Techcitement Holiday Gift Guide: Tablets

This year was absolutely the year of the tablet. As such, expect family wish lists to be full of the things. Here’s a selection of tablets covering two pages that we think your loved ones (or blog writers hint hint) may like.

The 10” Tablet They All Want

Shocking, isn't it?

Let’s be honest, when the average end user thinks tablet,  they’re thinking iPad. Apple’s 10” tablet is the industry definer, and with good reasons — it’s light, quick, intuitive, and has a massive library of apps. Yes, there’s a certain subset of the population that adamantly doesn’t want Apple products, and they’ll give you a litany of reasons why (often without any kind of prompting). If that’s the case, steer clear. Statistically speaking though, this is the tablet your loved one has in mind. If you want to be thrifty, try getting them a first gen iPad instead of an iPad2. They’ll still love it and you.

Honorable Mention: Samsung’s Galaxy Tab 10” is one of the few still-sold tablets to come anywhere near Apple’s mindshare. Everything else is too heavy (Lenovo IdeaPad, Toshiba Thrive), too end of lifed (HP TouchPad), or too unheard of (everything else). Well, there is one exception.

For The Uber- Geek

Insert More than Meets the Eye joke here.

Anyone who sees the Asus Transformer Prime and says he doesn’t want one is insane or lying. The first tablet to run NVIDIA’s Tegra 3 chip, making it five times faster than every other high end Android tablet on the market, the Transformer Prime also adds an insanely stunning IPS display and is future-proofed with the promise of an upgrade to Android 4.0. This tablet is the indicator of Things to Come for Android Tablets. Throw in the great keyboard dock, 8 MP camera, and the fact that the 32 GB model is priced at the cost of a 16 GB Tegra 2 tablet or even an iPad2. It’s no wonder that the Transformer Prime is so popular that Amazon has actually had to stop taking pre-orders.

Honorable Mention: If you’re gifting to more of an art geek than a tech geek, you may want to check out the HTC Flyer for the pen functionality. It’s a bit more advanced than the typical tablet stylus (although that would make a nice stocking stuffer).