Just saw the Sony and Toshiba tablets in Media Markt and Saturn, 2 of the bigger German electronic retailers.
Hmmmmm....
The Toshiba is somewhat similar to Motorola Xoom. It's okay, but I would have bought maybe a year ago. Now it seems somewhat dated. Just checked the web: This really was the Thrive. Wow. Would have expected more from Toshiba.
The Sony certainly has an interesting form factor. But I found it unsatisfyingly cheap. Actually, with only € 450 to € 500 it IS cheap. For the price it may be okay, but I easily could resist. In my opinion, the price directly is reflected in the "touch and feel" = "plasticky".
I saw the Samsung 8.9" as well. Nice. Very well built. But I don't like the form factor. For smaller tablets, I clearly prefer 16:9 over 4:3.
And I saw the LG tablet. Wow. This one I liked. But it was € 850, whereas I can have it for € 550 to € 650 via Amazon. The form factor, 16:9 I guess, is extremely appealing to me. And it's extremely well built, almost iPad quality I'd say. I don't like the 3D nonsense, though. So I'm not quite sure yet, whether I'll go for it.
If I check out all the tablets in Media Markt (about 10 different ones I guess), it becomes pretty obvious: Majority of the manufacturers aims for a price point in the range of € 400 for a 10" tablet with 32GB.
Personally, I don't like this development. Yes, it may increase the number of tablets and this possibly may influence the number of apps. But I'd really wish for more quality. After all, most of us will use their tablet for 2 or maybe 3 years. Over a usage period of, let's say, 3000 hours: Do € 100 price difference really matter?
I understand: A lot of people may say, € 100 makes the difference, whether they actually can afford it. Granted. There obviously is a demand for some entry models.
But still: Personally, I'm absolutely willing to pay, let's say, € 200 more (that's still way below € 1000, that I've paid for my PDAs about 9 years ago) for a quality product. Instead, I only bought a Pizza today. € 9 well spent.
