Tablet choices - General Topics

So I have had my eye on the TF300 and even purchased one and took it back once finding out about the i/o issues but still cant get over the look and feel it offered and even more so now at it's current low pricing. I'm currently looking at tablets in the $250-300 price range including the TF300/Memo variant (any version offer a fix on i/o?), Acer A700(get screen just TFT with low backlight quality from what I have seen--would a rom help? Also slow DDR2 ram...does this have much affect?), Galaxy Note 10.1 refurb(I have Note 2 and could picture a 10.1" version being great) and even the Galaxy Tab 2 for it's thiness but performance has said to be greatly lacking? I plan to run mostly web browser and netflix/hulu but I do game sometimes including vice city/modern combat.
I'm kinda weird about crispness during scrolling/smoothness and I also prefer GPU performance to be decent/good but things I don't mind are heat and thickness although I did love the TF300's thin feel but it is not a must if other things can outweigh the negatives.
I feel as if the iPad 3 is my best choice even though the GPU is lacking since I know modern combat ran well when I tried friends who asked me to JB but the price is hard to justify being the cheapest I can find is $360-370 but the screen is awesome and iOS is super smooth. I also prefer iOS due to them having amazon prime streaming...dont ask me why they are still not giving it to us android people IMO it's not going to force me into one of their tablets.
Appreciate any advice, thanks!

Sir we have a sticky for this type of discussion. Please use that
Thread closed

Related

How does the screen compare?

