Guidemaster: Picking the right tablet for each use case
Enlarge / Microsoft's Surface Pro 9. (credit: Andrew Cunningham)
Tablets looked to take the computing world by storm during the iPad's meteoric rise, but they have now stabilized into their role as a secondary device oriented around convenient content consumption and portability-at least as far as at-home use goes. Still, tablets are hugely popular, especially with families where kids and adults each want their own computing solution, but not everyone has room for a desk.
And given that younger generations are touch-first, keyboard-and-mouse second, and there are plenty of reasons to spring for one or more tablets these days. While Google has struggled to translate its Android smartphone operating system into a viable tablet platform, Apple's iPad dominates the market, with Amazon's Fire lineup covering a lot of other users.
There's also the sort-of-tablet Surface line of products from Microsoft, which are aimed more at productivity and power users. Today we'll go through our best tablet picks for different types of users and use cases based on our time reviewing these devices. Let's dig in!