There is so much buzz today about tablets. There are tablets running Android, iOS and now Windows 8. Seems like every company under the sun is getting into this expanding marketplace.
They now come in different sizes, colors and everything else in between. With all these choices what tablet makes sense?
I put in some serious hours reading through reviews, going into stores such as Best Buy to test the options out there and talked with many folks that blazed the trail and purchased one before me. I immediately removed Microsoft’s Windows 8 from my list! Honestly, I simply do not like the user interface and its not that intuitive!
After all the research, “kicking the tires” and hundreds of conversations I finally made the decision to go with the Asus Transformer Pad Infinity TF700T. It is an amazing tablet! The ASUS Transformer Pad Infinity runs the latest Jellybean 4.1.x version of Android, which admittedly is a big improvement over previous editions of the platform. With Jellybean, the Android OS is getting smoother and slicker and is definitely less restrictive than iOS.
Here are a few things that stood out for me:
1. Speed. The Asus Infinity is running a Nvidia Tegra 3 quad-core processor and its very fast. Applications load quickly, multitasking is a breeze and I have not experienced any lag.
2. Display. It doesn’t quite have the “retina” display of the new iPad, but the resolution is double that of the original iPad and significantly higher than most Android tablets. The Infinity’s higher resolution shows crisper and sharper text and much higher levels of detail.
3. Capacity. This hit it out of park for me! The Asus Infinity comes with an HDMI out port and an expandable micro SD slot. Wait it gets better, if you purchase the keyboard dock you get an extra SD slot, USB port and an extra battery!
The iPad probably has a slight edge with having more available apps, however, I appreciated the fact that all my favorite apps were available via the Google Play store.
When I fired up my tablet I entered in my Google account information and most of the apps I used were there and ready to go. Whats really cool about the Asus Infinity tablets is you get android software such as Polaris® Office® preloaded, a professional mobile office solution which enables users to edit various types of office documents including documents (.doc), spreadsheets (.xls) and presentation files (.ppt), making the Infinity very attractive for professional use. In addition, you get 8GB of ASUS WebStorage cloud space free for life!
I ditched my Amazon Kindle and now read my books using the Kindle app on the tablet. For now I picked up a Bamboo stylus and I am using the preloaded SuperNote app for quick adhoc note taking. I eventually get all that stuff over to Evernote which is my primary app that I use for speaking, presentations and all my blog work.
I am starting to take my tablet wherever I go!
What tablet do you have? Why?
Are you looking at tablets? Which ones?
For further reading check out this article on ‘Moving from iOS to Android: your guide’
