Why are tablets so expensive?

[phucheneh]

Okay, so let's get this outta the way: I do not keep current on phones and tablets. At all. So I'm just presenting my observations.

Something like two years ago, I bought a Nook HD+. I think it was $150. It has a very nice 9" 1920x1280 screen. It has...some memory. 8GB? I don't remember...it's largely inconsequential because of the SD card slot. It is...not fast. But fast enough for internet browsing, email, Netflix, whatever I wanna do with it (running Cyanogenmod 11 right now).

At the same time, an iPad 2 was like $400, maybe?

Fast-forward to right now. My mom tells me she wants a tablet and doesn't know what to buy. She's thinking iPad, but I tell her that spending $300+ on a 16GB tablet without expandable memory is awfully steep...I'm assuming that SURELY, there must be Android tablets with superior hardware (and expandable memory) available for half the price.

But when I get to looking...I'm just not finding anything. For less than $200, all I'm seeing are 1280x800 screens and old Atom processors. I was expecting to find ~1080p and quad-core ARM's, really. Somehow, two years after I bought my cheap beater tablet, the best deal I can find...is the exact same tablet for the exact same price. Say what?

What should I be steering her towards? She doesn't want to pay for a newer iPad...she was eying a Kindle, but at the $200 price point, they only have the 7" model, which I think she would regret...she probably needs the 9-10" screen. And apparently Amazon has also chosen to go the Apple route of nixing external storage, choosing instead to charge crazy premiums on external memory, despite 16-64GB SD cards being cheap as dirt.

What am I missing? I don't recall tech features/prices ever seeming so stagnant.

 

[midwestfisherman]

Any tablet under $200 is going to be shit. Save more money and get something good once you have the dollars to spend.

 

[phucheneh]

Any tablet under $200 is going to be shit. Save more money and get something good once you have the dollars to spend.

Very insightful, thanks. Totally addresses my post.

Good grief, is 'tablet snob' really a thing?

Anyway, as I continue to look, really, it seems to boil down to the issue of screen size being priced at a ridiculous premium.

'Hey, there's a Kindle for $100! ...with a 6" screen.'

Surely going from a 6" screen to a 9" screen MUST equate to triple the price...right? Oh, wait, no...that's dumb.

I should just give her my Nook.

 

[luv2liv]

i got my mom hisense pro 7 inch tablet from walmart maybe 3 years ago. was $129. has microSD slot, nvidia tegra3, 1gb ram, gps, and hdmi output. still works perfectly fine for her doing emails, websites, music, ips screen, and video.
u can only find them refurb now for $50. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834738002&Tpk=N82E16834738002

 

[Oyeve]

here.

http://www.amazon.com/Samsung-Galax...e=UTF8&qid=1428201186&sr=8-5&keywords=8.4+tab

and refurb

http://www.amazon.com/Samsung-Galax...e=UTF8&qid=1428201186&sr=8-4&keywords=8.4+tab

 

[lopri]

Some iPads are cheaper than Android tablets. Especially mobile data enabled ones. I had to acquire an iPad Air (LTE version) for the household use earlier this year and believe it or not there was no competitive alternative in Android world. (unless you count Shield tablet for $400 as an alternative) I paid $430 for the iPad Air.

 

[v-600]

I assume you're in the US, but you might be able to get hold of one of these.

http://www.techradar.com/reviews/pc-mac/tablets/tesco-hudl-2-1267726/review

Ballpark figure, minus UK VAT, adding international shipping (from experience going the other way) and converting to dollars would be about $180. You may find an equivalent but differently branded device already sold in the US.

 

[Obsy]

The iPad Air 2 is arguably the best tablet out there, even at its retail price point. You're not finding any 'superior Android tablet for half the price' because there is none.

Please don't compare the value of the 6" and 9" Kindles purely on screen size. The 9" is far superior in every aspect except for small-purse pocket-ability.

Also, the Nook HD+ originally retailed for $269 but was such a massive flop that it was heavily discounted to the price you bought it at. It competed with the then $299 Kindle Fire HD 8.9 and not with the much more powerful iPad 4.

 

[Crono]

How did the Nook HD+ work out for Barnes & Noble? I'm pretty sure they were either taking a loss on those tablets, or making very little.

