Are the best tablets yet at the point where they can be viable desktop replacements?

P

peppergomez

2[H]4U
Joined
Sep 15, 2011
Messages
2,150
I ask because I am thinking it would be nice to sell my behemoth desktop and unused 3 30" monitors and save a ton of space.

I am a tech writer and photographer (so I use Adobe Photoshop to edit hi res RAW files), and I watch movies and sometimes game. I would want to hook up a 30" monitor if that is possible.
The lightweight form factor is most appealing.

Probably,y what I need to do is buy a laptop, since it'd be less of a drastic change.

Just curious though to see how close the best tablets are coming to catching up to good (not über) PCs.
 
It depends on what you want to do.

Intel BayTrail tablets offer a comparable performance experience to a Core2Duo with better video acceleration. While the slower eMCC based storage on these are slower than laptop/desktop SSDs they still have random performance advantages over the HDs of that era as well. These are available on <500g devices with 8 inch screens. The bigger limitation would he output ports to act as a desktop replacement. In your case the problem would be gaming. Also while Photoshop editing is doable you'd likely want a better than just "doable" experience for that.

However you can get in-between options with convertible/hybrid notebooks. These use mobile CPUs (typically Intel ULVs) and range from 10-14 inches (although there some more niche larger ones). Have you used a drawing tablet before for you workflow? Many of these devices have built in digitizers as well where you can draw directly to the screen. However these will still lack discrete GPUs (the Razer gaming tablet aside). Although the Intel HDs have improved significantly they of course still are rather behind discrete GPUs.

Now in terms of a full laptop the smallest would be 13 (thick) or 14 inch thin laptops with discrete GPUs. However keep in mind these are mobile class GPUs. Although with Nvidia's new GTX 8xx series launch and Maxwell you can get nearly desktop GTX 750ti performance at these small sizes. Laptop GPU performance currently peaks at under a desktop GTX 770 (for more than the cost of a GTX 780ti :p) for single GPUs in very large laptops. There are some monsters with SLI solutions however.

Gaming is always the tricky question and should really be narrowed down. Do you mean gaming in terms of Battlefield 4 or League of Legends?
 
Last edited:
Deepnds really what tablet and what desktop. Surface 2 Pro or Lenovo Helix will be sufficient to replace a desktop. Though, I treat them more as ultra-portable laptops instead of just tablets.
 
In our eco-system we use MS Surface2's for doctors, and HP Elitepad's for nurses.......

The surface2 has docks, and 24-27 inch lcd's hooked to them.


So are they viable? Yes. Easy to use? Not so much....even with 200% scaling a lot of Dr's here have issues seeing text.
 
Tablets for gaming, none...
Tablets that can handle photoshop:
Dell XPS 18/12 (used both and they do fine with LR and PS)
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top