I've used a Kindle Fire and a Nook Tablet. I'm thinking about purchasing a Tab 7.0 Plus, but I'm wondering if anyone with experience with either the Nook or Fire can comment on how the screen compares on the 7.0+, especially with regards to the level of glare. I found the Fire has significantly more glare than the NT did, to the point of being significantly less usable in places with overhead lighting.
I imagine the 7.7's Super AMOLED display would improve on things a bit, but who knows when that'll arrive and how much more it'll cost..
Thanks.
I had a Nook Tablet. Returned it, and got the Plus. The screen is great. There's definitely more glare than the nook, buy I think it's less than the fire. I think a screen protector would make it perfect.
Sent from my GT-P6210 using Tapatalk
It may not be officially IPS but much much better than the A100!
does the 7 plus have a AMOLED Screen?
No, the 7 Plus uses PLS LCD developed by Samsung. It is quite similar to IPS (iPad, Asus Transformer) in terms of viewing angles. The Tab 7.7 is supposed to be the first tablet with AMOLED screen, but will unlikely be available in the U.S. due to the ongoing patent war between Samsung and Apple.
abszer0 said:
No, the 7 Plus uses PLS LCD developed by Samsung. It is quite similar to IPS (iPad, Asus Transformer) in terms of viewing angles. The Tab 7.7 is supposed to be the first tablet with AMOLED screen, but will unlikely be available in the U.S. due to the ongoing patent war between Samsung and Apple.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Have seen the 7.7 offered on a couple overseas websites. Priced from around $600-$750! Not real sure an extra .7" and AMOLED would justify such a price difference.
as much as I want a super amoled screen. This screen good for the price, that being said, my nexus Spoiled me because of the great contrast of blacks. This screen is nice at 50% brightness and the angles are pretty good. I am wtill considering a anti glare screen protector, glare is more apparent in LCD than Amoled buts its no mirror at least. 100% brightness is beautiful just bye bye battery
I checked out the 10.1, 8.9 and the 7.0 at bestbuy and the 7.0 screen is underwhelming. In terms of brightness and vividness, it seems dim compared to the 10.1 and 8.9 and the lack of sharpness is evident.
I had the original galaxy tab and the 7.0's performance was disappointing. It felt the same as my old tab. Lagging and stuttering here and there. If anything the 10.1 and the 8.9 felt much snappier and smoother. The 7.0 had trouble keeping connected to the wifi, and actually kept turning itself off and on again, not just disconnecting. The 7.0 is not the guts of the other tabs in a smaller package, which was what I was hoping for. But it seems they cut corners inside as well. The screen is also less responsive to touch. I found myself continually re-tapping the screen.
I'm not saying that the 7.0 is a bad tab, but compared to the 10.1 and 8.9, it felt sluggish and the screen felt lacking in many ways. Both brightness and touch response. At $399 right now it is not worth it imo.
I played a lot with the 8.9 and the 10.1 and the tegra 2 seemed more sluggish than my 7 plus. 7 plus is a beast in 7 inch form.
The 7 plus is a beast indeed. Comparing it to the Asus Transformer which I sold to get the Galaxy 7 Plus is a very noticeable in performance increase. Plays media with no delays or lag. It can play 1080p flash from YouTube through the browser. Try that on a Tegra 2 Tablet.
Compared to the Tab7 which I traded in, the 7+ is brighter and I have no problems with viewing angles.
dds517 said:
I checked out the 10.1, 8.9 and the 7.0 at bestbuy and the 7.0 screen is underwhelming. In terms of brightness and vividness, it seems dim compared to the 10.1 and 8.9 and the lack of sharpness is evident.
I had the original galaxy tab and the 7.0's performance was disappointing. It felt the same as my old tab. Lagging and stuttering here and there. If anything the 10.1 and the 8.9 felt much snappier and smoother. The 7.0 had trouble keeping connected to the wifi, and actually kept turning itself off and on again, not just disconnecting. The 7.0 is not the guts of the other tabs in a smaller package, which was what I was hoping for. But it seems they cut corners inside as well. The screen is also less responsive to touch. I found myself continually re-tapping the screen.
I'm not saying that the 7.0 is a bad tab, but compared to the 10.1 and 8.9, it felt sluggish and the screen felt lacking in many ways. Both brightness and touch response. At $399 right now it is not worth it imo.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
The original 7.0 is a different beast entirely when making comparison to the 7.0+ IMO. Question.....was the 7.0+ you were trying the display at BB? If so, I've would not use a display to judge any tab really. Those devices have been at the mercy of fingers that may/may not know what they're doing and could well have whacked it around a bit (metaphorically speaking). Maybe it's just me but actually getting a device and using it right out of the box as I would use the device is really the best way to judge. Any that's any device really.
dds517 said:
I checked out the 10.1, 8.9 and the 7.0 at bestbuy and the 7.0 screen is underwhelming. In terms of brightness and vividness, it seems dim compared to the 10.1 and 8.9 and the lack of sharpness is evident.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
10.1 and 8.9 all use pls lcd, which is same as 7.0 plus. I also want to know how it does for comparing to kindle fire nook tablet and asus transformer.
dds517 said:
I checked out the 10.1, 8.9 and the 7.0 at bestbuy and the 7.0 screen is underwhelming. In terms of brightness and vividness, it seems dim compared to the 10.1 and 8.9 and the lack of sharpness is evident.
I had the original galaxy tab and the 7.0's performance was disappointing. It felt the same as my old tab. Lagging and stuttering here and there. If anything the 10.1 and the 8.9 felt much snappier and smoother. The 7.0 had trouble keeping connected to the wifi, and actually kept turning itself off and on again, not just disconnecting. The 7.0 is not the guts of the other tabs in a smaller package, which was what I was hoping for. But it seems they cut corners inside as well. The screen is also less responsive to touch. I found myself continually re-tapping the screen.
I'm not saying that the 7.0 is a bad tab, but compared to the 10.1 and 8.9, it felt sluggish and the screen felt lacking in many ways. Both brightness and touch response. At $399 right now it is not worth it imo.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I hope you're not saying that the 7.0 Plus is worse than the 10.1 and 8.9 from a performance standpoing and you're simply referring to the original 7" Tab. Because if it's the former, you're just wrong. The Exynos processor in the 7.0 Plus is significantly better from a benchmarking and usability standpoint than anything that is Tegra 2. I have both the 10.1 and the 7.0 Plus in my household and the 10 collects dust its so sluggish compared to the 7.0 Plus.
Pretty sure anyone who has used both will agree with me...I really am perplexed at what you experienced if you say the 7.0 Plus is worse. It's abnormal...we'll leave it at that.
dbdynsty25 said:
I hope you're not saying that the 7.0 Plus is worse than the 10.1 and 8.9 from a performance standpoing and you're simply referring to the original 7" Tab. Because if it's the former, you're just wrong. The Exynos processor in the 7.0 Plus is significantly better from a benchmarking and usability standpoint than anything that is Tegra 2. I have both the 10.1 and the 7.0 Plus in my household and the 10 collects dust its so sluggish compared to the 7.0 Plus.
