Best Full-Sized Tablets: Perfect Gifts This Holiday Season

With Christmas and New Year round the corner, Tablet tops the gift wish-list of everyone. The market gives a lot of choices with Google and Microsoft emerging with their own tablets and the evergreen iPad.

Full-size tablets, which generally have screens measuring about 10 inches, are better for surfing websites designed for PCs, and much better at displaying magazines and documents. They are in race to replace the laptop.

Let’s take a look at the best available large-sized tablets:

1. Apple iPad, fourth generation (starts at $499)

The fourth generation iPad comes with a faster processor and the new “Lightning” connector and charging port, replacing the wide port inherited from the iPod. It has an ultra-high-resolution “Retina” screen. Only Google Nexus 10 has more than iPad’s resolution of 2,048 by 1,536. The iPad 2, which was selling last holiday season, is still on sale for $100 less, but it’s not a very good value for the money. 

If $400 is all you can spend, there are better tablets out there than the iPad 2. iPad also enjoys the best support by far from third parties, both in terms of quality applications and accessories like cases. Only drawback is that the base model of the iPad has only 16 Gb of storage, which fills up fast these days. You should think for at least a 32 Gb model, for $100 more.

2. Barnes & Noble Nook HD+ (starts at $269)

 The HD+ is B&N’s first model that is large in size, with 9 inches on the diagonal. The resolution at 1,920 by 1,280 pixels can show more detail than a living-room HDTV. The Nook is family-friendly too. You can create user accounts and restrict them from certain content. It comes with just 16 Gb of storage, but it can be expanded with a microSD card. Nook is perfect for an avid reader or movie watcher. But the number of apps available is small, and it doesn’t have any cameras, while the competitors have two each.

3. Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1 (starts at $499)

The Galaxy Note 10.1 is for a creative person. It’s the only tablet that comes with a “pen” that can be used to write and draw on the screen. The Note 10.1 runs Google’s Android software, giving it access to a wide array of apps originally written for smartphones. The selection is not on par with the iPad’s but better than other alternatives. The Note’s screen is low-resolution category, with 1,280 by 800 pixels and its storage memory can be expanded with cards.

4. Microsoft Surface (starts at $499)

Microsoft’s first tablet seems at first similar to the first iPad. It’s thick, heavy and rough. It runs Windows RT, a version of Windows 8 adapted for tablets. It comes with a version of Microsoft’s Office suite and the ability to connect to wireless printers and USB drives. The screen resolution is 1,366 by 768 pixels, placing it in the low-resolution category. It’s the tablet for those who want to take their writing on the go. The basic model starts out with “32 Gbs” of memory, but interestingly, only 16 Gb is available to the user. It accepts memory cards of up to 64 gigabytes, though. The poor thing is that it doesn’t run standard Windows applications. It will run only programs specifically adapted for Windows RT.

5. Asus Vivo Tab RT (starts at $599 with a dock)

Asus has a quality line of Android tablets they call “Transformer” because they dock into a keyboard with an extra battery. It gets fold up just like a small laptop and has excellent battery life. The Vivo Tab RT basically takes a Transformer and puts in Windows RT instead of Android.

The tablet part is smaller and thinner than the Surface. Like the Surface, it has a memory card slot and a USB port. The screen resolution is the same.

6. Google Nexus 10 (starts at $399)

This is Google’s first full-size tablet and the only tablet available that beats the screen resolution of the iPad with 2,560 by 1,600 pixels. It’s also the only tablet in this list that has speakers on either side of the screen when it’s held horizontally, making for good stereo reproduction while watching movies. There’s no memory card slot or an option for a cellular modem. The Nexus 10 is the closest to matching the flexibility of Apple products.