LOS ANGELES – For back to school, many students may be looking at putting a new tablet in their backpack for the new semester.
Tablets have a lot of advantages–they’re light and you can save some weight by downloading electronic textbooks. You can also use a tablet in your video production class–they come equipped with great cameras.
Let’s take a look at what tablet to consider.
–The Apple iPad is the industry standard. If your class works with Mac computers, this is the tablet you’ll want to get. They start at $399, for the Mini, or $499 for the full-size iPad with the 9.7 inch screen.
–If you like Windows software, take a good look at the Microsoft Surface Pro 3. This is really more of a combo notebook/laptop than a tablet, but many students opt for it, since it comes with a keyboard, so note-taking is a lot easier. (You can buy an accessory keyboard for the iPad, starting at around $100.) The Surface is a pricier buy, however, starting at $799.
About the most economical tablet on the market right now is Amazon’s Fire HDX, which starts at $379. It has an 8.9 inch screen, which is slightly smaller than the full-size iPad. It’s more geared towards entertainment, but Amazon is about books, right? There’s a huge library of e-textbooks that can easily read on the Fire.
In the traditional tablet space, the best specs can be found in Samsung’s soon to be released Galaxy S Tab 2, which starts at $499. It has double the internal memory over the Fire and iPad at 32 GB, and has a slot for additional memory. However, it won’t be available for sale until late August at the earliest.
Whatever your choice, have a great school year, and study hard.