Pretty sure anyone who has used both will agree with me...I really am perplexed at what you experienced if you say the 7.0 Plus is worse. It's abnormal...we'll leave it at that.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I'm just saying what I experienced from using both tablets at bestbuy. This is not based on quadrant scores or other benchmarks, but simply using the tablet. There was noticeable stuttering and lag on both tablets, but noticed it on the 7.0plus more occasionally. There is a browser brightness glitch. The wifi on it was glitchy as well and the screen seemed to lack touch responsiveness. If you go to a white screen you will also notice vignetting [darkening] on the long sides of the screen.
I know the exynos processor is better than the tegra2, but hardware alone doesn't make a tablet better or worse. There is a big difference between all the 10.1 tablets that use the tegra2 processor. Some suffer with video playback while others have a smoother ui's and so on. So just basing the usability on the processor alone doesn't work. And if you read on other galaxy 7.0 plus forums there are many bugs that people have been reporting.
Don't get me wrong, I want to get this tablet and have tried it out at different bestbuy's and even factory resetting them. I had the original galaxy tab and it wasn't without it's problems. But things like wifi glitchyness seems like a big issue.
I have a 7.0+ side by side with the Kindle now. The screen on the 7.0+ is ever so slightly less reflective, but not really enough to make any meaningful difference. I don't have the Nook Tablet on hand to compare with that, but I'd guess the Nook is better as that was a noticeable difference when I compared to the Fire.
On the upside, good hardware, and Netflix and Youtube are both in HD vs the Fire's SD..
Still deciding whether to keep it.. honeycomb has a lot of annoyances that bother me.
dds517 said:
I'm just saying what I experienced from using both tablets at bestbuy. This is not based on quadrant scores or other benchmarks, but simply using the tablet. There was noticeable stuttering and lag on both tablets, but noticed it on the 7.0plus more occasionally. There is a browser brightness glitch. The wifi on it was glitchy as well and the screen seemed to lack touch responsiveness. If you go to a white screen you will also notice vignetting [darkening] on the long sides of the screen.
I know the exynos processor is better than the tegra2, but hardware alone doesn't make a tablet better or worse. There is a big difference between all the 10.1 tablets that use the tegra2 processor. Some suffer with video playback while others have a smoother ui's and so on. So just basing the usability on the processor alone doesn't work. And if you read on other galaxy 7.0 plus forums there are many bugs that people have been reporting.
Don't get me wrong, I want to get this tablet and have tried it out at different bestbuy's and even factory resetting them. I had the original galaxy tab and it wasn't without it's problems. But things like wifi glitchyness seems like a big issue.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
From what you're saying I see simple explanations for a lot of it:
Lacking brightness/brightness glitch: LCD power saving mode
Unsharp screen: Movie color mode, which also blurs the image slightly
Lag: Apps running in the background? Using Market, which seems to stutter on everything for absolutely no reason?
WiFi issues: ?????? Mine's never had any such issue
dds517 said:
I'm just saying what I experienced from using both tablets at bestbuy. This is not based on quadrant scores or other benchmarks, but simply using the tablet. There was noticeable stuttering and lag on both tablets, but noticed it on the 7.0plus more occasionally. There is a browser brightness glitch. The wifi on it was glitchy as well and the screen seemed to lack touch responsiveness. If you go to a white screen you will also notice vignetting [darkening] on the long sides of the screen.
I know the exynos processor is better than the tegra2, but hardware alone doesn't make a tablet better or worse. There is a big difference between all the 10.1 tablets that use the tegra2 processor. Some suffer with video playback while others have a smoother ui's and so on. So just basing the usability on the processor alone doesn't work. And if you read on other galaxy 7.0 plus forums there are many bugs that people have been reporting.
Don't get me wrong, I want to get this tablet and have tried it out at different bestbuy's and even factory resetting them. I had the original galaxy tab and it wasn't without it's problems. But things like wifi glitchyness seems like a big issue.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
You can NEVER trust a demo unit...that's a fact. I've had two GT7+s in my house and both are significantly faster and usable than the two 10.1s I've had. Yes, the brightness bug in the browser is annoying (switched to Firefox and voila, gone) and my first GT7+ had the SOD bug, but other than that, the GT7+ performs significantly better than the 10.1 doing the same things I always do.
I've yet to see any of the other stuff you're speaking about...wifi glitchy? Mine stays connected all the time and switches to the correct hotspot when I use my phone, my work connection or my home...so not sure what you mean.
And about the screen, I agree with CPTN above me...bet it was in Movie mode, dulling the colors.
Cptnodegard said:
From what you're saying I see simple explanations for a lot of it:
Lacking brightness/brightness glitch: LCD power saving mode
Unsharp screen: Movie color mode, which also blurs the image slightly
Lag: Apps running in the background? Using Market, which seems to stutter on everything for absolutely no reason?
WiFi issues: ?????? Mine's never had any such issue
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I've tested the tab with the power saving mode off and and the color on standard.
As the member above said there is a browser glitch. There is a post on this and other forums about wifi being weak and even not connecting to certain routers. If you have both the 10.1 and 7.0, can you do a internet speed test on 'speedtest.net' and post your results? And did you guys update the firmware at all? I'm thinking the newest firmware update might have fixed some of the issues.
I haven't had any issues with wifi, and no apparent adjustment in sensitivity whether or not I hold the bottom left side as some reported.
I had a chance to compare with my a family member's Nook Tablet again side by side (also with the Kindle Fire again). It's pretty much equally as reflective as the Fire, perhaps a hair better but not significant.
The Nook Tablet is much better than both -- I think a big part of why the Nook Tablet is better when it comes to glare is that not only does it reflect less, but the reflected background area seems smaller. That is, if I hold both the Tab and the NT up in front of me, I can see most of the room behind me on the Tab, but on the NT I mostly see my own head. The reflection of my head fills a larger proportion of the screen, which in turn means less reflection of walls, overhead lights etc is caught. I think this is what makes it easier to find a glare free viewing angle.
The result is that when watching videos on the Fire or Tab, even during scenes that aren't particularly dark, I'm distracted by reflections, whereas on the NT only notice them on the darkest scenes.
The hardware is damn nice though.

