Best Tablets: Holiday 2015

After kicking off our yearly holiday guides with a look at some of the best Android smartphones on the market, it's time to take a look at the best tablets you can buy this holiday season. Something interesting about the tablet industry is that Microsoft has a fairly significant presence, while in the smartphone space they're still struggling to make Windows a viable platform for users and developers.

While tablet sales have certainly declined, the absolute number of tablets sold every quarter is still very high, and they will undoubtedly be a gift given by many during this holiday season. I'll be going over the options in Apple's iPad line first since they're already pretty well known, followed by the best inexpensive and high end tablets running Android, and the best tablets available running Windows.

Even if your phone is an Android device or a Windows Phone, it's difficult to not give the iPad some consideration when looking for a tablet. It's can definitely be difficult to have to manage two different ecosystems with their own apps, but even at this point the iPad still has a significant platform advantage over most tablets as far as applications and multitasking goes, and to improve multitasking and productivity further you really need to move to a full blown Windows tablet.

The iPad line is fairly simple, with only a few options available, and all of them occupying their own screen size. For people who want a smaller tablet, Apple offers the iPad Mini 2 and iPad Mini 4. While the former is definitely getting a bit old, at $269 it offers a fairly inexpensive entry to the iPad ecosystem. $399 gets you the iPad Mini 4 which offers significant improvements to the display, performance, and the size and mass of the chassis. The Mini 4 is definitely my recommendation for a small iPad because of the improved display and additional RAM to enable split screen multitasking, but the $399 price for the 16GB model can definitely be hard to swallow.

Click here to read our reviews of the iPad Mini 2 and the iPad Mini 4.

For a buyer that's interested in a more standard sized tablet, Apple sells the iPad Air and the iPad Air 2 at $399 and $499 respectively for the 16GB models. With how old it is, and the limited amount of RAM it includes, I wouldn't really go for the iPad Air, especially when one considers what the Mini 4 offers at that same price. As for the iPad Air 2, it's definitely my top recommendation for a standard tablet. Although it's actually over a year old, there's still nothing from the major Android players that competes with its performance and build quality, and on top of that you get access to the library of tablet-optimized applications that the iPad is known for. Both the iPad Mini 4 and iPad Air 2 offer upgrades from to 64GB for +$100, and to 128GB for +$200, with cellular capabilities adding on another +$130. Read our iPad Air 2 review here.

At the very top of the iPad line sits the recently introduced iPad Pro. Josh is still working on our review of it, but based on his feedback so far and my time with it I feel it's worth recommending. There are definitely some caveats to consider. The iPad Pro will inevitably be compared to the Surface Pro 4, and I think there are some significant differences between the two that end up determining which one is a better fit for a given user. If you're looking for something that is first and foremost a modern tablet, the Surface isn't the best option because you're dealing with a lot of legacy software design decisions like having to manage files using a file system, and the number of Modern UI apps is quite small which means you end up having to manage a typical Windows desktop with your fingers.

If you're not a user who will benefit from having a full featured copy of Windows installed, but are looking for a large tablet with keyboard and pen support, then the iPad Pro is definitely worth checking out. Price wise, it starts at $799 for the 32GB model, $949 for 128GB, or $1079 for 128GB + LTE. Including the Apple Pencil will bring the price up by $99, and the Smart Keyboard increases it by $169 which means that the entire package can be quite expensive once you factor in the accessories.

I've taken a look at a number of Android tablets this year, and pretty much all of them occupied a different price bracket from the others. Something particularly interesting this year was the number of tablets that sported Intel Moorefield SoCs, driven by the existing relationships between PC OEMs and Intel as those OEMs began to make their way into the Android tablet space. Unfortunately, it's pretty accurate to say that 2015 hasn't been the greatest year for Android phones or tablets due to issues with the available SoCs from Qualcomm, and in the case of all but one of the devices I've reviewed, issues with display power usage and calibration. That being said, I think there are two notable Android tablets that one should consider.

Starting off with my recommendation for a low-cost Android tablet, I think the NVIDIA SHIELD Tablet K1 is the obvious winner of this category. The SHIELD Tablet K1 was originally sold for $299 before being recalled due to battery issues, but It has just recently been re-introduced at a new $199 price point, and with Google seemingly giving up on offering a Nexus tablet at that price there's really nothing in the Android space that competes with it. The performance provided by NVIDIA's Tegra K1 SoC is far greater than what you'd expect from a $199 device, and the GPU performance is still unmatched by any other Android device. Read our review here.

The only complaint I really have about the SHIELD Tablet K1 is that while the display is a sufficiently high resolution at 1920x1200, the color gamut and accuracy is lacking. While this can be excused somewhat based on the $199 price tag, it's important to note that it did originally cost $299, and the second generation Nexus 7 shipped with an incredibly well calibrated IPS display at a price of $219 over two years ago. Even with that compromise, I don't know of any current Android tablet that competes at this price point, especially when you factor in NVIDIA's very good track record with releasing Android updates in a timely manner, and the relatively few alterations they make to the Android interface. That coupled with the possibility of game streaming from your NVIDIA PC, and the existence of stylus and controller peripherals made by NVIDIA, make the SHIELD Tablet K1 a pretty unique tablet that's definitely worth considering.

