Tablet specs question

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Brids17

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Dec 28, 2013
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So my mom is looking to get a new tablet but is on a budget and asked me to look into them for her. The problem is I've never owned a tablet and so I don't really know what I'm looking at. She mostly just goes on facebook or googles thing and plays some puzzle style touch screen games so she's not really looking for anything crazy powerful but she also doesn't want to have to wait 2 minutes just for a web page to load either. Looking at them their RAM is like 1-2gb which seems horrible to me but I don't know how well that translates for a tablet. Just hoping someone could give me an ideal amount of RAM and internal memory amount for what she's looking to do on it. Don't need any specific tablets, I'll find them on my own, I just need to know what I'm actually looking for.
 
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Solandri
Android memory management works a bit differently than Windows. If you close a program in Windows, it gets unloaded from RAM. "Closing" a program in Android just moves it to the background. It keeps running there until all RAM is exhausted and you try to open a new program. When that happens, Android frees up RAM by unloading the program which hasn't been used the longest.

So in Windows, you need as much RAM as you plan to run programs simultaneously. In Android, more RAM helps the responsiveness of starting new programs (because they're not really starting, they're just being moved from the background to the foreground). Recent Android builds take up about 350-500 MB, with Google Apps taking another 300-400 MB. So while 1 GB...
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USAFRet

USAFRet

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Mar 16, 2013
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A budget number is the key here.

I am also on the hunt.

I had an Asus Transformer, than became a Christmas present for my granddaughter.
32GB eMMC drive, 2GB RAM, Win 8.1 originally upgraded to Win 10.

So I'm on the hunt for a new one, something similar.

Currently top on my list is a Surface 3
https://www.amazon.com/Microsoft-Surface-10-8-Inch-Certified-Refurbished/dp/B01ATVJDYI
$350

Or another Asus Transformer
https://www.amazon.com/Transformer-T102HA-D4-GR-Touchscreen-Quad-Core-keyboard/dp/B01K1JW7RS
$425


If the actual budget for your is significantly different, then other options would appear.
 
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USAFRet

USAFRet

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If a Windows OS, 32GB is NOT recommended. That's what I had with the Asus T100T, and it was severely restrictive.
To the point of the Win 10 Anniversary Update simply would not run, due to not enough free drive space.

There was only the OS and a few small applications. The only thing that made is sort of usable was the microSD card slot, where I pout a 64GB card to save everything else.
 
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captaincharisma

captaincharisma

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Oct 13, 2004
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1gb tablets are always going to lag on you with even with a pure stock android os

 
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Barty1884

Barty1884

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Apr 16, 2015
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I'd disagree CC, I've used a couple of cheap Android tablets from Asia with minimal hardware, including 1GB RAM without issues - especially for the type of tasks the OP is asking for.

The Tab E 8.0" is 1.5GB, with Samsungs overlay atop stock 6.0.1......... and it's fine too.

 
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Solandri

Solandri

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Jan 4, 2012
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Android memory management works a bit differently than Windows. If you close a program in Windows, it gets unloaded from RAM. "Closing" a program in Android just moves it to the background. It keeps running there until all RAM is exhausted and you try to open a new program. When that happens, Android frees up RAM by unloading the program which hasn't been used the longest.

So in Windows, you need as much RAM as you plan to run programs simultaneously. In Android, more RAM helps the responsiveness of starting new programs (because they're not really starting, they're just being moved from the background to the foreground). Recent Android builds take up about 350-500 MB, with Google Apps taking another 300-400 MB. So while 1 GB will work, it can result in a lot of delays if you use a lot of apps. They will need to be unloaded and reloaded into RAM every time you run them.

The sum total of the apps I frequently use combined with OS + Google apps ends up around 1.3 GB. So 2 GB works a lot better for me than 1 GB would. But if you don't run a lot of apps, 1 GB might be sufficient. If you're planning to keep this a while, I'd aim for 1.5-2 GB as a safety buffer against future (larger) Android builds.
 
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