So why DID Samsung go with 1280 x 800?

It's not as if Samsung doesn't know how to make good screens and at $500 it's not as if they are giving away a $200 loss leader tablet to sell content. So why? The screen resolution is the ONLY thing that keeps the Note 10.1 from being the greatest tablet of all time and severely hurting iPad 3 sales.
Everyone will have their opinion on this but I'll give you mine.
Reason 1 - speed.
Reason 2 - the s-pen.
It is clear that the Note 10.1 has been designed as a tool and not a toy. It is a productivity device. As such, speed and functionality trumps eye-candy. Based upon what I have been reading about the ASUS Infinity, the HD screen seems to cause performance issues.
There is also the issue of the s-pen. This is pure conjecture on my part but it seems intuitive that writing on an HD screen will require more processing power than writing on a 1280 x 800 screen. There are more pixels to change. I believe that Samsung looked at it and asked themselves, what is the lowest resolution we can do (thereby improving s-pen function) but still deliver an acceptable image?
** It could be that Samsung just cheaped out but I don't think so. If they gave us a super HD screen but the s-pen lagged it would have been game over. I think it came down to a question of what the user would be most willing to sacrifice. Since the Note is a productivity device, that would be eye-candy. Speed, above and beyond all else was key.
Just my 2 cents. What do you think?
I've read that it's the max resolution supported by the Wacom digitizer.
Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I747 using Tapatalk 2
05GT said:
I've read that it's the max resolution supported by the Wacom digitizer.
Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I747 using Tapatalk 2
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
From what i read its the maximum resolution supported by the exynos chip. With the new exynos chip which i soooo hoped for to be inside this tablet, the max resolution would be i think double.
I only have one concern before buying this tablet:
what if...the tablet which should be around 11.6 inch coming from sammy (probably the next few months) will also be a note instead of a "standard" galaxy tab..? That would be a huge blow for all note 10.1 buyers :/
Probably has to do with the digitizer pen technology. Even Wacom doesn't offer the comparable Cintiq (minus multi-touch except for top of line 24HD) with a resolution higher than 1280x800 until you go from the $1000 12" to the $2000 22" model.
http://www.wacom.com/en/Products/Cintiq/Compare Models.aspx
I don't believe it has to do with the digitizer. There are tablets that use the same one and have higher resolution.
I think it's for speed and possibly limitations on the cpu. Samsung wanted this tablet to fly. Increasing the resolution would be a problem for that. I think next year we will get a high res Note.
Sent from my Galaxy Note 10.1
I think Samsung did a great job with this 720P HD display. Its something about it that's different from my previous prime or my nexus 7. The colors are richer/more detailed. The prime and nexus 7 has exact same resolution also. Im more than satisfied with this display. Everything looks crisp to me.
Well I don't have my note 10.1 (arrives later today) but my dads tf300 has the same resolution and my brother has a new Asus nexus 7. I compared the both as the nexus has a higher dpi and personally I can hardly see any difference! So does it really matter that much?
sysl0rd said:
From what i read its the maximum resolution supported by the exynos chip. With the new exynos chip which i soooo hoped for to be inside this tablet, the max resolution would be i think double.
I only have one concern before buying this tablet:
what if...the tablet which should be around 11.6 inch coming from sammy (probably the next few months) will also be a note instead of a "standard" galaxy tab..? That would be a huge blow for all note 10.1 buyers :/
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
This is what I've heard as well, although I couldn't find anything from Samsung about it. But it seems the most likely (while it's possible that Exynos 4 does support higher resolution outputs, it might not be fluid enough for use with the S Pen as lag is definitely more noticeable with a stylus than a fingertip).
Cranking up the resolution requires cranking up the GPU horsepower, which means more battery consumption.
Look at the iPad - they needed to make the battery around 50% bigger in order to offset the significantly increased power consumption. This means a heavier device, and MUCH longer recharge times.
The iPad's resolution is a waste of pixels. There's flaunting spec epeen, and there is proper systems engineering - Samsung did proper systems engineering here.
Before getting my Note 10.1 I got myself an Asus Infinity Pad (which was promptly returned due to the screen coming OUT of the case). The screen WAS magnificent, However, there was so much power going to the screen than the entire OS was lagged out pretty badly. Even after their OTA updates, it was pretty bad. Battery drain was horrible unless I put it into the "power saving" mode and at that point the screen on my Galaxy Tab and Note 10.1 was beautiful compared to it.
I agree with the OP. Speed and the S-pen are the primary causes. Honestly, I don't need an ungodly powerful screen. I use this for work and for play and it does extremely well on both. I am often amazed at how quickly pages load, or the fact that I don't have to buffer pages, books or other things as long as other tablets take. I will take power over beauty any day of the week...
Also as a geek moment for myself "Power is beauty and I've got the power" - Flea (From Chrono Trigger).

