Which Tablets with Digitizers

[jaygss]

I am looking into buyin a new Tablet mainly to faciliate PDF Documents (to read and edit - with a Pen), and I was looking into those, what can you suggest?

I found the following models which look good:

1.) HP Elitepad 900 (~800?)
Pro: looks nice, Pen looks really neat (sold seperately 35?), Expansion Jacket (sold seperately for 100?) looks nice too (HDMI, USB connectivity)
Contra: low resolution (1280x800), Battery not too great (just 25Wh, TPT has 30Wh)

2.) Thinkpad Tablet 2 (~800?)
Pro: Built in Pen, all connections are built in (HDMI and USB via adapter), Bluetooth-Keyboard with Stand available (~100?)
Contra: low-power USB

3.) Asus Vivotab 810C (800? alone, 930? with Keyboard dock)
Pro: Keyboard dock- sometimes really useful to have a full keyboard around and with the additional battery- best battery life, 24 months warranty
Contra: Instable, reviews

What do you think? Or get something else altogether?

 

[Daniel Ratcliffe]

Don't forget there is also the Surface Pro. And if you are willing to go Android there is also the Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1 and 8.0 available (8.0 will be available shortly)

 

[jaygss]

Surface Pro is not out yet (in Europe) and will not come out soon. Plus, I want it just as an addition to my full powered i7 laptop to read PDFs and some on the road skype and videos- but not as a replacement for my desktop.

I checked the Note 10, but it looks too much like a toy to me. And the pen is tiny (really liked the HP one).

 

[Daniel Ratcliffe]

Ah yeah that's fine. I'm going for an 8.0 myself (I don't want a Win8 Pro tablet) as the Note 10.1 is too big. It's bigger than my HTC Flyer though (which is a 7")...

 

[jaygss]

I think I need 10", I had a Nexus 7 and the screen was a bit small

 

[Daniel Ratcliffe]

I require portability. I prefer to cart it in my inside jacket pocket. My new jacket will have one too.

 

[jhguth]

The digitizer on the Tablet 2 and Surface pron (have not tried the Asus) are okay, but if you have used devices with Wacom digitizers like the Lenovo x60t or X220t you will be disappointed. They just are not as good. They are better than a capactive stylus, but not even close to the wacom digitizers you used to get on other devices.

Despite repeatedly calibrating my digitizer, it still is not very accurate and certainly not as accurate as my old x60t. On the x60t I was able to take notes directly on the device, it was fast enough and accurate enough that I didn't even carry paper notebooks in college after purchasing. I've tried doing the same in meetings with the Lenovo Tablet 2 but I can't its not good enough.

I also have to mark up and review drawings and it is at least good enough for that, but a capacitive stylus probably would be too.

 

[Ruined]

Well, the first thing to get out of the way is that the core guts off all three of the machines is the same - Intel Atom N2760 chipset w/ dualcore inorder CPU and SGX545 GPU. So core performance of all three will be near identical.

In terms of writing performance, the Lenovo and ASUS both use Wacom digitizers while the HP uses an Atmel. Apparently the former two are better and I heard the HP's pen was delayed due to quality issues. Also, I believe that the reason none of them are great for artists is that the Windows 8 pressure sensitive drivers are not ready yet.

That being said, I think any of the ones you mentioned would be great for your purposes of PDF editing. I would probably go with the Lenovo or HP as ASUS had screen reliability issues in their RT tablet, and being that the Lenovo pen is builtin and the HP isn't ready yet... I'd go with the LENOVO THINKPAD TABLET 2.

 

[jhguth]

Yeah, I'm really happy with the Tablet 2 overall and the battery gets me more than a full day worth of use. I tweaked a few settings to improve performance and its great (any atom tablet will slow down if you start multi-tasking or throwing too much at it, but for what you are describing and how i use it its great)

 

[BIGPADDY]

I'm holding off for the surface pro or a Nokia tablet :excited: