Why need a tablet

I also enjoy taking the iPad on a plane for movies, a job that used to go to the iPod Touch. Tablets are cheaper than a new laptop. A quick restart is is all it takes to get them back on track. Tablets are good for travel. Tablets usually work with Wi-Fi and 3G networks and the large screen and storage space is great for maps, guides, and dictionaries. Tablets are just cool. Are tablets as portable as the phone you already have? Is carrying an extra bag to holster your tablet the end of the world?

Where are the games? Will I be able to play play multi-player in Battlefield with a tablet? It might make for a few cute Instagram posts, but we've heard our fair share of smartphone horror stories involving young ones. Instead, cheap tablets like the ones we just discussed make for great distractions during long car rides and stressful situations. Their bigger screens mean that icons and educational apps are easier to interact with, a crucial benefit for those whose fine motor skills aren't done developing yet.

Just be sure to get a sturdy case, even if your chosen tablet has an extended warranty like Amazon's. While tablets can be valuable tools for parents, it's important to remember that they might not be ideal for the very young.

The medical community still seems to disagree on how old a child should be before they first use a tablet , but at least one study points to a connection between tablet use in children under two and delays in speech development. All right, bear with me on this one. People are buying more smartphones and PCs than tablets, so it's pretty clear what kinds of devices we're using to get actual work done. That said, a correctly equipped iPad or an Android tablet could feasibly replace a laptop for lightweight tasks like web browsing, media consumption and word processing.

The traditional notebook and PC form factors aren't going anywhere; they're likely to remain the de facto choice for power users. Realistically, though, most people might not need that kind of power. Even so, hardware makers have spent years trying to close the gap between tablets and more traditional computing setups. The performance gap between the two has shrunk dramatically as a result -- iPad Pros and Galaxy Tabs are capable of editing videos and playing graphically sumptuous games, in addition to handling more mundane tasks.

Both are available with snap-on keyboards and sophisticated styluses too, making them powerful choices for the productive and the creative. They're not for everyone, but tablets do make a lot of sense for some people -- they aim to provide the right amount of power and functionality at the right time.

As tablets get more powerful and the software available to them becomes more sophisticated, the scope of people for whom tablets are a potentially viable PC replacement will continue to widen. This might be the biggest reason to abstain -- after all, you probably have a device in your pocket that can do basically anything a tablet can.

Beyond that, gadget makers tend to prioritize smartphones: New components, features and software typically debut on handsets before they make their way into tablets. What's more, smartphone screens are getting larger by the day -- extra-long, panels are becoming more common, with the bezels surrounding those displays also getting narrower.

We've already seen a few phones that are basically all screen, and it's not hard to imagine that trend taking hold across the industry. Sure, a tablet will still give you more raw screen real estate to work with, but that argument isn't as persuasive as it was a few years ago. Smartphones are tremendously popular. In fact, you can do without a phone without anyone else even knowing or caring.

Virtual phone numbers are available from 5G and VoIP providers. Google Voice and Skype are mainstream apps you may already be using, and these will give you a phone number you can share and be reached at. To illustrate my point, consider this basic thought experiment: Which would be more of a disadvantage in business — to never have access to the phone system or to never have access to Zoom? The answer is clear: Not having access to Zoom would be a much bigger disadvantage these days.

While you could take and make phone calls on VoIP and other services, not having Zoom means you would have to turn down meetings. In other words, we have an entire technology, system, and network devoted to functionality that is duplicated by apps.

And while the best audio communication apps on any device sound better than mobile calls over the phone networks, Zoom works much better on a tablet than a phone, simply because on the tablet the front camera is the same but the screen is bigger.

The iPad Mini 6 is the best example yet of a small tablet that can replace a phone — because the world has moved on from relying on phone networks, and the iPad Mini 6 is the best small tablet on the market. It arrives next week. What happened with the landline phone is happening with the mobile phone network: How people communicate for business is evolving away from the mobile phone network. In addition to the quality of the screen and elegance of the user interface, my work benefits enormously from the flexibility of usage models.

But I also seamlessly switch to voice and touch and pen or Pencil, if you will. I can use it for a lean-back experience for doing research, and with the Pencil for taking notes and sketching ideas. I carry my iPad almost everywhere I go, and can quickly do work anywhere.

I use cloud services in multiple browsers, and both iPhone and iPad apps. The necessity to have an iPhone in order to use an Apple Watch is just an artificial limitation created by Apple, presumably to sell more iPhones. And, of course, an Apple Watch is hardly a business necessity for most people. Nor is taking pictures a business need for most workers. More to the point, just about every mainstream business function and usage model people perform with smartphones, desktops, and laptops can now be done with an iPad or another tablet brand.

This is a controversial point for two reasons. Some work styles demand a large-as-possible screen, and tablets max out at what would be a small screen for a desktop or even a full-size laptop. Most laptop users could use a tablet without missing out on any feature or function, and in fact could benefit from the superior screens and elegance of interfaces like the iPadOS.