What's the point of using a tablet?

Surely the title can be interpreted as an attack towards tablets, but it's not. As a non-tablet user, I want to know when and where it can be useful and/or comfortable to use. I feel like it has the worst features of both a computer and a smartphone, maybe because it looks like a gray zone. I know it has some good use cases, such as drawing tablet, e-book/manga reader and just a big screen to watch movies with. Does anyone know any other good use cases? It always made me confused as it's a good alternative to a laptop (if a keyboard is attached) and a good big screen for smartphone software. One of my concerns is about the OS: I never understood if it fits well with smartphone-purpose or desktop purpose software, as it looks like it can do both. Sorry for the redundacy if any, and no device wars. These are just some personal doubts I want to clarify...

I think they were made as a solution to a problem that didnt rlly exist, you basically listed all the things tablets do well at They only really exist thanks to LCD tech maturing in 2010 so large, low power high DPI screens became cheap so why not make an embiggened phone? The hardware came far before the software

A lot of senior high school and university students use tablets for their study. It makes sense. At all times I carry different eight notebooks, a fat pencilcase of pens that are running out of ink, and my laptop where I keep class materials, assignment stuff, basically everything else. If I had a tablet, I could have all this crap in one device. Why don't I have one? Price point is one thing, but in my opinion, they feel awful to write with. I think it's because a digital pen on screen has no resistance the way a pen on paper does. Less problem for drawing because it's easier to change technique, and your strokes are broader, but with writing it's too minute and ingrained to change. The tablet notes of even regular users, are kind of ugly at best, but often are illegible. Not that my opinion matters. Lots of students like them, and I can understand why.

I'll play the devil's advocate. Tablet just makes most of the stuff you can do with the phones more comfortable: reading, browsing, watching, etc. The only tasks it's worse at are photos and calls, just because it's clunky. When it comes to the OS, I'd say mobile OS is better on it for the consumers. You can make use of a desktop OS on it, but currently it requires a lot of tweaking. Another upside of tablets is the fact that they are not being reinvented each year by the marketing. No mega-wide 3:1 screens, no pop-up cameras, no notches of stupid shapes, you get the point. Stylus is a great boon, as it makes sketching a thing on the device. You can actually do a lot of types of work on tablet with stylus. I've seen several people being really efficient with text editing, drawing, design and music production on Ipads for example. The comparison with laptop is, in my opinion, much more of a preference issue. Working with text or code is obviously better with laptop. Even if tablet has a keyboard it's not as good most of the time due to it being less stable and smaller. But tablet gives you a lot of freedom for drawing, design and (arguably) music production, as touch controls and stylus provide a lot of additional options. And the portability is different: laptop is better at creating a workplace anywhere, while tablet gives you the ability to not care about having a workplace at all and just do the thing. Again, personal preference.

>>84210 >When it comes to the OS, I'd say mobile OS is better on it for the consumers. You can make use of a desktop OS on it, but currently it requires a lot of tweaking. It is kind of a grey zone: Android can be a good solution, but what about a desktop OS? Windows is a purely desktop-oriented OS, so it wouldn't be a suitable solution for tablets. Linux-based OSes can ship (or you can install manually) GNOME, which is a mix between desktop and mobile, but in this case you have two problems: - You should rely mainly on resizable programs that can fit a mobile display, for example desktop Telegram; - It's the same as Windows, a desktop OS (we should say in this cas a "desktop" desktop environment"), the only difference is that you can tweak it a little.

>>84204 Get a tablet with a micro sd card - then mass pirate all your content onto it Also nice for drawing and art

>What's the point of using a tablet? At home, at an office job, in the classroom they're better smartphones. Same content consoomer device with a bigger screen and battery. In public they're too big which is why the phone form factor still exists. When they figure out the durable Westworld folding tablet, smartphones will be done. Apple would have you believe it's the best way ever to write and draw, don't know if professionals prefer these tiny zoom pan cope screens and the software limitations. At school it's an excuse to have a screen on, iPads are more awkward to write on than paper but mistakes can be fixed, layout rearranged, more colors. (But what for, anybody heard of the Gutenberg fuarrrking press? Why copy all day long like medieval monks.) Locked like phones with spy ROMs. Linux DEs have touch support, would work fine to view files, with mouse keyboard and a stand it'd be a computer replacement. Can't have that gotta siphon that personal data. Can't have tablets taking calls and texts on a SIM either, gotta sell them smartphones. There were experimental tablets running Windows on Intel's failed mobile chips, needed a cooling fan. Today there's only baby toy tablets or the Surface line which is more laptop than efficient tablet.

>>84237 >mobile drawing yoga laptops do that better, 13.3" folds backwards and got a drawing pen with pressure sensor. Dont know if they still build new models of it but i got one years ago and its competitive to drawing with a wacom tablet at home.

I see mentions of using a tablet to draw. How does that compare to a dedicated graphics tablet?

