Tablet Hands-On Roundup
by Vivek Gowri on January 27, 2011 10:25 AM EST
2011 is the Year of the Tablet. With all due respect to the rabbit, who would have otherwise been assigned to this year, I think the tablet has earned the right of representing 2011. If you followed CES at all this year, you’d know why.
I decided pretty early on that I would make a huge post with all the tablets we looked at instead of posting each one individually, simply because the sheer number of tablets on the show floor meant that I would have taken over AnandTech’s front page with tablet-related posts. It would have been impossible to cover all the new tablets, but I think we managed to get our hands on most of the high profile tablets in addition to some of the more promising new tablets out there.
Everyone, it seemed, was debuting a new tablet. The usual suspects were out in full force, with Motorola showing off the first Honeycomb tablet to hit the market, ASUS releasing a quartet of highly specced tablets, Dell’s 7”, Tegra 2-based follow-up to their first Streak tablet, Acer coming up with new 7” and 10” Honeycomb tablets, Samsung releasing a convertible slider PC tablet to go with the newly LTE-infused Galaxy Tab, and RIM showing off the PlayBook prior to its imminent launch this quarter.
But they weren’t the only ones. Notion Ink had the production Adam on hand, with the first US shipments going out this week. Panasonic’s Viera range of tablets was unexpected to me, since it’s been ages since Panasonic had a consumer-level computing device in the US. Razer debuted a pretty sweet looking dual screen gaming tablet running Oak Trail and Windows, though we didn’t get a chance to go hands on with it. And then there were new companies like Enspert coming out of the woodwork with new devices amongst all the big launches. So let’s get this party started.
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finbarqs - Thursday, January 27, 2011 - link
the ONLY tablet that runs Hulu NORMALLY without a hulu plus subscription is the Blackberry Playbook!This is shocking as well as encouraging!
iuqiddis - Thursday, January 27, 2011 - link
Is there any chance of you guys reviewing the Asus EP121? It's a windows tablet and all, but it'd be great to put it through the paces as an alternative to a laptop.VivekGowri - Thursday, January 27, 2011 - link
Yeah, Asus is sending a review unit to Brian, since he's the guy who really uses inking a lot. It's actually a really interesting alternative to the 11" MacBook Air, provided you can live without a physical keyboard.iuqiddis - Thursday, January 27, 2011 - link
Awesome. Looking forward to that review.TheUsual - Thursday, January 27, 2011 - link
I'd like to see the Pixel Qi screen on a windows tablet, if they can just find a way to get decent battery life.TheUsual - Thursday, January 27, 2011 - link
Tablets, no Rablets :)rs2 - Friday, January 28, 2011 - link
I've yet to see a single point that would make me want to buy a tablet. Basically you're getting an underpowered netbook with no keyboard, a non-standard hardware architecture that makes it unable to run most common application, and a non-standard OS that in some cases locks you into using a proprietary "app store" for all your software needs. You know, because all that software that can be freely downloaded off the Internet is not good enough for these devices, or something.My money is better spent elsewhere.
Oscarcharliezulu - Friday, January 28, 2011 - link
Do all these tablets require you to buy all the software you need? Can I create my own apps, perhaps say like a database based app without needing to publish to an app store? Can I presume that with a win7 based tablet I can load any x86/win based Dev tool ? I've not seen any review address this requirement.vision33r - Friday, January 28, 2011 - link
Simple jailbreaking will allow you to install apps to ipad and Android requires rooting to install apps not from Market.Win7 tablet will run just like regular Windows.
Missy @ Golin - Friday, January 28, 2011 - link
Hi Vivek, In the PlayBook segment, you mentioned strong hints from multiple parties saying that there’s a TI OMAP 4 SoC underhood. It is indeed TI's OMAP4440 processor. More details are available at TI's Mobile Momentum blog: http://e2e.ti.com/blogs_/b/mobile_momentum/archive...