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Used for: 3–6 months
Call on one half, notes on the other
Splitting the screen between a call and the document is what makes it a work tool rather than a toy: the call on one half, the notes on the other, and nobody on the call can tell. One mark against it, and it is my own fault for saving money. Wi-Fi only means that on a train through the Peak District the hotspot on my phone is doing the work, and it drops often enough to be irritating. If it lives outside the house, pay for the cellular one.
Used for: 3–6 months
Screen and pencil are beyond criticism
Still not a laptop the moment the work gets awkward
A terabyte of storage on a device that still makes moving a file from one app to another feel like an achievement is where my three stars come from. The hardware is beyond criticism. The screen is the best I own, the pencil is instant, and it is quicker than my laptop at everything it is allowed to do. That last part is the problem. Two apps at once is fine until you want a third, external drives work until the app decides otherwise, and the browser still hands you a phone version of half the sites I need for work. As a reading, drawing and film machine it is superb. As the laptop I hoped to leave behind, it is not there.
Used for: 1–3 months
The whole photo library lives on it, not in the cloud
Editing photographs on the sofa is the whole reason it exists in this house. Raw files off the card, the pencil for masking, and a terabyte so the library lives on the device rather than in the cloud, though the culling still goes quicker with the keyboard attached
Used for: 6–12 months
My scrawl comes out as searchable text
Handwriting recognition turns my dreadful scrawl into typed notes that are actually searchable, which after ten months of meetings has quietly become the feature I would not give up. The pencil charges on the edge and has never once been flat!
Used for: 6–12 months
The keyboard costs what a whole tablet used to
Reads like paper, draws like paper, costs like furniture
Used for: 6–12 months
The whole house has found a use for it
Slow to charge back up after a long day
It was bought for me and it has been colonised by everyone else, which is either a compliment or a warning. The eight year old gets an hour on it while dinner is cooking and has not managed to break anything, thanks to the case. My wife takes it to book group because the whole library is on it. I get it back for the train, where a film fills the screen and the headphones do the rest. Eight months in and the battery still does a day trip to London and back with plenty left, though it wants an hour and a half on the charger afterwards.
Used for: More than a year
The keyboard folio was bought at the same time and it is the part that has aged. Keys still fine, but the covering has gone shiny and the magnets hold a little less confidently than they did. The tablet itself, after two years of daily carting about, looks like it did in the shop.
Used for: 6–12 months
One-handed in bed, which the bigger one is not
Wi-Fi only means tethering when you are out
No cellular on this one and I have not missed it once, because the phone hotspot goes on in the two minutes a month I need it away from a network. Weight is the thing that decides which tablet you actually use. At eleven inches it sits in one hand for a chapter or two in bed, and the thirteen inch one my brother has does not. Battery goes a whole weekend away if it is reading and films rather than editing. Nine months in, the only wear is a shiny patch on the back where it sits in the car door.
Used for: Less than a month
Light enough to hold for a whole chapter
The 11 inch is the one to buy if it is going to be held rather than propped. A chapter in bed one-handed, a film on the sofa, a recipe on the worktop, and the weight never becomes the reason to put it down. A terabyte seems absurd until the whole camera roll and a season of something for the train have gone on!