The tablet market is mature, or at least close to it. You probably won't see the bottom drop any more than it has, for the same reason you don't (normally) see $50 desktops... prices don't continue dropping forever. Being able to get decent Android tablets like the Nexus 7 at ~$200 or an iPad Mini Retina at $300 is actually not bad. The fact that you can get Android and Windows tablets for $100 or less and not have them be utter crap is impressive enough, considering the multitouch tablet market is only 5 years old.

The Windows tablets that have dropped to as little as $60-70 on sale are as fast as desktops from a decade ago (or close, not 100 percent sure about that), can be connected directly to a monitor and used with a keyboard and mouse, and many of them take microSD.

 

[Zaap]

Yeah, the Nook HD+ is very misleading.

It was a great tablet for its time (at the later discounted prices, not so much at release) but absolutely B&N took a bath on them. Don't forget originally it was locked down, with no native Play Store access; B&N intended it to be a portal to buying things from them only, therefore willing to take a loss on the hardware itself.

Of course, that didn't work out too well, as it was an outdated business model even before it began.

So ever since, if you've been expecting to find comparatively decent screen/features in a tablet at the same discounted price difference compared to everything else- prepare to be underwhelmed. No one's really looking to take a hit on purpose to provide that.

I don't really see $200 as very expensive for a decent tablet still; eventually the price has to reach an equilibrium and not vary that much. What I don't like all that much, is just like with phones, the internal memory sizes and storage options are still pathetic. But then again, I can see why- people (even on tech forums that should freakin' know better!) will actually argue til they are blue in the face that they don't want expanded storage options on mobile devices, to please, please, keep selling them piddly amounts of memory at yesterday's prices.

So, the manufactures seem to keep obliging, and probably will for as long as they keep getting begged to do so.

 

[sweenish]

Very insightful, thanks. Totally addresses my post.

Good grief, is 'tablet snob' really a thing?

Anyway, as I continue to look, really, it seems to boil down to the issue of screen size being priced at a ridiculous premium.

'Hey, there's a Kindle for $100! ...with a 6" screen.'

Surely going from a 6" screen to a 9" screen MUST equate to triple the price...right? Oh, wait, no...that's dumb.

I should just give her my Nook.

It's always fun to call someone out on a "BS" answer, then flaunt the ignorance you came into the thread with. I'm assuming you asked the question because you wanted an answer. Not because you knew the answer and wanted to make fun of those that didn't.

Consider a smaller tablet screen, ~7". It's smaller than a 10" screen. This is obvious. What's not obvious to you is that it's also much easier to get a good yield on a high resolution but smaller screen, than a 10" screen.

Approximate areas:
7" (16:10) - 21.83 in^2
10" (4/3) - 47.94 in^2

In those three inches, there is also a change in aspect ratio, resulting in that iPad having about double the amount of glass. In doubling the amount of glass that has to run a high resolution and not have glaring flaws, you've (a-) at least doubled your material costs, which I can almost guarantee don't scale linearly, and (b-) significantly decreased your yield rate.

That's just talking about the glass. We haven't even discussed screen tech, calibration, etc.

Nor have we discussed post-release support. That's not free, and one company does a FAR better job than the other in that regard.

Nor have we addressed machine specs. Nooks tablets have always, in my limited experience, been power starved. That makes for a janky, slow, and infuriating experience.

Now let's consider motivations. What is the motivation of B&N to sell you a Nook HD+ at a razor thin margin? It's so you'll buy their egregiously priced ebooks and get locked into their environment. Make no mistake, they want your money. They just want the barrier to entry for your ebook and e-zine subscriptions to be as low as possible.

What's Apple's motivation? They want to sell you a piece of hardware that they believe defines the tablet experience. Software lock-in is a pleasant side-effect for Apple. When you buy the iPad, they will have made their money off of you. Your app and book purchases are icing on the cake. Apple makes about a penny of a song purchase, probably just a couple cents on an album. I imagine the movie purchases also have fairly thin margins. They are a convenience for you, to keep you buying their hardware.

But please, go ahead and make a blind numbers comparison without putting so much as 5 seconds of thought into the matter.

