Upgrade your tablet

tablet_02 by denebinside, on Flickr

There were 195million tablets sold in 2013 and these sales look likely to continue in 2014. The electronic device is quickly becoming the must have accessory in the technology world. However, if you do plan on upgrading to a tablet do not fall into the Apple trap, you can upgrade and actually minimise costs by choosing one of Apple’s competitors.

If we compare the iPad Air, Apple’s tablet, and the Android operated Kindle Fire, which is £100 cheaper, you can see that the Kindle is a significant upgrade for a considerably lesser cost.

Let’s start with what’s inside both tablets. The iPad Air uses the Apple dual-core ARM8-A, which is faster than the Snapdragon 800 used in the Kindle Fire. How faster? Not much. Whilst in terms of overall performance the Snapdragon 800 comes up tops, it can handle a heavier workload – meaning you can download a couple of PDFs and play games much quicker than Air. This is good news for online gaming fans. With the increasing popularity of online bingo and casino sites more and more people want a reliable way to play on the go. At 32Red for example you can download their mobile app and play games on whatever device you decide to go for. The speed of the Air is counteracted by the cores found in the Kindle Fire making them both winners in their own right.

Apple banged the drum about their retina display screens that they now use, the Kindle Fire’s display can also be classed as a retina display. Both have fantastic picture quality but the Fire is the overall winner due to its higher pixel density, meaning you can hold the tablet closer to your face without losing the retina quality.

In the modern era nobody wants something that is heavy and bulky, whilst neither is, the Fire is the lighter of the two and smaller, making it much more practical than the Apple equivalent.

Battery life is a huge factor in overall tablet performance. The Air promises up to 10 hours of surfing the web, watching videos, or listening to music, a very respectable battery life indeed. But wait, the Fire can offer you 12 hours of reading, web-surfing, video watching, and music listening, which makes it the less likelier to run out of battery on the train, a dreaded ordeal for all of us.

Of course with iOS 7 you get access to the App Store, which is incredible, but the Amazon App Store for the Fire is hardly inadequate. The App Store is the better of the two but it isn’t a factor that should influence your choice too much.

We have all been sucked into the Apple vacuum. There was a time where they were innovative and ground-breaking, that time is now over. All of its competitors, thanks to Android, have all caught up with the Californian company.  So if you are planning on upgrading to a tablet then don’t feel like Apple is automatically the best product on the market, you are effectively paying for the logo and not any actual spec. Upgrade your life and buy a tablet but also upgrade your presumptions on the tech market, a half-bitten apple is not the be-all-and-end-all.