A few wild ass guestimates from the long term planning bin.


Remaining in beloved Android country: ~$650.

• Galaxy Tab S6: $650.
• I hate 16:10 tablets.
• What comes next?

Turning to an iPad Pro: ~$780

• 11" 2018 model: $650.
• Pencil 2: $130.
• CPU on par with my desktop.

Turning to any other iPad: $479 ~ $589

• 7th gen: $330 ; Air 3: $450.
• Pencil 1: $99.
• Lightning cable all the things ~ $40.
• I already routed USB-C all the things.

The best price to performance in my opinion is the Air but simply put, I pretty much reject anything that requires a Lightning connection to charge. To me the cost delta between a regular iPad and a Pro is a time based one; e.g. by the time an Pro goes to the old folks home, just as much will have been spent on regular models in the name of faster SoCs. If Lightning cables littered my home the way USB-C and USB-MicroB cables do, I'd probably go Air.

I've been extremely happy with my Tab S3, and before it a Tab S2, and before that a Note 8.0. Damned 1" crack in my screen and the occasional side effect of that becomes increasingly worriesome as time goes on. But other than that, it has been a perfect device for me.

Samsung's Tabs S4, S5e (barf), and S6 make me question their road forward. No one else makes a suitable device. And the level of bugginess my Chromebook offers, the odds of me taking a 2-in-1 or tablet based Chrome OS device as an upgrade path aren't very high. Unless Google changes in larger quality assuring ways, I can't really call a Chrometab any better than suffering i[Pad]OS versus a real Android device.

The real question, I suppose is when my Samsung finally heads towards failure versus when my budget converges with a replacement.

Every now and then my device acts a smidge funny. Like today, it decided to stop taking pen input for a while. As far as I can tell the crack in the screen has not been visibly expanding but events like this seem to now happen several times per month. When you consider that if neither Direct3D nor bash are involved, my tablet is my primary computer at home and my secondary computer at work, that gives worries, alright. Sigh.