[Q] Why does my Galaxy SII appear to be faster than my Trasformer Infinity?

I like my new Asus Transformer Infinity, but not as much as I love my Samsung Galaxy sII. It bugs me that it appears that a lot of apps are much smoother/faster in loading data on the SII than on the Infinity, while the former is a year older with a slower CPU.
Does anyone has the same experience?
And what could be the cause?
On both devices I use almost the same apps, have the same accounts installed and i use the same wifi connection. My sII still uses ICS and my infinty JB (which in my opinion is much better then before), Both unrooted.
When I run the usual benchmarks (quadrant, antutu, browsermark), I get the scores you would expect: Infinity scores clearly higher than the SII and conform the results that other users report. Internet speed tests do also give expected results,
I'm experiencing the following. A lot of apps that load some data from the web (news apps for example) show a delay of 1 or 2 seconds, while the SII often loads the data instantly. Browsing on the SII gives me a smooth experience, while browsing on the Infinity often results in a couple of seconds that the tablet is unresponsive when the page is not loaded completely.
This effect is the strongest in the Stumbleupon app, which probably has an inferior browser built-in, but my SII still loads the new pages really fast. The infinity shows a lot of unresponsiveness in Stumbleupon and it results in a lot of ANR popups.
The ANR popups are not so prevalant in other apps. This did happen a lot more with ICS. On my SII I almost never get an ANR.
I understand that the tablet needs to render for a much higher resolution and that the tablet has some issues with IO performance. But can this make such a difference? Could it be that most apps are so terribly designed for tablets, that the tablet needs a lot of CPU time to upscale, which causes unresponiveness?
Or is it just my tablet?
gybema said:
I understand that the tablet needs to render for a much higher resolution and that the tablet has some issues with IO performance. But can this make such a difference?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
yes.
You are not alone. I also have a galaxy s2,and it's a lot faster than this tablet.
It is not that surprising. My Sensation also feel faster and more reliable than my Infinity, guess it is just right that the S2 is much faster. And yes, the resolution does matter a lot. Imagine running Skyrim or Crysis II a 1024x768 resolution versus at 1920x1080, the difference in frame rates will blow you away.
Yup,
Most games and apps are designed for phones not tablets.
Applications for phones driving that big 'ole 1920X1200 screen with a 12 core GPU just ain't going to respond the same as the junior sized screens at a much lower resolution.
Just wait when the apps catch on to the HD wave there will be many happy campers.
Takes time...
Asus uses a tegra and samsung uses exynos. The exynos/malli processor/GPU seems to perform much better than tegra despite that tegra is made by nvidia. on paper the GFLOPS and toals MADs produced by the Exynos is higher.
The screen also is a factor as FHD screen takes more time to push all the pixels on a 10.1 screen compared to a 4.3.
Architecture of chipset as well
Manufacture also plays a part. Their coding and software implementation to make the hardware and software work together. Samsung does better in this case. ASUS is always pushing updates.
Its not just the Infinity as this was the first thing I noticed when I got the Transformer Prime vs my S2. Does resolutions play a role? Maybe a bit more in the Infinity's case but the Prime and TF300 had resolutions that's not too far off from the Galaxy Nexus but the latter with 2 less cores sure did better than the Asus tablets.
Most of it is the cheap crappy internal memory Asus decided to use for their flagship device, some of it's the higher resolution.
Unibrow said:
Most of it is the cheap crappy internal memory Asus decided to use for their flagship device, some of it's the higher resolution.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
My wife's apple ipad 3 with the high resolution runs smooth like a baby's butt. I could only wish my infinity ran that smooth. Since complaints aren't only coming from me now the proof is right here...this tablet was made without thinking. Basically Asus wanted a great tablet on paper to jump ahead of everyone, ON PAPER, but in reality it is a pretty bad device for such a large amount of money. Better off with a cheaper laptop with an SSD drive in it really.
Not to be funny, but my droid charge (2 years old, first samsung lte phone) is faster and smoother than tf700! Asus build a biggest giant cruise ship and forgot to plug a hole in the bottom of the ship!
As any gamer knows, higher resolution means more resources needed, which means a lower frames-per-second rate. It simply has to render more.
Your S2 has a resolution of 480 x 800, your TF700 a resolution of 1920x1280. In terms of resource difference between those two, it's pretty much the difference between running Minesweeper and running Skyrim.
Add to that the fact pretty much 99% of the apps are made for phones, and in most cases specifically the Galaxy series, and it's no surprise they run better on a small phone they're optimized for than on a large full HD tablet that most app-developers don't even consider.
ShadowLea said:
As any gamer knows, higher resolution means more resources needed, which means a lower frames-per-second rate. It simply has to render more.
Your S2 has a resolution of 480 x 800, your TF700 a resolution of 1920x1280. In terms of resource difference between those two, it's pretty much the difference between running Minesweeper and running Skyrim.
Add to that the fact pretty much 99% of the apps are made for phones, and in most cases specifically the Galaxy series, and it's no surprise they run better on a small phone they're optimized for than on a large full HD tablet that most app-developers don't even consider.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
