-With so many tablets on the market, buying a new one can be a little daunting.
I'm Sharon Vaknin, and we're here at Best Buy with tablet expert, Eric Franklin, to make this process a whole lot easier.
Eric, what should we look for in a tablet?
-Well, before you get even close to buying a tablet, I say figure out what your needs are.
Let's say you wanna watch movies on the train while you commute to work, then you're gonna want a tablet with a
really nice screen and access to a lot of movies and TV shows.
Kinda like this.
Have you seen this movie before?
-I haven't.
Check that out.
Nice screen size for watching a movie.
And it's really light, too.
Okay.
-This is the iPad Air, by the way.
-So, what if I wannna get work done, though?
-If you wanna get work done, then you're definitely gonna want a tablet with a nice comfortable keyboard and access to, you know, a nice productivity suite.
Kinda like this.
-Yeah.
-Check it out.
-It's nice.
And--
-Yeah.
-So, this one's a little heavier.
But--
-Yeah.
But the keyboard comes up.
-sort of snaps right on.
-Yeah.
-That's pretty cool.
-Yeah.
That is cool.
So, I'd say know your needs.
-Okay.
So, once we know what our needs are, what about budget?
How does that play into my purchase?
-Well, budget is very important, obviously.
We'd say the thing that affects budget the most or affects price the most for tablets is storage space.
The more storage you want to store those movies and TV shows, the more you're gonna pay.
Also, I would say there are a lot of affordable tablets out there, but they are not always the best quality.
So-- but thankfully, Amazon and Google have found a way
to release high-quality tablets at really affordable prices.
-Well, we talked about budget, but does it really matter how much you spend?
Is it really worth spending an extra 100 bucks on a tablet?
-You know, sometimes, it is.
Like there are a lot of tablets that are under 100 bucks, and they look really appealing.
But you know, you really get what you pay for when you go that low.
-Okay.
So, stay away from those sub-$100 tablets.
Now, before we go, I know that some tablets have some extra tricks up their sleeves.
So, tell me about those.
-Yeah.
A few of them do, like the Samsung tablets have an IR sensor that you can use to use the tablet to control your entire entertainment center.
Like that.
-That's kind of the biggest remote I've ever seen.
But still a neat trick.
-Definitely.
And then, the Kindle Fire tablets.
If you're a parent, you wanna share your Kindle Fire with your kids, they have this Kids mode that allows you to [unk] what kind of access your gonna have on the tablet, so they don't use up your credit card and they don't access sites that you'd rather not have them accessed.
-Now, that is a useful feature.
-Yes.
-Well, thank you, Eric.
And hopefully, by now, you have a better idea of what you need in order to buy your next tablet.
For CNET.com, I'm Sharon Vaknin.
-I'm Eric Franklin.
-Happy shopping.