If someone is looking for a high end Android tablet, then the Galaxy Tab S2 is going to be their best option. I reviewed the Tab S2 recently, and while I praised its thin and light build, and high quality AMOLED display, I wasn't fond of the use of plastic, the performance, or the battery life. Software aside, the iPad Air 2 is better in pretty much every respect, and so this is really an option for users who want to stay within the Android ecosystem because of functionality that doesn't exist on iOS, or an existing library of apps that they wouldn't be fond of buying again for iOS. Samsung does try to offer tablet-oriented features, like their multitasking features. Unfortunately, they end up being limited by what changes they can make to core parts of Android without breaking other parts of the system, and so some of the features are implemented in a less than optimal manner. Despite that, out of all the Android tablets I've looked at this year, the Tab S2 is the best one even w ith its flaws.

There is one other device that may be worth considering, although I personally can't speak for or against it as I wasn't able to review it this year. That tablet is the Sony Xperia Tablet Z4.

While I am skeptical of a device powered by Snapdragon 810, the Z4 offers some pretty interesting features like waterproofing, and for a full size tablet it's pretty thin and light. I really wanted to take a look at it but wasn't able to source a review sample, and so I can't really give a definitive answer on whether it's worth purchasing but it's certainly something I would take a look at myself if I was planning on buying a tablet this holiday season.

Much like how the iOS tablet market is really an iPad market, the Windows tablet market is pretty much a Microsoft Surface market at this point. I haven't really seen any successors to the inexpensive Bay Trail tablets from a year or two ago, which suggests that Intel's contra revenue strategy has winded down. Most Windows tablets from this year have really been 2-in-1 laptops that either have a rotating hinge or can be split into two parts. That latter segment hasn't seen an enormous number of product launches either. There certainly have been some notable ones like the ASUS T300 Chi, but they often end just being both a mediocre tablet and a mediocre laptop, and you're better off getting a device that does one of those things really well rather than something that does both poorly. Meanwhile, convertible devices like the HP Spectre x360 can be great laptops, but the convertible form factor means that you always have the mass of the keyboard half of the laptop attached, and I've yet to see one that even remotely approaches being light enough to use as a tablet.

With all that in mind, the only two Windows tablets that I truly feel are worth recommending are the Surface 3 and the Surface Pro 4. Going back to what I said in an earlier paragraph about balancing tablet and laptop functionality, while parts of Windows like window management and managing a file system are unwanted by some users, for others they are absolutely essential features to have available. That's why the choice between the two really depends on your workflow, and what sort of experience you're hoping to get from a tablet. If you're a user who wants something that's more similar to a full fledged Windows laptop, but that can also act as a tablet at times, then the Surface tablets are by far your best options. Not only that, but you get a Windows experience that is free of preloaded software and the rarely useful utilities that OEMs tend to include.

The entry model in the Surface line is the Surface 3. This is both a smaller and less expensive device than the Surface Pro 4, but it still runs a full copy of Windows. The display is a 10.8" 1920x1280 panel with a high degree of color accuracy, although I think the resolution is too low for a tablet that starts at $499. Inside is an Intel Atom x7-Z8700 SoC, along with 2GB of RAM and 64GB of eMMC NAND in the $499 model, or 4GB of RAM and 128GB of NAND in the $599 model. The additional RAM and storage for $100 is definitely worth it if you plan to be running any serious Windows software, although as the price moves even further beyond $499 the display's low pixel density becomes more difficult to overlook. Adding on Microsoft's Surface Pen bumps the price up another $50, and the Type cover is $129 so the cost of the accessories brings the price up fairly quickly. It's also worth noting that the Surface 3 doesn't come with the infinitely adjustable hinge of the Surface Pro 3 and 4, which might be an issue for some users as you'll be limited to three fixed angles.

Of course, the flagship Surface tablet is the recently launched Surface Pro 4. The Surface Pro 4 comes in several configurations, and when you include the BTO models there are far more than I could list here. The pricing ranges from $899 for the fanless model with an Intel Core m3-6Y30 CPU, a 128GB PCIe SSD, and 4GB of RAM, to a whopping $2699 for a dual core Intel Core i7-6650U, 16GB of RAM, and a 1TB PCIe SSD. The average price for the Surface Pro 4 should make it pretty clear why I think it ends up competing more with high end laptops than iPads or Android tablets, but it is technically a tablet. That being said, the base model isn't really any more expensive than the iPad Pro once you factor in what Apple charges for accessories, and for that price you're getting a device that you can really use like a full fledged laptop which will certainly appeal to many people.

As far as common specs go, every Surface Pro 4 has a 12.3" 2736x1824 display, 802.11ac WiFi, and Microsoft's Surface Pen included. The battery capacities do vary based on the CPU you get, and the Core i5 and Core i7 models aren't able to be passively cooled like the Core m3 model is so they do use a fan for cooling. Microsoft's Surface Type Cover will still run you $129 on top of the price of the tablet, or $159 if you opt for the version that has a fingerprint scanner for authentication.

Both Surface tablets can legitimately replace a full fledged Windows laptop, and in part that's because they excel at the types of tasks you would do on a laptop. I definitely wish the Windows Store had a wider selection of Modern UI apps that would allow you to use more like you would use an Android tablet or an iPad, but I also think that many of the buyers interested in a Surface 3 or Surface Pro 4 want one specifically because it can run all of their existing Windows software, and so for those users the lack of tablet-oriented apps may not be an issue at all. If you fall into that category, I really recommend you take a look our reviews of the Surface 3 and Surface Pro 4, because Microsoft has executed the hybrid laptop/tablet idea better than any other company has.

Source: Best Tablets: Holiday 2015