pro money

Hannspad titan is about £180

ThePrettyDamned

Is there a reason why tablets seem less specd than phones? 

I want a tablet that matches my new phone - 4gb ram, octa processor, qhd screen if possible but actually HD is fine, micro sd slot and android 7.1.1 (or 8, but that's a bit silly to ask for now). 

I just can't find anything! They all seem to have earlier OS and lower specs than the phones...

My dad has a kindle fire HD. It's 2 years old and while it's not as fast or smooth as an iPad, it's been tough and reliable with excellent battery life and does everything he wants it to. Great little gadget. 

darthed1981

ThePrettyDamned said:

Is there a reason why tablets seem less specd than phones? 

I want a tablet that matches my new phone - 4gb ram, octa processor, qhd screen if possible but actually HD is fine, micro sd slot and android 7.1.1 (or 8, but that's a bit silly to ask for now). 

I just can't find anything! They all seem to have earlier OS and lower specs than the phones...

My dad has a kindle fire HD. It's 2 years old and while it's not as fast or smooth as an iPad, it's been tough and reliable with excellent battery life and does everything he wants it to. Great little gadget. 

They do exist, at the very top end of the market.  The iPad Pro is a serious but of kit.

They don't generally sell well though.  The bottom dropped out of the tablet market when phablets came along and now Amazon's cheap ones sell because they really are exceptional value.

monquixote

ThePrettyDamned said:

Is there a reason why tablets seem less specd than phones? 

I want a tablet that matches my new phone - 4gb ram, octa processor, qhd screen if possible but actually HD is fine, micro sd slot and android 7.1.1 (or 8, but that's a bit silly to ask for now). 

I just can't find anything! They all seem to have earlier OS and lower specs than the phones...

My dad has a kindle fire HD. It's 2 years old and while it's not as fast or smooth as an iPad, it's been tough and reliable with excellent battery life and does everything he wants it to. Great little gadget. 

It's for the simple reason that people don't buy them on contracts so you are hard pushed to sell an £800 tablet. You can buy plenty of high end Windows convertibles though.

EDIT: To get geeky the other thing about octocore processors is that they are a bit pointless in a tablet. The processors in phones aren't really octacore they are more like two quadcore processors in a single die. 4 cores are high performance and 4 are low power cores for doing work in the background. Normally the low power ones are on when the screen is locked and the high power ones are on when you are using demanding apps. Because tablets don't do much in the background and have much bigger batteries there is less point in having that approach.

dchwhite

Thanks everybody for all the advice.

He ended up going for the Lenovo 10" for £120 at Argos - happy enough with it so far

ThePrettyDamned

monquixote said:

ThePrettyDamned said:

Is there a reason why tablets seem less specd than phones? 

I want a tablet that matches my new phone - 4gb ram, octa processor, qhd screen if possible but actually HD is fine, micro sd slot and android 7.1.1 (or 8, but that's a bit silly to ask for now). 

I just can't find anything! They all seem to have earlier OS and lower specs than the phones...

My dad has a kindle fire HD. It's 2 years old and while it's not as fast or smooth as an iPad, it's been tough and reliable with excellent battery life and does everything he wants it to. Great little gadget. 

It's for the simple reason that people don't buy them on contracts so you are hard pushed to sell an £800 tablet. You can buy plenty of high end Windows convertibles though.

EDIT: To get geeky the other thing about octocore processors is that they are a bit pointless in a tablet. The processors in phones aren't really octacore they are more like two quadcore processors in a single die. 4 cores are high performance and 4 are low power cores for doing work in the background. Normally the low power ones are on when the screen is locked and the high power ones are on when you are using demanding apps. Because tablets don't do much in the background and have much bigger batteries there is less point in having that approach.

Ooo learnt something new, wisdom for you. 

Yes, I suppose that's true - I just wish there was a big version of my phone that only had WiFi because it works. 

Google have some tablets out, maybe I'll check them out.