The storage device is a piece of crap, there's nothing wrong with the graphics performance. Every single user experience issue with this tablet is down to data not getting read/written fast enough from/to storage. It's as simple as that.
Every application that uses "RAM" is subjective as fast as at my SGS2 (runnig CM9). But the i/o perfomance at stock ROM on my TF700 is really bad. With Browser2RAM surfing is a lot snapier but still not as snappy as at SGS2. Hopefully CM10 at TF700 works as much as possible around this storage issues.
Don't forget that the TF700T has the fastest RAM of all android devices that are on sale at the moment. But it has the slowest eMMC storage, too.
As far as the browser goes, use stock browser and if you are rooted, 1st look for app browser2ram and sideload it (and follow all instructions in thread dedicated to it), then (or for anyone else not rooted) type about:debug into browser address box, hit enter, then go to settings (three small vertcal dots in upper right hand corner of screen) and choose debug menu. Check the box next to Enable CPU Upload Pathand then close it. It speeds up the browser by a lot. I'm only using the stock browser now and I'm very satisfied with its performance.
The other suggestion I have for you that feel unhappy with the TF700's performance in general, is really consider unlocking, flashing a custom recovery (I highly recommend TWRP) and a rooted custom ROM, especially the CleanROM Ultra Light Edition v1.3. This JellyBean stock-based ROM is so fast and smooth and functional, you will wonder why you waited so long to have the device you had imagined. I kid you not. I've tried all the ROMs available for this device, and though they all have their strong points, for someone looking for a better than stock experience, where everything works, right now, this one's the best and it gets even better with each update. And this is just the beginning of wonderful development for the Infinity. This is honestly, a superb machine. We owe it to ourselves to take full advantage of it.
If you're running stock it's slow. If you optimise it it's pretty damn fast. Had mine lying next to an iPad 3 and they are on the same level. How to do it? Disable (a lot) of unneeded apps and use the right software (Firefox Aurora or the above mentioned Browser2Ram)
That's not much of a win considering the ipad 3 has a higher resolution with 2 less cpu cores and running 600mhz slower.
maedox said:
The storage device is a piece of crap, there's nothing wrong with the graphics performance. Every single user experience issue with this tablet is down to data not getting read/written fast enough from/to storage. It's as simple as that.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yup. This. The screen is a minor thing. If the ASUS engineers had not selected subpar parts for the internal SD, this thing would have absolute bleeding edge performance on every front. As it is, it often shows signs of brilliance but also has some limitations due to the system bottleneck. Your impression of the device user experience will depend heavily on your use model (and its associated memory footprint). The vast majority of issues/discussions wrt to this device basically come down to this one thing.
Barring some very serious OS hacking (ala the effort to allow external SD to replace internal) all the TF tabs will ALWAYS be limited by memory bandwidth. It's a hardware limitation. Either you can live with it or you can't. Too bad. Now that JB is here and the OS is finally decent/stable, this tab is one bad cost cutting measure away from being the undisputed best in class device in the industry. <shrug>
I'm not browsing very frequently and when I do, they are not heavy multimedia sites, so for me, the TF's certainly a really good user experience and I love the device. Games are great now that the driver bug is fixed for example. It's slightly frustrating knowing that the tab could have been amazing on EVERY front if they had spent another fifty cents on the memory... but that's life. I'll be happy if they just continue to support/stabilize/enhance the firmware. The hardware is what it is.
htcplussony said:
That's not much of a win considering the ipad 3 has a higher resolution with 2 less cpu cores and running 600mhz slower.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Well, I understand that the gpu is better and the whole ios thing is completely optimised for browsing, so yeah, it is kind of a good comparison in terms of user experience.
This!!!
My HTC Evo 4g LTE has more consistent performance than my TF700T....
It's kind of frustrating really and the fact that my daughter's ipad is ALWAYS smooth bothers the hell out of me...
Is this the way these things are designed or do I have a lemon on my hands?
The fact that there are articles instructing people that they can buy a $30 SD card and move their /data mount to the external micro SD card tells me this is a design issue...
There's nothing more frustrating than tapping the screen and not being able to tell if you mis tapped or if the tablet is IO locked and in a 'wait' state. and it happens way too damned much.
I'm not doing anything special.... all I can say is that I'm running a lot of apps and perhaps this is the problem (I've restricted background process to 4 and disabling all animations and am now using APEX launcher to even disable all animations + the wallpaper).
Max free RAM at any time is around ~250 MB...
I want to show this thing off but everytime I pull it out it's performing like **** and cache cleaning or rebooting doen't seem to help either...
Also to add - post JB I DID perform a factory reset as well. I've installed about 130 apps.
Sent from my ASUS Transformer Pad TF700T using xda app-developers app
Just curious, how does tf700 compare to other android tablets? Is it a a lot slower or less smooth? It one thing to compare it to phones. I want to know how it compares to a Samsung note 10.1.