 

[mmntech]

The iPad Air 2 is on the top end of the performance spectrum. So yes, you're going to pay a premium for it. It falls into the same price point as high end Android and Windows tablets. I do agree that the cost to upgrade the storage on them is obscene. It's how Apple makes bank on them, but I really wish they offered external storage outside cloud services.

I'd check out the Samsung Galaxy Tab Oyeve linked. I'm not sure what their refurbs are like but that's not a bad deal for what you get.

 

[Bman123]

This truly is funny. What are you expecting for $150? A 10 inch screen with 3gb of ram and a snapdragon 810 in it.
You can't have champagne taste on a beer budget when looking for a tablet

 

[Zodiark1593]

Reminds me of tue time a friend went and bought a $100 tablet from wal greens against my advice. A sub-500 MHz ARM9 (predecessor to the ARM11) and 3 hours standby time (1 hour actual use, if that) is guaranteed a miserable experience.

 

[Nebor]

Frankly I think the iPad air 2 is a bargain for $500. The amount of technology jammed into this thing is amazing for the money.

 

[Artdeco]

Frankly I think the iPad air 2 is a bargain for $500. The amount of technology jammed into this thing is amazing for the money.

And if you pay attention to sales, it's not unusual to find one in the $425 range.

 

[boomhower]

Refurbed Air for $299 isn't bad.

 

[Nebor]

And if you pay attention to sales, it's not unusual to find one in the $425 range.

I got a 64gb for $500 out the door.

 

[luv2liv]

enjoy your ipad air 2.
come back in 2 years n let us know how it performs. dont be surprised how it mysteriously slows down even for basic tasks like web surfing or emails. it's ridiculous because my 10 years old Dell still do basic tasks fine.

 

[Artdeco]

enjoy your ipad air 2.
come back in 2 years n let us know how it performs. dont be surprised how it mysteriously slows down even for basic tasks like web surfing or emails. it's ridiculous because my 10 years old Dell still do basic tasks fine.

You're claiming Apple is crippling it's hardware in order to sell the newer stuff?

I see just the opposite, and a ton of iPad 2's in the wild every day, I don't think they'll die till their battery life drops to an hour or 2.

 

[Oyeve]

You're claiming Apple is crippling it's hardware in order to sell the newer stuff?

I see just the opposite, and a ton of iPad 2's in the wild every day, I don't think they'll die till their battery life drops to an hour or 2.

Wrong. Apple does cripple it's hw. 4 and 4s useless, Ipad 2 pretty much useless. Ipad 3, we'll that was pretty useless out the door. IPhone 5 is getting useless.

 

[Zaap]

4 and 4s useless

...IPhone 5 is getting useless.

I know they aren't the new shiny-shiny things, but in what way are any of these useless?

We still have my wife's old iPhone 4 and 5 and they're just fine for the same basic things they always were. (The screens being pathetically postage-stamp small a separate issue, since that's mainly a perception thing, as those too are the same size as the day they were new.)

 

[Oyeve]

I know they aren't the new shiny-shiny things, but in what way are any of these useless?

We still have my wife's old iPhone 4 and 5 and they're just fine for the same basic things they always were. (The screens being pathetically postage-stamp small a separate issue, since that's mainly a perception thing, as those too are the same size as the day they were new.)

On ios 8.x they slow down and crash. On the 7 various 4 and 4s and 5 I play around with this is pretty consistent.

 

[Zaap]

On ios 8.x they slow down and crash. On the 7 various 4 and 4s and 5 I play around with this is pretty consistent.

I don't know about the 4, but iOS 8.x isn't slow on my wife's iPhone 5, and it doesn't crash. Certainly doesn't make it useless.

Her 4 is just running whatever the last update it had when she stopped using it over two years ago in order to get the 5. Still works the same as it ever did- not that anyone's using it.

 

[luv2liv]

You're claiming Apple is crippling it's hardware in order to sell the newer stuff?

I see just the opposite, and a ton of iPad 2's in the wild every day, I don't think they'll die till their battery life drops to an hour or 2.

brother's ipad2 (not air 2) was working fine until system update. not coincident that ipad 3 was out.