I’m looking for a tablet to last me at least 4-5 years doing -

  • Reading via Linkding, Audiobookshelf and Kavita
  • Note taking via Notesnook
  • Light media streaming via Jellyfin

I’ve been looking forward to the Google Pixel Tablet 2 to put “The OS that must not be named” on it and have a highly privacy respecting device. The current Pixel tablet just has a lot of drawbacks - support timeline is limited, speakers aren’t good, display is mehh etc. But of course Google didn’t announce the new tablet, most likely putting it off until next year.

I’ve considered a few options -

  • iPad Air - don’t have an Apple account, and frankly don’t want to get into their ecosystem in general.
  • Surface Go - Unavailable in the UK and the kernel required has some missing features as well.
  • Generic Android tablets from Samsung, Lenovo etc - Don’t want a device where I can’t fully control what the OS is doing, and I’ve used LineageOS, and didn’t really like it.
  • Generic Windows tablets from Dell, Lenovo etc - Is Linux really ready for a tablet use case? I’m not really sure about this. Will I have proper driver and hardware support here?
  • Linux tablets such as Pinetab, Starlite etc - These seem to be woefully underpowered and underspec.

So is my only real option to wait until May of 2025 for a Google Pixel Tablet 2? I’d love some input for this dilemma. Thanks!

    • bluegandalfOP
      2·
      6 months ago

      Yeah, I did consider it - you can see the last point in the original post - basically I feel these are extremely underpowered and I’m not sure about Linux’s support for hardware and whether its truly tablet ready. I’d love to hear any opinions on the contrary if you’ve used these devices though