Worth buying now with JB?

After reading all the reviews on how the a700 is sluggish on ICS, Ive stayed away. However there are some really good deals on it right now, and I saw that it had the JB update. Does that resolve the sluggishness issues? Is it worth buying now? I'd love the extra resolution for PDFs etc, but don't want to deal with something that feels slow all the time.
Actually, the device is not as smooth as a galaxy s2 with jelly bean and aswell it's not as smooth as a galaxy tab 2 10.1, it still lags a bit, but it doesn't really disturb.
Edit: Actually speaking for the last official Acer Jellybean.
However, speaking of the better resolution, the display is not worth the buy, I have seen better displays with 1280x800 pixels, for example the Sony Xperia Tablet S display. The A700 Display is not very bright, also the light sensor is bugged and you basically allways use the lowest brightness settings and the display does not have a good contrast aswell, the resolution is fine, but I enjoy to work with other tablet displays a lot more.
what do you expect? it is a FullHD tablet, so you can expect slowdowns due to the high resolution.
If you don't like it, get a Nexus 10. apparently it is very smooth.
I can say that the A700 runs now more smoothly with custom roms (Coolrom 700 or IconiaN 2.2 with a custom Kernel).
So for the price it IS worth buying.
I bought the Asus Infinity after I got tired of the ICS sluggishness on the a700.
After the JB update came for the a700, I went back and forth between the Acer and the Asus.
This this week, I decided to sell the Infinity and keep the Acer a700..better sound, more responsive (the IO issue on the Infinity was killing me), and I found better battery life.
If I were you, I'd wait for the next batch of tablets powered by Tegra 4. 2560x1600
himmatsj said:
If I were you, I'd wait for the next batch of tablets powered by Tegra 4. 2560x1600
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
More resolution more problems to handle good performance i think.
i don´t know what you expect to get for around 370€. Keep in mind the price and what it has on the good side. When you want to have the best, you need to pay for the best. But everything has an other side.
I wanted a tablett,which is fast enough and has the ability for getting a stock 4.2 and a good picture (sound) for watching videos, photos and tv. First i started with a 220€ lcpower sinai-1 tablett. compared to what i got for 150€ more, the acer makes me in every point happy:
- a much better case,
- a lightnings better Panel and Display glass (i mean gorilla) - try to cleaned the other one, it was not possible without cleaner, bad contrast? Not really. My photos looks brilliant, its brighter than all my laptops. together with ips angle stability it´s a great pleasure against photos frames i know.
- long lasting battery life
- everybody is writing on lags. I didn´t reallized them. But i don´t want to play with it. Maybe there are some games which are currently to much for this resolution. Its the same like on laptops, gaming is premium class LOL
- i get covers for it.
I noticed, that eather the alternative tabletts are not on stock, or are much expensiver or are much cheaper. Around 250-350 € are no tabletts. And i wanted to have warrenty, so a china import was not a choice, from the quality not speaking.
And we can root it!
If you don´t want the high resolution, you can choose maybe the a510. It depends on your preferences.
Got an Acer A701 last august, with ICS on, paid the equivalent of 550€ back then. I installed an unofficial JB 4.1.1 ROM back in november, it improved a lot, heating problems have almost totally gone away, system is more responsive, beside the JB improvements and tweaks. In general, tablet's quality is good. I have a protective case but no screen protector, the screen looks like new after six months anyway. I'd love it to be a bit thinner, but nevertheless. I'm very satisfied with my purchase.
The stock launcher seems to attribute to the slow response. I have been using Nova Launcher with JB and the response is night and day. It is almost as fast as my Galaxy S3.

Is there anything better than the Note Pro 12.2 (Verizon LTE)?

