Android

Not to mention fakes. I bought and Android 12 tablet on Amazon as new not long ago, the version string said 12, but the actual API level was 24 (Android 7) and the UI wasn't android 12.

If you don't think that's a big deal on a cheap tablet then you're not considering what else could have been done to it that you can't see. They're already lying after all.

And even apparently from name brands.

My sister bought a low-end Samsung tablet (some years ago admittedly), and it NEVER received a software update in the 3 years she owned it. Not a major update, not a security patch, nothing.

I'd hope they've gotten better about that, but I wouldn't hold my breath.

Some of the crap being pushed out cheap is made just for Black Friday. Weird TVs with one HDMI port, or the guts of it are leftovers from three years ago, stuff like that.

I mean sure, buy a PS5 or whatever because there's no cheapo version of that with a PS4 Pro in it, but for things like TVs, tablets, or things with a million different model numbers? Buyer beware.

Yeah, title should just be:

Don't waste your money ~~on an awful Android tablet~~ on Black Friday

I bought two 4TB USB SSDs half price, they seem well built and were brand new. I think I did pretty well.

When is a good time to buy then?

That's so wasteful. And I dragged my old Sony reader for like 7 years and then even handed it down until the battery just wouldn't hold a charge anymore. In 14 years I'm my second reader and feel the Kobo I've got is perfectly fine.

Damn I would take a free Kindle!

I would have personally accepted. More devices for modding and tinkering with! 🔥

I've been using old kindles for homeassistant interfaces for across the house.

This is literally terrible advice and incorrect. Lenovo and Xiaomi are at just 2 examples of brands whose midrange and high end tablets get supported with updates for years.

I have a Lenovo tablet, bar being useless to me as piece of tech it is very functional and continues to get updates.

What about Lenovo tablets?

Pixel

After getting burnt by both the Google endorsed Xoom and the Google branded Nexus 10, I don't trust them at all when it comes to tablets.

With both, Google released good products, and then proceeded to ruin them with abhorrent changes to the software. They made the Nexus 10 dump it's tablet interface in favor of a big phone UI ffs.

In 2017 I got myself a lenovo tab 8", Android 6, 3GB of RAM for less than 120€. Thanks to AOSP, I got it on Android 10, and it's still kicking 6 years later. Get tablets that you can own! (ie Unlock bootloader).

s/Samsung//

This is SEO foam of the sea of e-commerce.

Half a terabyte of read-only memory would be pretty useless anyway

Samsung still makes great ones. Some of them are even compatible with Wacom pens.

Once I helped to set up a Lenovo Android tablet, that too was stellar compared to the cheap junk you can meet with easily.

Samsung's are generally regarded as pretty good. There's also that OnePlus tablet that MKBHD liked because it has features similar to iPads

Whatever you can get second hand

e-ink isn't (edit: good) color.

Tablets are the ideal form factor for things that would traditionally require a large, full-color book. That is: passing around a photo album, reading magazines, textbooks, comics, playing turn-based games like board-games and strategy games. If you use a stylus they're excellent for things that require free-form pen-and-paper like math homework and creating art.

Now, when they were a $600 luxury item that didn't really make sense as a product. But now that they're like $150 for a solidly good tablet they're absolutely a worthwhile purchase for those use-cases.

If small phones were still a thing I could see myself getting a 7 or 8" tablet again (RIP Nexus 7) but with 6+" screens being the norm there's no point.

I do love my kobo libre 2 for reading but also wish it was smaller.