What tablets to buy this holiday season

What tablets to buy this holiday season Yesterday, we warned you off of a whole bunch of tablets that are either sinking like rocks or have issues big enough to make them not worth buying. So, what tablets areworth getting, and who should you get them for? Here are three that we really like, one of which requires…a little modification.


For the Business Traveler or the Heavy Laptop User: The Asus Transformer Prime

The Prime will cost you: $599 for a 64GB model, and $499 for a 32GB model. And to get the full functionality, you’ll need to shell out $150 for the keyboard dock. On the other hand, for $50 more than the best iPad, you get a lot more for your money.

Essentially, for $750, you have a blazingly fast laptop and insanely quick tablet in one package. The Prime has a quad-core processor, faster than any other tablet on the market, more space that any tablet at its price point, and a better design. Even better, it’s got microSD and microHDMI support right out of the box, meaning you can expand it if you need to.

It really is the best tablet on the market; pricey, but worth it.

For the Casual User Who Doesn’t Want to Lug Around a Laptop: The Nook Color eReader with Nook2Android

It’s a little weird that we’d be recommending Barnes and Noble, of all people, as a solid supplier of consumer electronics, but it’s a weird world we’re living in these days.

The stock Nook is OK as a tablet: it’s got email and a web browser, but not a lot of apps. This is why, as an addition to your $199 Nook Color, you also buy your lucky friend a microSD card from Nook2Android, which requires you to put a card in a slot and turn the Nook on. It gives you full tablet functionality with zero actual work, and doesn’t even void your warranty.

The seven inch screen is sharp, but small, so this isn’t really suited to doing actual work on. But for apps and goofing off, it’s pretty much perfect.

For Your Mom, and Other Less-than-Tech-Savvy People: The Nook Tablet

We’d normally recommend the Kindle Fire, but until they definitively resolve the ongoing WiFi problems, we’re a little hesitant to recommend it. So we’ll go with the Nook Color’s big brother, the Nook Tablet, instead.

It’s not a fully functional tablet, really; it’s more of a Barnes and Noble software ecosystem that happens to allow you access to popular apps. Still, it’s designed with less-than-tech-savvy people in mind, which is perfect for that holiday gift you don’t want to spend five hours explaining.

Just do yourself a favor and include a gift card or two for the Nook Store: odds are pretty good you’ll have to help them enter a credit card.