I am starting to fall out of love with my tablet. I bought it shortly after launch after seeing it on display while my wife was looking at an Apple tablet. The display blew me away, and the specs were awesome... two + years ago.
The problem that I'm running into, and from my research many others are too, is that there really isn't an "upgrade" to the note pro. I might be willing to go down to a 10" screen, but I like the size. The Pixel C seems like the specs aren't up to what I have now.
So I thought I'd come here and seek the advice of people using the Note Pro 12.2 - what are you considering upgrading to?
I just bought a refurbished one off eBay to replace my original one which has a cracked screen (but still working.) I kept waiting for something new to come out, but finally gave up for now. The finally straw was Samsung coming out with a 12" Windows tablet, but no Android version.
There's nothing spectacular out there on the tablet market to begin with anyways. For now I'm satisfied with my Note Pro. I'd jump on a Surface Pro 4 if handwritten note taking on it were as good as it is with LectureNotes but nothing else comes close.
Thanks, I guess I'll just have to wait and hope for the best to come out. I too was very disappointed to see the windows version come out.
BillVanDusen said:
I am starting to fall out of love with my tablet. I bought it shortly after launch after seeing it on display while my wife was looking at an Apple tablet. The display blew me away, and the specs were awesome... two + years ago.
The problem that I'm running into, and from my research many others are too, is that there really isn't an "upgrade" to the note pro. I might be willing to go down to a 10" screen, but I like the size. The Pixel C seems like the specs aren't up to what I have now.
So I thought I'd come here and seek the advice of people using the Note Pro 12.2 - what are you considering upgrading to?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
You can get MM on your devices through CM13. But if you have the Verizon variant you get at least LP 5.1.1. http://www.sammobile.com/firmwares/download/56136/P905VVRUBOH1_P905VVZWBOH1_VZW/
I have read a lot about MM, and the battery saving you can get from it, also some claim spotted improvements, but I was just waiting for someone else to take the plunge on the Verizon version!
thools60 said:
You can get MM on your devices through CM13. But if you have the Verizon variant you get at least LP 5.1.1. http://www.sammobile.com/firmwares/download/56136/P905VVRUBOH1_P905VVZWBOH1_VZW/
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
BillVanDusen said:
I am starting to fall out of love with my tablet. I bought it shortly after launch after seeing it on display while my wife was looking at an Apple tablet. The display blew me away, and the specs were awesome... two + years ago.
The problem that I'm running into, and from my research many others are too, is that there really isn't an "upgrade" to the note pro. I might be willing to go down to a 10" screen, but I like the size. The Pixel C seems like the specs aren't up to what I have now.
So I thought I'd come here and seek the advice of people using the Note Pro 12.2 - what are you considering upgrading to?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I've seen pretty much the same myself.
The only options with roughly the same form factor with reasonably close or better specs are the ipad pro and surface pro but neither one is an android tablet.
Really the only option for a true upgrade is to drop to a 10 inch tablet.
The Pixcel C is better specs-wise by quite a large margin in the processor and graphics department and at least equal in most other areas.
The things holding me back there are Screen size (10.2 inch), Aspect ratio (4:3) and from what I've read there are a some software/driver issues (This is likely to be fixed pretty quickly by google for what its worth)
In comparison the Galaxy note has a 12.2 inch screen, a 16:10 aspect ratio and against popular opinion, I'm pretty fond of the extra features in touchwiz.
but if you can deal with the smaller screen and 4:3 aspect ratio the pixel C is really the only solid upgrade I've found.
for me I decided I'm sticking with this tablet for the foreseeable future, its great with the right peripherals and gets everything I need done and the snapdragon 800 keeps up pretty well at this point.
Not really.
I had hopes for the 18.4" Galaxy View, but that turned out to be a bigger joke than an iPad.
(No, seriously, it has a 1080p res on an 18" screen, 5700 mAh, 2GB RAM and a 1.6 GHz CPU. Useless.)
The Surface Pro 4 sounded very interesting at first, when the rumours mentioned an Nvidia GPU. Turns out is has an IntelHD, which means I can't use it properly and thus isn't worth the money. If I have to spend 2000 quid on a "laptop replacement" tablet, I bloody well want to be able to run Mass Effect 3 on it. It has all the specs to run it, except for that horrendously massive bottleneck of a GPU.
Ipad... No, just no.
Everything else either has a low resolution, too small a screen, too low RAM, too low CPU or a ****ty GPU. And no Spen. (And yes, as a designer I use that pen. A lot. Hell, you can even use it as a Wacom tablet for your PC with a simple app.)
So no, nothing worth upgrading to.
firefly6240 said:
Really the only option for a true upgrade is to drop to a 10 inch tablet.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
The other problem (other then drop in size) I had with that is almost all the tablets are dropping LTE. I really like the flexibility that LTE provides when traveling - using in a car, avoiding hotel wifi charges or slow speed, etc.
Thank you everyone for your responses. It seems that you have all confirmed my fears: that besides the Pixel, which doesn't have the s-pen, I am just going to have to live with what I have for now.

Categories

Resources