>>84243 just to clarify a "wacom tablet" is just a plastic surface you can use the pen on. Its not a tablet in the sense of the Op. The benefit using one is you can look at the regular tft screen at home without your hand obfuscating what you draw. The wacom tablet has more pressure levels than the yoga pen but in practical application it didnt make a difference to me. Only real change is whether your hand obfuscates what you draw. Regarding screen size its just a bit more annoying to draw on smaller screen since you have to zoom and scroll more to make up for it.

I manage something like a hotel. I just use an online spreadsheet to manage bookings (each room has a column, each row is the a date, each page is a month) It's very good as a tool to view and browse through this information, I'm often using my phone to input reservations rather than a PC even when I'm sitting at the computer. I'm looking to get a tablet for my employee, so she can easily see the daily tasks and get a good visual for the work throughout each month. She is older so the larger screen is better than a phone. As well as a personal device like others are saying it's great. I can be watching a movie, decide I want to have a bath then go to bed, and I can take the movie with me. There are some really nice stands and holders/mounts out there.

>I know it has some good use cases, such as drawing tablet, e-book/manga reader and just a big screen to watch movies with. Does anyone know any other good use cases? These are genuinely the only reasons I even got a tablet. I guess the battery life is better than a cheap laptop too; strong emphasis on cheap. The software ecosystem is complete trash for the most part, sadly. Even with a keyboard plugged in or synced over bluetooth, it is just a lot less useful than my ten year old laptop because of the software issue. If I'm just browsing the web, watching a movie, reading documents (being able to view PDFs in vertical format and at a decent size is amazing), or using one of the surprisingly decent drawing applications available, things are fine. Once you step outside that zone, things are just abysmal. >>84243 I'm a total amateur and I use a cheap disc-tip capacitive stylus to draw on my tablet since mine doesn't support anything like the S Pen or Apple Pencil. I got a stupid cheap tablet. I do like it a lot more than drawing with a desktop drawing tablet, even if there are some quite major issues (no pressure sensitivity, low accuracy for initial strokes since you need to move a fair bit to get past any accidental touch rejection). Being able to rotate the device underneath me is just way too convenient versus rotating it on screen on a desktop drawing application. If you want one for drawing, make sure it does in fact support a proper drawing pen.

>>84204 A good use case I found for my tablet is having clients signing documents. It's a device that's good to have if you are on your feet and need to document.

>>84204 I only use mine for charts and soykaf when I'm playing microshart flight simulator lol

They're decidedly for home, maybe office use. Key points are: they're larger - easier to see what's on the screen often feature better display technologies speakers are likewise better than a phone, for watching videos They're lighter than a laptop and are becoming equally powerful for most usecases. I like using mine when cuddling up to someone and watching a show. Oh, and I guess they're a status symbol for some people.

There is a few other advantages. It can be more easily mounted on a movable arm to watch overhead than a monitor due to being battery powered but it also can be used as a monitor. You also can control your computer with it so you don't necessarily have to be limited to things only for tablets. It's easier to carry with you when traveling than a laptop and a laptop is more likely to be seized as "suspicious" by TSA compared to a tablet. Using a tablet when walking around is a lot easier than using a laptop while walking around even the laptops that can fold into tablets you're just risking dropping the thing so this is good for either work environments or if you just are a nervous pacer. A tablet can serve as a secondary device to use a different OS without a redundancy say for example your PC is set up to boot a Linux distro, Windows, and a hackintosh macOS, your phone is an Android and you have an iPad which allows you to use basically every program in existence. Also if you want an eink display those only are made for tablets and more recently phones, I am not aware of any laptops or standalone computer monitors that exist. The line between tablet and PC is blurring too since all PC OS's are able to run with ARM chips now. There also does exist projects like Ubuntu Touch and Debian Mobile. >>85219 > speakers are likewise better than a phone, for watching videos Some phones have dual speakers while there are tablets that only have single speakers. Plus both a phone and a tablet you can use bluetooth speakers.

>>84204 Tablets are an exceptionally good solution for lightweight data-hoarding, especially if you don't have a laptop. >Does anyone know any other good use cases? Grab yourself a (reliable) 256gb SD card, download KiwiX, and start grabbing VIMs for things like Wikipedia. Load up Openstreetmaps, Google Translate, etc. If your internet goes out for more than a few days you'll realize how valuable a tablet loaded with local data can be.

I use an iPad 5th generation of browsing image boards, reading eBooks, IRC with Palaver, using BBSes with MuffinTerm, browsing Gemini with LaGrange, Amazon PrimeVideo, Netflix, PPSSPP, SSH with Terminus, YouTube, YouTube Music, Element chat, FTP, Torrenting with webtor.io, spreadsheets with Numbers, and Word Processing with Pages. I also have a 2-in-1 Laptop/Tablet Hybrid, a Lenovo ThinkPad Yoga S1 running Debian and Gnome. Both offer decent tablet experiences but the iPad does it better.

