Basic Tablet for PDFs

[blackbloodtroll]

I am looking for a really basic, cheap tablet, to display PDFs.

I play a lot of PFS, and carrying around tons of books, or printed sheets, is a huge hassle.

Still, got a rather limited budget.

Any suggestions?

[Scythia]

Amazon Fire HD6 is alright, and only around $99.

I use one as a reader/email device.

[Krensky]

What sort of limited budget are you talking about here?

$100? $200? $300?

What sort of things do you want or need it to do in addition to PDFs?

[blackbloodtroll]

Around 100$.

Store and read PDFs. Yeah, that's about it.

If not a lot of storage space, then a slot for USB or SD/Micro SD to have additional storage.

[knightnday]

I've had fairly good luck with a 10 inch RCA tablet from Walmart. pre-black friday price of around 65$, otherwise around 120$. Allows for micro USB, has 12-16 Gig memory as well. It's wifi only, android, and operates well for what I need it to do (read books, read PDFs, light web browsing)

[Irontruth]

For the most part, you don't need a ton of storage space for PDF's. I have 7.1G worth of PDF's on my tablet and that includes:

Corebooks for 38 different RPG's
TSR adventures (A, B, C, EX, GDQ, H, I, L, N, R, RPGA, S, T series)
17 Paizo rule books
2 Adventure paths (all the player's guides)
100+ maps
PDF's of about a dozen board games
Owners manual for my car
About a dozen books on various topics
Plus probably 3 dozen other RPG books of various categories

I can only comment on Apple tablets, so afraid I'm not much help on the hardware front that meets your price goals.

[Krensky]

In that price range, for new stuff, you're looking at an Android tablet since the Win 10 tablets I know of are well over $100, although they are full blown Windows machines able to run real Office, do light gaming, etc. Apple devices are also way over that price and without the benefit of being real, full blown computers.

The major thing to watch out for in that price range us be very careful about knowing whether or not the tablet had Google Services or not. Android is free to the manufacturer, but Google Services (the Google apps, logging into your Google account, Google drive, the Google docs apps, the Google app store, etc) are not. I, personally, would not purchase a tablet without them, bit that's a decision you have make.

Another thing to consider if you'd be considering a table with cellular data service is to see what sort of offers and financing your carrier is offering.

Also, it is that time of the year so start researching Black Friday sales now and then look into those in your price range.

I am not positive, but I think those RCA tablets knight day mention have Google Services and the 7" 8Gb is like $40 I think.

[knightnday]

Krensky wrote:

In that price range, for new stuff, you're looking at an Android tablet since the Win 10 tablets I know of are well over $100, although they are full blown Windows machines able to run real Office, do light gaming, etc. Apple devices are also way over that price and without the benefit of being real, full blown computers.

The major thing to watch out for in that price range us be very careful about knowing whether or not the tablet had Google Services or not. Android is free to the manufacturer, but Google Services (the Google apps, logging into your Google account, Google drive, the Google docs apps, the Google app store, etc) are not. I, personally, would not purchase a tablet without them, bit that's a decision you have make.

Another thing to consider if you'd be considering a table with cellular data service is to see what sort of offers and financing your carrier is offering.

Also, it is that time of the year so start researching Black Friday sales now and then look into those in your price range.

I am not positive, but I think those RCA tablets knight day mention have Google Services and the 7" 8Gb is like $40 I think.

They do have Google service (at least the 10 inch does). The 7 inchers are running 35$ for 8 gig and 45 for 16 gig for pre-black friday sales online.

[Krensky]

i would also recomend to look at them in person if possible I've heard dodgy things about the 7 inch ones screen resolution and the battery life in general.

The former might make it hard to read things and the later may or may not be an issue depending on your use scenarios and how far away a outlet will be. My father has a very cheap tablet he uses for email, web surfing, and ebooks that has about a half hour battery, but he doesn't mind since he only uses it from the couch. I use my aging Acer tablet for service manuals and a bunch of other stuff at work so I couldn't tolerate such a short battery life.