Why are there no good tablets at the moment? | Neil's blog

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Why are there no good tablets at the moment?

Published on: 2026-06-03 19:36:22 by Neil Brown<br>1 min read

A friend was looking for a new tablet, and they asked me for a<br>recommendation.

And… I just don’t have one.

The only good tablet, because<br>Android can be replaced with GrapheneOS, was the Google Pixel<br>Tablet, and that is no longer available. Secondhand prices are sky high.<br>That was my go-to recommendation for a while. But it looks like Google<br>has abandoned this project too.

Amazon’s range of FireOS tablets are, IMHO, bloated with crapware<br>which one cannot easily remove. Even the<br>Fire-Tools scripts only get one so far. I can’t recommend one.

There are some fun-looking “tablet computers”, but they are all<br>expensive.

A secondhand Surface Go, if one wants a Linux-based tablet, is<br>readily available and pretty cheap, but honestly not what most people<br>will want. And, while I like it as a cheap, touchscreen, Linux machine,<br>it is not particularly powerful, which can be frustrating. And getting<br>the camera working is a nuisance.

I guess that there are some iPads, if one is accepting of Apple /<br>iOS. Again, that wouldn’t be my choice, but I can see why some people<br>like them.

Why is there no good (non-Apple) tablet at the moment?

Linux tech tablet Pixel GrapheneOS iPad

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