>>85220 > It can be more easily mounted on a movable arm to watch overhead than a monitor I'm going to take this opportunity to point at mounting arms for airplanes as well. Tablets are extremely common among pilots, from small planes all the way up to jumbo jets, due to Foreflight. For the uninitiated, Foreflight is what's called an "Electronic Flight Bag", basically has everything a pilot would want to see. Maps (with moving marker for your plane and other planes, if you're using ADSB-in), routing, live weather, NOTAMS, notes, capability to create and file a flight plan, etc. Once a pilot gets serious about flying they'd be doing themselves a huge disservice not to have an ipad (has to be iOS due to Foreflight requirements. There are free alternatives like FltPlnGo or Avare that work on Android but aren't nearly as good). There really isn't a scenario where you can make a laptop work out in a cockpit either, so tablets are a form factor that are uniquely positioned to be useful there.

>>84208 If it doesn't already exist, I'd be surprised.. but I'm thinking of a notebook app that OCRs your soykafty text and puts clean text in its place. Wouldn't work well for some stuff like geometry I'd imagine but idk

>>84204 I'm using a tablet as my main computer for a few months now, so I think I can help explain. It really depends on your use case, I certainly wouldn't say everyone should have a tablet instead of a PC, at best it's a suplementary device, and not a replacement, anyways nowadays we can do most things in our smartphones, and a tablet is essentially that, but bigger. What's the point of a tablet? Well, there are a few things it does better than both laptops and smartphones, like drawing, consuming content in bed or other comfortable places and positions, it's more portable and easier to take with me on trips than a laptop, and does about 90% of what I'd personally do on a computer, since my use case for them is simple. I also love using mine as a Nintendo Switch/Steam Deck with a telescopic controller, it's much better to play on using CRT shaders than a smartphone. I love mine, and it was cheap. It depends on what you'll use it for and how much you need it specifically for those use cases.

>>84208 tcl nxtpaper tablet has paper feel and a ebook mode. quite cheap as its their target market. the chipset is just right for all of its models, it just works and it drains battery less and has a beautiful IPS screen that doens't give you the oled eye strain

I got a new tablet today! Tablet is my preferred device, because over 90% of my screen time I spend reading pdfs. An ereader is also nice, but it's not too good for certain kinds of pdfs, it's mostly made for epubs. With a tablet I have a little bit of extra functionality that is awkward in an ereader, namely just about everything that is not reading epubs. I like a tablet because it's easy to carry around, it has a screen big enough for reading, unlike smartphones, and yeah, for the most part I get comfy in a chair or sofa and just read away. I do admit that the bright screen can be an issue sometimes, not so much because it burns my retinas, but because it reflects sunlight and I can't read soykaf if it's too bright outside. In the evening it is also a bit difficult to adjust the brightness but it does have the benefit that I can read with dim light.

>>87092 It's cool to see more tablet users here. I like it for the same reasons, it gets a lot o hate for being sandwiched between laptops and smartphones, but there are some things were it's vastly better than both and, if you happen to use those things a lot, it's a superb device to own and use daily. Which tablet did you get? I'm more of a Samsung Galaxy Tab guy... but all tablets are cool.

>>84219 >Windows is a purely desktop-oriented OS, so it wouldn't be a suitable solution for tablets huh, yeah, thats why they got the bigass buttons and put the bar icons on the center on W11, huh

>>85531

>Windows is a purely desktop-oriented OS, so it wouldn't be a suitable solution for tablets. why do people just say things?

>>84210 >You can make use of a desktop OS on it, but currently it requires a lot of tweaking. This is why I went with a Lenovo Duet. open it and you get standard desktop ChromeOS, disconnect the keyboard (attaches with with magnets) or fold it under and it switches to tablet mode. ChromeOS as the system also gives you its linux dev environment and a no hassle, very well integrated, everything just works Debian VM. Love that little machine, insanely useful and portable, barely thicker than a standard tablet in a folio style case and indistinguishable from a tablet when the keyboard is removed.

>>84204 A bit off topic, but is there any way to connect a tablet with USB C 2.0 on a TV through an HDMI adapter or is there no way that the thing's going to have output? Any workarounds?

>>87895 How could this site possibly attract these fuarrrking tech illiterates? You're asking as if every tablet with a USB-C port in existence would be the exact same slab with the same set of features. I looked it up for you and it depends on the device. There's an app on Google play store that detects whether or not the device has HDMI compatibility and guides you through the process of setting it up and holy fuarrrking soykaf the page says that it contains ads! How do you live with these things? I also know that some devices offer wireless screen mirroring to HDMI devices such as smart-TVs but hopefully lainchan hasn't fallen that low.

>>87896 >I also know that some devices offer wireless screen mirroring to HDMI devices such as smart-TVs but hopefully lainchan hasn't fallen that low. I know, I was asking for a wired solution because there's a clear delay and, for something like video games, it can be a pain. I tried using an HDMI adapter on mine and it didn't work, I was hoping there was some trick or workaround.